The Pomp Podcast - #1140 Gideon Powell On Bitcoin Mining, The Oil Industry, & Criminal Justice Reform

Starting point is 00:00:00 What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Gideon Powell is the CEO and chairman of Cholla Inc. In this conversation, we talk about oil and gas field workers, his family's story, the rise of Bitcoin mining in West Texas, why he believes West Texas is going to dominate the future, the work that he's doing in the criminal justice system and how he thinks we can change that for the better, why he reads so many books and exactly how he picks the next book he's going to read. And then we do a deep dive on Troy Inc. itself, Charles Koch and the building of various businesses, and then Julian Simon,

Starting point is 00:00:41 the greatest economist that no one has ever heard of. I really enjoyed this conversation with Gideon and I hope you guys enjoy it as well. After you get done listening to this episode, jump on Twitter and let us know what you liked, what you didn't like, what you agree with, and what you disagree with. We always appreciate the feedback. Here's my conversation with Gideon. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his

Starting point is 00:01:17 personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Gideon here with me. I'm super excited to talk about this. Everyone in the world knows that the American economy is made up of so many different types of workers, businesses. But one that gets shit on, one that gets completely lost in kind of the controversy and the debate on a national stage is the oil and gas field workers. And you, your family, so much of what you do on a day-to-day basis, you interact with these people. You've worked with them for a long period of time. And so I thought a great place to start our conversation is just like, help us understand the oil and gas industry and the importance of the actual field worker themselves to sustain not only the industry, but the American economy in general. Yeah, I think that's one of the most important things. I appreciate you giving me a platform to talk on this because really, you know, we talk about oil and gas and it's obviously needed throughout society. I think there was a lot of push towards, hey, let's do this energy transition, but it needs to be sustainable.

Starting point is 00:02:18 and part of sustainability is profit. So I think really kind of slowing down and thinking about what's going on in the field. And yeah, to your point, so the field workers are the guys that are putting oil in the tanks. And so really, I mean, when there's a weather event, you know, those guys are overcoming adversity.

Starting point is 00:02:33 They're overcoming the elements. They're actually in the field ensuring that oil is coming out of the ground, that gas is coming out of the ground. And that gas is heating our homes. It's powering power plants, which is baseload critical to powering our whole world and, you know, economy.

Starting point is 00:02:48 And so really the field workers, I think they're one of the most underappreciated throughout society. And I was telling you the story earlier, but my daughter came home from school one day and she was like, hey, my friends know you're an oil and gas and they don't like you. And I was like, cool. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to wake up tomorrow, 5 a.m., and we're going to go to West Texas where we've got a frack operation going on. And to my surprise, she woke up before me and was ready to go. And we drove three hours out to West Texas, and, you know, we got there. There's about 30 guys, mass amounts of equipment going on.

Starting point is 00:03:23 And really, I did, and luckily one of our head of engineering was out there. And I was like, hey, Walker, will you introduce her to everybody? And she got to see 30 guys that were working. And I said, Avery, these 30 guys, they're ensuring that we have the fuel needed to power our current modern world. and without these individuals that wouldn't be possible and and the oil is ten dollars we were fracking when nobody else was there was chaos oiled just stopped being negative and she got to see 30 individuals who were able to feed their families because there was this you know mutual benefit of we're getting oil out and these guys are making it making sure it happens so um you

Starting point is 00:04:05 know and i could have tried to explain that to her but she saw that perspective and you know made sense to her there's an element of humanizing these conversations that i think is really important right um there's a comedian who has a whole spiel about the term insurgent during the war right if you say hey we're gonna go kill insurgents everyone's like i don't know any insurgents like kill them all right but if you're like hey we're gonna go kill humans everyone time out hold on which humans why all of that same thing when you bring it to the national debate and it's not so much a wartime scenario but we talk about different industries or different types of workers with just this broad-based stroke. You don't know anyone in that industry. You've

Starting point is 00:04:41 never met anyone. You don't understand what they do on a day-to-day basis. You may not even understand how that industry works or what that job entails. And so therefore, it's easy to say, I like this one, I don't like this one, because you don't know, right? You're just completely uninformed, you're ignorant. And frankly, most people are just repeating what they've heard on the mainstream media. When you look at these roles of the oil and gas workers, what are they doing on a day-to-day basis. Like you said, they help get the oil into the tanks, right? They're making sure that the natural gas is coming out of the ground, like all these, but like, what are they actually doing? And I'm coming at it super uneducated other than I seen the video on the internet where

Starting point is 00:05:19 they're wrapping the chains around the actual drills and that shit looks real hard. Throwing chain. I worked on a double jack knife rig and once they found out I was the boss's son, I was not allowed to throw a chain. But yeah, so yeah, I think, you know, there's a few kind of key field workers and i love you know i love the the convergence of bitcoin mining and oil and gas because a lot of the names that have emerged for these positions we're all going to translate that over to well okay bitcoin mining as well but really there's your your pumper so after you have drilled a well you know that is a mechanical operation that goes thousands of feet into the ground you set casing which is pipe then you have fluids then you have cement to ensure that you're

Starting point is 00:05:59 protecting the water but one that oil and gas doesn't just come out of the ground that's a mechanical operation, things are going to break. So what a pumper does is they're proactively checking on the well. If there's a leak, leaks happen, then the pumper is our first line of defense to ensuring, hey, let's catch it before it gets bad and then remediate the land. So really the pumper kind of floats around and has several different wells and this covers a large geographic area. And there's talk of, oh, let's automate that, you know, and of course there's efficiencies that, you know, choil, we're evaluating, but you can't ever replace the human that goes out there, makes observations, and then is able to assess what went wrong or what is about to go wrong.

Starting point is 00:06:40 So that's kind of another big, you know, you've got to anticipate and that's where experience matters. So the pumper is in charge of making sure that the wells are performing, performing safely, and, you know, kind of the first line of defense on what could go wrong. And I kind of think about the pumper, like I think about, you know, somebody checking on their Bitcoin lines all right but we'll get there uh but yeah and then there's the roughneck and what a roughneck does great name it's a yeah yeah roughneck is one of the greatest i don't know what they do but i want to be that guy so what a roughneck does is they're kind of a modern nomad so their job is to operate the drilling rig so they're the guys on the drilling rig and that's an offshore drilling

Starting point is 00:07:20 wig or that's an onshore drilling rig and so really they're the guys and there's a few different um ways to manage their schedules uh but a lot of guys do you know three eight hour ships and this is a huge capital investments millions of dollars to own a drilling rig and so you want that working all 24 7. i mean these guys are working over christmas over thanksgiving over new year's over the super bowl i mean the this is a 24 7 operation and so what they're doing is there's a few different types of roughnecks there's a tool pusher who's in charge and then um you know you know, you've got the weasel, the new guy, but really those are the guys that are manning the mechanical operations of putting a hole in the ground. So you're going into the ground and

Starting point is 00:08:05 then, you know, you've got to connect pipe or drill pipe. And so you've got a drill bit that has to go down. We're going down two miles below the earth. That is just, you know, look out and identify what is a two mile marker. We're going that far down. And then we go two miles sideways. So you go two miles down and then two miles sideways to actually hit some of these oil deposits. Yep. Is that the right terminology, oil deposit? Reservoirs.

Starting point is 00:08:33 Reservoir. I'm only half smart. All right, so two miles down, two miles sideways. But when you do that, how do you know that you're going to hit it? That is like the big question that when I see this, I'm like, I didn't realize it was two miles, first of all. But second of all, like the pinpoint accuracy to hit this stuff, how big is the reservoir and like do you ever miss?

Starting point is 00:08:54 uh yeah you definitely miss okay that's okay there's so many awesome capabilities and guys and girls in this industry but uh to ensure you don't miss you want to have a damn good drilling engineer but at the same time you want to have someone on his team that's an operations geologist so the drilling engineer is really kind of the quarterback ensuring the drilling is done safely prudently and efficiently um and really we've got a great drilling i mean our drilling engineer i'm gonna go and brag on him one of the things i really liked is when you have a certain kpi which is a lot of drilling engineers like to go fast because that's you can measure well if you drill too fast then you're going to drill a janky hole and that means when

Starting point is 00:09:35 you're producing it the pumper is going to have a harder time so you really want a humble individual that is a high performer and that's exactly what we've got his name is david dean he's an awesome human and i was incredibly impressed the first time i had breakfast with him is just his humility and i've seen it in action where he's a good communicator because it's intense you're moving fast. So the drilling engineer is really set in that kind of framework for how do we do this right and ensuring the roughnecks, the tool pushers, and then the directional company. So what a directional company does is they literally are a service company that has the technology to measure where you are. So you're down two miles and we're actually going, some people are going to three

Starting point is 00:10:14 miles. Is that because there's less oil closer to the surface now? Like we've been going and getting oil for a while. And so we have to keep going deeper and deeper to find more of these reservoirs. It's not just deeper. So it really is this amazing study of human ingenuity. So historically you would drill down and you didn't have to drill. Like we literally, there was oil seeps on the ground and people were like, oh, where's the oil on the ground? Let's put a hole there. And that was like a novel concept. And then a liquid battery came out and people were like, oh, great. We can make this into productive. And that obviously ushered in the industrial revolution. That's when I would have been successful in the oil and gas industry is

Starting point is 00:10:51 when you could just walk around and be like, oh, there's oil, put a hole there. Like after that, I'm out. And that's where people are like, oh, Bitcoin, it's crazy. I can't, oh my gosh, this is like magic internet money. It's like, guys, literally people used to imagine trying to explain oil and gas to someone like, hey, we're gonna go drill a hole and a liquid battery is going to come out. Oh, and we need, you know, inflation adjusted millions of dollars to go to would like west texas that is the flattest someone literally conceptualized an idea in their mind that underneath that were mountains of oil and you know that obviously ushered in the industrial revolution and helped us win world war ii um when you see that happening is that why people in texas

Starting point is 00:11:30 are so predisposed to um what i'll consider like the american ideals and ethos because there's a lot of alignment there but also why they're so predisposed to uh being receptive to bitcoin I think it has a lot to do if you know want capabilities if like what we've done like going two miles down and two miles out three miles out that's really challenging that takes a coordinated effort of of several types of employees services consultants companies and so really when people are like oh bitcoin mining it's so hard what we're what are what the oil and gas industry has done is light years. It is the most advanced capabilities companies in the world. I mean, we have overcome, you're talking about offshore going down, you know, several miles, then heating

Starting point is 00:12:16 the seabed floor, then going down, you know, another five miles. I mean, these are orders of magnitude more complex projects than anything the world has faced. So when we, so to me, it all comes down to capabilities. We, in the oil and gas business, we've seen individuals overcome significant obstacles to power our modern world. And really, you know, it kind of goes back to like, we're never going to, we will never run out of oil molecules, period, full stop, end of argument. We might run out of economic oil. And I think that goes back to Julian Simon's principle of cornucopian economics, which when oil goes up, it's saying two things, find more of me and compete or or so find more me or find another resource to compete so when oil was running out

Starting point is 00:13:04 in 2008 or you know gas was running out we were literally building spending billions of dollars to import natural gas and then what happened some dudes out of west texas and the barnett shell said hey let's drill sideways let's apply innovation let's apply technology the price signal has gone up the incentive is greater boom so we're not running out of natural gas we got way too much And I think the same thing happened with the oil business. You know, we were running out of oil and then everyone's like, oh, we did it with gas. Can we do it with oil? Hell yeah.

Starting point is 00:13:34 Human innovation was applied and oil would be significantly higher had we not had the culture we have in America and the property rights to unleash that innovation. You mentioned Julian Simon, and I didn't know who that was until you were telling me about him. And you, I think quote that you used was Julian Simon is the greatest economic individual that no one knows, right? He's the greatest economist that no one knows. Julian Simon is the greatest economist that no one knows.

Starting point is 00:14:00 Who the hell is Julian Simon? He really was the antithesis to the Malthusian idea that we have too many people on this planet. So really, he took the stance, and he made a famous bet on kind of the future of commodity prices where he said, look, in the long run, all commodities trend towards zero because of human innovation. And I think history has shown this multiple times.

Starting point is 00:14:22 So he wrote a book called The Ultimate Resource, about the ultimate resource one and the ultimate resource two. And really, he popularized and really conceptualized these ideas that we don't need top-down management. We need more people. And so really the greatest resource is the human mind. So we need more people. We need more people with more ideas equipped with liberty. And so, you know, one of his quotes is our company quote, where it's like individuals equipped with liberty and freedom, they can exert their will on, you know, their ecosystem.

Starting point is 00:14:56 And there's this mutual benefit that we all, and I think this has played out. I mean, I like the example of going back to whaling. Literally the whales were going extinct because of whale fat. And that was used to power the world. And then somebody found this thing called kerosene. And all of a sudden the whales didn't go extinct. You know, that was not out of the goodness of their heart. That was, there was a better product, let the market compete.

Starting point is 00:15:19 We saw this at the same time with, people were deforesting Europe to power. They were using wood, you know, that is archaic, but, and they were deforesting all of Europe. And then all of a sudden someone was like, I mean, they were designing boats to go to America to pick up wood and come back. And then all of a sudden coal was discovered and that helped to where we didn't, you know, deforest everything. So I think when people talk about CO2 or emissions, this is not something society hasn't faced. And in fact, the people that are going to solve it are the individuals with resources endowed with liberty and capabilities at the oil and gas companies. What's fascinating to me about you is you're very well educated. You have this very kind of sympathetic view towards the oil and gas field worker.

Starting point is 00:16:03 You understand the importance of the actual people on the ground doing the work, keeping the American economy powered and running and kind of building this huge economic machine the world's never seen before. But at the same time, you run a business and you run a business in a pretty unique way compared to the rest of the world. But you've got a couple of folks that I think you've kind of gotten a crash course from. And Charles Koch is one of them who, when I say that name, most people think of politics and donations and all this kind of stuff. But they actually don't know that Charles Koch and his brother have built one of the largest, if not the largest, private company in America. I think it does $100-plus billion in revenue a year. And when you actually start to unpack how they did that, the MBA that you can get from simply understanding how well-run that organization is, how principled that organization is, how they treat their employees, how they treat their partners, how they treat their leaders, is unlike most companies in America. So maybe talk a little bit about that organization and what you've learned from them and maybe Charles himself.

Starting point is 00:17:09 Yeah. I mean, Charles Koch will go down as one of the greatest philosophers and business leaders and philanthropic leaders the world's ever seen. Really, I'm incredibly blessed. I was posting libertarian-ish things in 2016, 17. I always try to be very respectful. and uh one of my friends called me and said hey you clearly don't have enough friends why don't you come to this dinner and i went to this dinner and it was it was a dinner sponsored by uh charles coke's philanthropic group called stand together and at that dinner i met eight

Starting point is 00:17:44 under and my wife and i showed up we made eight other individuals who who really cared and weren't just larping and complaining it was there are problems in the world what are we going to do about it. And so I, I mean, that was just a super charge of like, wow, these people there, you know, they, I mean, it was an incredibly diverse crowd. Everyone had different ideas, but there was no complaining. It was how do we get better? And so then, you know, started going to this, you know, these events called Stand Together. And I just remember interacting with everyone at this philanthropic group and being incredibly impressed with, you know, even a little thing, like one time whiteboard fell and one of the employees from the very far back came back grabbed the whiteboard

Starting point is 00:18:29 and put it up and i was just like how is everyone such a high performer here and so respectful and um there's also if you you know if you i'm a member of stand together because it's one of the easiest organizations i've ever felt about i mean it was just such an easy win what is it stand together so stand together is a philanthropic organization that is focused on backing social entrepreneurs. So really what Charles Koch and his team did was they developed capabilities over decades on how to build long-term value. And profit matters, but it's really, you know, we think about things in a binary way of for-profit, not-for-profit, and I think that's a flawed dynamic. And really it's culture. How do you build culture? So I had no idea what company

Starting point is 00:19:14 culture was. I'd never thought about it, but I remember I was meeting with, and what his philosophy is uh really market-based management or principle-based management and it's apply basically what distill what made america great um and then apply that to any ecosystem and so really when i started interacting with the stand together people i also got introduced to some former executives from coke industries and they just spoke the most truth and wisdom i mean it was just like, unbelievable on the knowledge. And I was all you know, my dad was, you know, he, his dad died at a young age, and he just had to work and he and his whole life, he felt like

Starting point is 00:19:54 he was trying to survive, even though he built a massive business. But he loved working. But, you know, so he instilled in me this just like, hey, be effective, get stuff done. And, you know, so fun to work with my dad towards the end of his life. Because he built, I kept reiterating, you know, it's hard going through change, I was trying to change stuff at Cholla. Um, but he, he started to see that I got to take time off, reflect, build philosophy, heavily influenced by market-based management and stand together and Coke Industries and

Starting point is 00:20:25 apply that to, to not only my personal life, my business life, my philanthropic of how do we create mutual benefit through society? And specifically, I'll never forget. So, um, I was arrested my senior year of college. It was, um, it sucked. What'd you do? Um, I got in a motorcycle accident in a parade and, um, you know, I hurt some kids and that sucked cause I was making kids smile before that, but I got to go to jail and I'll never

Starting point is 00:20:52 forget. And I, I, I walked in feeling really sorry for myself cause I was charged with three. The DA basically said, we're going to charge you with three counts of aggravated assault. And I was like, dad, let's fight this. That's like, look, I messed up, but like felonies. and um that was one of the first times i saw my dad cry and my criminal defense attorney was like you can't win this gideon you you have to plead down and it was also um but yeah so that so anyway i go into jail and i tell the story and people's like how long are you in there uh like three

Starting point is 00:21:24 hours but my two white parents who love each other who raised me um and i had an awesome criminal defense, they took me to jail. And so when I came out, it didn't happen overnight, but I realized, wow, this system's really messed up. And imagine if I didn't have the financial resources I have. So I got interested in criminal justice reform. That's actually where I first got introduced to Charles and his philosophy is, um, I saw that he was interested in criminal justice reform. And then, you know, years later, I get invited to see him and it was just like a, an amazing thing. What does he do around criminal justice reform? it okay so really there's something called the first step act which basically got it it equipped

Starting point is 00:22:06 people with the resources to get thousands of people out of jail who who should not be in jail so our criminal justice system is totally screwed up that there's no doubt but it's so big how do we i mean they're like we talk about america which is a dichotomous relationship of like okay we're the freest nation in the world but we also incarcerate more people than any other nation like that's insane and that's a problem and it's one of the greatest tragedies of our time um and so i also like criminal justice reform because it's mutually beneficial there is no tribe like okay there's you know okay we got you're a democrat okay you like criminal justice reform you know lower the amount of time for non-violent drug offenses and then oh you're a republican and

Starting point is 00:22:49 you are fiscally conservative. Well, prison is a really expensive way of making people worse. And so Charles and his team, a guy named Mark Holden actually was Koch's general counsel. And he approached Charles and said, hey, this is really screwed up. I'm a lawyer. I worked at a jail. I want to change this. And so Mark spun out, started developing capabilities up in Washington. And really for decades, they built resources, relationships, and were prepared. And a few years ago there was a woman named alice marie johnson so alice um she's one of the most amazing people i've ever met and she was in jail because she got in put in a bad situation she was a grandma her mother at the time and she she sold drugs and she approached and it was her first

Starting point is 00:23:37 time ever offense and you know the da said we're gonna we're gonna punish you and she said this insane. I'm not doing a pleading down to 10 years or something like that. And so she fought it and they punished her. They sent a message, which is do not fight the system. Take your slap on the wrist of 10 years. So she was set to be in jail forever. So anyway, we threw a fundraiser. My wife and I did kind of incubate some criminal justice nonprofits. And I remember seeing a video of Alice Marie Johnson played at my house and she's just this sweet, sweet lady. And she's talking about she messed up and, but how she's sorry. And I gave this speech at my house, I think it was 2016 about how I'm, you know, or no, 17. I was like, you know, we, everyone in this room, I invited

Starting point is 00:24:25 all my parents, friends, all my, you know, all my Bitcoin friends, all my oil friends, like anybody that's curious and had resources. I wanted you there. And, um, actually Parker Lewis orange killed me that night. But it was really fun. The mayor. I mean, and it was so fun because so many, I got to bring in so many people that it wasn't about Bitcoin. It was about how do we elevate human prosperity? And here's an injustice. And I remember saying, everyone can have a small impact on ensuring people like Alice and the jail wouldn't even let her video in. We had to play a recording. And I was like, everyone can have a small impact on ensuring people like Alice get out of jail and also stay out of jail. And then like a year later, I'm in a stand together

Starting point is 00:25:06 conference hugging her. How'd that happen? Well, how it happened is because I was a very, very, very small part of elevating a dialogue. My wife and I were, but really what people don't fully appreciate is the first step act was about to die. It was, there were some people held up on it. And I remember the night it was held up, I was texting Mark Holden, some leaders that stand together some leaders at america's for prosperity um and i was like hey how can i help how can i help and then i'll never get mark was like gideon we've been preparing for this moment for a very long time you know appreciate your feedback and they got it over the finish line they got it done and it wasn't one individual wasn't mark wasn't charles it was a coordinative effort but all the

Starting point is 00:25:50 groups i was talking to were incubated by charles coke so anyone who got out of jail they don't give but damn what, you know, who got him out of jail? You know, so really, and, you know, President Trump signed that, he pardoned Alice Marie and Alice was the inspiration. I mean, you got to bring her on. She like, she was literally with, I don't know if you've ever been to jail.

Starting point is 00:26:09 It's really dehumanizing. And I've been in inside of several jails multiple times with my wife working on some, you know, it's just dehumanizing, you know, and no one's getting out of that better. I mean, you're not even allowed to, when COVID, you couldn't even hug your daughter. So there's a program called Girls Embracing Mothers.

Starting point is 00:26:25 gym and you know so sweet um we you know my wife and my kids made these blankets or got blankets and it was so hard to get them into the jail but when we got them inside the jail the mothers got to spend time with their daughters and work on a little project together and like it's the humanizing element of it yes that basically when you do that all of a sudden now you bring back not only for the mothers but also for the daughters and that's where um brittany barnett um as a quote that i i steal a lot of quotes i try to give people credit sorry none of them but it's like it's not just one person goes to jail the whole family goes to jail so we're taking people we're moving them we're placing them around and you know we need um you know my brother's a

Starting point is 00:27:08 recovering heroin addict and that doesn't happen overnight it's a lack of community it's all it's it's there's all these things so we have to keep the families together yeah and we have to think about that and that should be considered. I do think that this is a really interesting place maybe that our society's in, right? So it's very well documented, the challenges with broken homes and the lack of two parents and all that. And I'm always careful to say, like, some people arrive at that situation by choice. Some people arrive at it not by choice. They're put in that situation. And so however you get there, you get there. And I think that there's a lot of work that's being done on, you know, what can we do to help these families that are

Starting point is 00:27:49 there. Whether they chose to be there or not, we need to help them. But also, there's this interconnectedness of we live a sedentary life. People are not out exercising. They don't eat healthy. Well, why are they not eating healthy? Well, they probably don't make enough money in many cases to actually be able to afford healthy food, right? Then all of a sudden, you add in things like the mental health issues. But are the mental health issues because if you just were by yourself, you would have the mental health issue? Or is it because we're poisoning brains with social media and electronics and devices. Then you add in criminal behavior and then drugs and you start to like build this picture where you're like, hold on a second here. There's a lot of

Starting point is 00:28:28 issues that people face in society, but are there one, two, three different things that if we just tackle them, we actually can have a first principle solution, right? And I think a lot about like criminal justice reform. I've had people on who are public defenders. I've had people on who have been in jail or in prison. I've had people on who are lawyers who help put people in prison, right? And FBI agents, like all these different people are in and around this stuff. And when I pull back for a second, I think to myself, you got to attack it from both sides, it feels like. You got to have what I call like the Band-Aid solution. Hey, you're already in the situation. We can't go back. Let's get you out, right? How do we actually help you given

Starting point is 00:29:06 the situation you're in? At the same time, how do we have a first principle solution to prevent the next wave of people from ending up in the same situation and i think one as i've learned about this stuff and talked a whole bunch of different people one of the things everyone agrees on it's like we got to have a society where there are a set of rules what those rules are will be debated but there has to be a set of rules and it has to be enforced and that some people's vision of that is like lots of rules some people's vision of that is almost no rules but somewhere there's got to be rules and and they've got to be enforced that whatever society agrees upon but what it feels like is in the pursuit of individuals trying to do their job they end up

Starting point is 00:29:43 making decisions that they don't understand the repercussions and i think a lot about you know the drug loss is one probably one of the best examples where we have people who are sitting in jail for literally a decade plus for non-violent possession in some cases and each story is different each you know kind of detail is different but when you look at like that one situation you're like i don't think that's what actually the people who created the laws i don't think that's law enforcement and i don't think that's what society intended to be the outcome but we got here and so unraveling it's way harder than creating a situation but it feels like some of the work you guys have done and uh charles and and kind of his organizations are doing

Starting point is 00:30:22 is like trying to attack it from both sides is that a fair way to think about it oh not just both sides all sides i mean i think that was like you know if you're a curious individual and you care you want a better world it's incredibly overwhelming where do we start okay well if i help in education well then you still got criminal justice or mental but but i think that was one of the coolest things when i walked in to stand together is there were type a get stuff done people in every arena educate i'll never forget one of the first guys i met um i forgot which state he was from it was somewhere on the east coast he was like i didn't like the school system in my state so i and i had the resource to do something so i built a competitive school like

Starting point is 00:30:58 And I'm just like, oh, what? That's possible. And I think that's what they're, you know, setting a good vision is really important. And like giving everyone like, hey, how do we work on this? And let's all start trending. And I think one of the things you talk about is, you know, these rules in society. And I think that's where many of us are trying to popularize. Look, there's for-profit, non-profit, but that's too black and white.

Starting point is 00:31:22 Things are complicated. So we're trying to build out this framework of top-down solutions versus bottom-up solutions. And I think, you know, an example is, well, the oil and gas business. I mean, why did the American shale revolution, why did the shale revolution, the energy renaissance happen in America? And it's because there was, and Russia doesn't have bottom-up solutions. Saudi Arabia has better rocks. There are way better rocks globally. California has some of the best.

Starting point is 00:31:51 I think that Los Angeles Basin has the highest oil per square sedimentary foot in the world. West Texas doesn't have the best rocks. What do they have? They have a culture that equips, they have property rights, which gives a line of sight to change. So there isn't one person in America dictating energy policy. There is a bunch of entrepreneurs who are equipped with profit and a vision of creating value. So I think this idea of bottom up, can it be applied? You know, it's the same thing.

Starting point is 00:32:22 Like we have federal draconian drug laws. Get rid of them. Let the states set what that should be. So I think, which kind of goes back to the philosophy I was working on, which my wife told me to not talk about it. But how do we have, you know, a different conversation, which is not for-profit, non-profit? You know, what's kind of another good example? It was like COVID policy. You know, the federal, you know, there were federal government, hey, let's do this.

Starting point is 00:32:48 And it really, it's like, hey, what does the community want to decide? So I think getting the closer we can push decision rights to the individual, individuals, it can be scary, but we know what's best for our lives. And I think that's kind of another reason why I like Bitcoin mining on the grid. Grids are getting more complicated, and you had top-down federal renewable mandates and incentives that have absolutely distorted the market and wreaked chaos in grids. That doesn't mean renewables don't have a place, but Bitcoin mining is a bottom up solution that can help balance grids. And I think, you know, right now, I mean, utilities are some of the slowest.

Starting point is 00:33:24 They all know this. So those are most archaic. And then you got us, you know, ratchet Bitcoiners who are like, hey, we're going to come in and change everything. And it's scary. But at the same time, we've got to start. And so I just like that framework of bottom up solutions. This episode is brought to you by 8Sleep. The holiday season is here.

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Starting point is 00:35:48 Unstoppabledomains.com. So this bottom-up solution I think is really interesting because every company started bottoms-up, right? Even the ones that are planned in boardrooms or with large investments or spinoffs or whatever, it's individuals with an idea who are willing to invest capital, time, and energy to build something they believe the market wants. And in a capitalist system, the market is the ultimate feedback machine. It either wants it or it doesn't. And I think that there are many people, Vivek Ramaswamy is a good example, who's been on and talked about, we now have people making decisions at companies that are not about the market.

Starting point is 00:36:32 It's not about economics. It's now about how do I fulfill these other mandates? And his point, I'll paraphrase and hopefully don't get it wrong, is your job as a company is to make profit for your shareholders. Focus on that. That does not mean that you should destroy everything else and not worry about everything else. But in many cases, if you are optimizing for the highest amount of profit for your shareholders,

Starting point is 00:36:57 that leads you to invest for R&D purposes because over the long term, you have to be innovative, you have to drive a change to your business, you have to actually go ahead and develop things. You actually want the best people and so everyone ends up not looking alike or having the same background, the same experiences, all these things that I think generally

Starting point is 00:37:17 society is like, hey, that's a good idea. His point is, if you focus on driving profit, the market kind of drives those changes faster than actually having these top-down mandates. And my favorite example is minimum wage. Minimum wage in America is still $7.25. And it's been that way for over a decade, almost like 13, 14 years now. Amazon pays close to 20 bucks an hour as their minimum wage, like 17 and a half, 18 bucks. We have politicians that are advocating for minimum wage in America to go from $7.25 to $15. $15 is already behind.

Starting point is 00:37:53 Because guess what? One of the largest employers in America is already paying $17.5, $18. By the time the politicians get around to making it $15, Amazon's gonna be paying $20, $21, $22. And so the market has done a better job of moving minimum wage than the politicians have. And so it's an argument that like,

Starting point is 00:38:10 well, actually maybe what we should do is remove minimum wage and allow the free market to go ahead and operate. Because guess what? If you go talk to a restaurateur right now, they're not talking about minimum wage. They're talking about, I used to pay a dishwasher $12. There's a restaurateur here.

Starting point is 00:38:25 I won't use his name because he's scared to come on the podcast. But he told me, he said, look, we used to have dishwashers, 12 bucks an hour. Then I started off in 13, 14, 15, 16, $17. I can't get anyone to show up. I can't get someone to stick with the job. And so guess what's gonna happen?

Starting point is 00:38:40 he's going to keep raising the price of what he's going to pay that employee until he finds someone who can do the job and that free market dynamic to me feels almost exactly what you're talking about of like this bottoms-up approach let the market operate and if you do that usually you actually arrive at the solutions faster even in a socialist a communist a democratic capitalist society whatever the top down is not only sometimes doesn't achieve it but it's slower Or even if it gets there, then the market itself will actually determine, right? Yeah. No, I think that's a great example of, you know, bottom up.

Starting point is 00:39:15 And I think, of course, I think we can both agree. There are some laws people, you know, businesses, individuals can take advantage of others and weakness. But I think that doesn't mean that, you know, we shouldn't. I do think that minimum wage and many of these things, we can set a better framework to where it's like, look, have. And I think it goes back to the fiat system of like, and that was one of the weirdest things. I was like, I hate inflation. like it is the most evil evil thing and it punishes the most disadvantaged but it's really really hard to talk to a single mother struggling to pay daycare of hey you know what you should

Starting point is 00:39:49 hate the federal reserve quantitative easing you know so i think that's been a humbling thing as well of like they're really tough discussions there's a huge education need um and yeah just the general lack of incentives to to change but i think you know even you know a business i'd even i don't you know i like i don't even profit matters and i think profit is very allows for more sustainability but i i talk in terms of the purpose of our business is to create long-term mutual beneficial value because there's a lot of stuff and we're a private company um so i don't give a damn about the next couple years i'm thinking 10 20 years out how do we do what's best in a mutually beneficial way for our company and its stakeholders um but when you think when i when

Starting point is 00:40:34 when I changed the lens to value, I mean, we're a very philanthropic organization that does not help our short-term profit. And it probably didn't even help our long-term, but I think we in society, you know, business leaders, individuals, people in the field, we all have a moral obligation to think about people in the communities we operate in. So I do. And I think that's one of the problems with the public companies. They don't, you know, they've got thousands of people that can bark, oh, you did that. And it's short-sightedness. So I do hope to see many, many more companies staying private and with a smaller ownership base to where you can effectuate and really be more attentive to mutually beneficial value creation.

Starting point is 00:41:15 Do you think the American economy would be better off if we had all private companies or more private companies than so many public companies? Absolutely. I mean, one of the problems in just the general archetypal problem in society is this high time preference. And I think cheap money has accelerated that. So I think when you're public, you have a very high time preference. You are focused on the next quarter. I cannot imagine over the last few years, some of the conversations and the pressure that's been going on in board rooms with ESG and, you know, mandates and other just crazy chaos. But I think if more companies can stay private and not focus so much on how do we get fast, big, fast and debt, you know,

Starting point is 00:41:56 debt can help but it's also very very dangerous and so i think the more companies that can you know not be so i mean the american to me the american dream is not um you know the billionaires of the world who came from nothing it's the guy that came from india who came here got a job working at a big company and can go back to visit his parents and has a few kids and he gets to go take them to disneyland like that to me is the american dream my granddad was the american dream He came from nothing, he overcame adversity, and he's created a ton of value throughout society, but no one's ever heard of him, and that's okay. Talk about Cholla, the business that your family runs. It's got a fascinating backstory in terms of how you guys get to where you are.

Starting point is 00:42:40 How did it start? What was your grandfather's story? So my grandfather, when he was in sixth grade, his dad passed away. So he had to go to work. he was the the breadwinner for the family and you know was forced to become an entrepreneur and so really he uh worked at some big companies he worked for general crude out in wink back in like 1921 um you know i had 200 employees he used to go to the train station with armed guards to pick up the the cash that would pay the guys every two weeks um but he then became an entrepreneur he

Starting point is 00:43:19 saved up and he bought a small drilling rig and he started contract drilling for some of the guys out in east texas during the east texas boom um and really you know my dad was was birthed in the east texas craziness um and so my my granddad was terrible with money he found a lot of oil but then he went bankrupt multiple times so really but but he he was able to provide my dad a really good education my dad got to go to high school and then my dad got to go to college and get an mba and so um but my dad grew up in field operations he had immense respect for all the guys in the field um because he lived it he saw it and so there was no one sharper than my dad on the whole how do you how do you get oil out of the ground because he lived it and how important

Starting point is 00:44:05 right like to me i always think of like people who end up rising to run these organizations like he built a body of experience he built a body of knowledge from doing the work right and and it feels like given where he was able to take the company over time it was built on almost like an apprenticeship model right of like i actually have done this and when i talk to these employees i know exactly what they're doing because i did it myself before i ended up getting into the leadership position right there was not a single person we used to say my dad had 50 uh direct reports because he talked to everyone at the company and we all knew he was the smartest guy because he'd done it every single thing he was telling someone to do was something he had done

Starting point is 00:44:50 um i mean all the way suit to nuts from prospect to pipeline my dad lived it and i think that was um yeah it was just great seeing that growing up and yeah my dad built a huge business um And so talk a little bit, as he's going through the field operations, he's kind of growing, how do we get from him doing the work to eventually building the big company? So really, when my dad was 29, his dad passed away. And I've got the balance sheet, it's like abysmal. You know, there was a couple thousand bucks in the bank. And then there was like a $10,000 or $50,000 accounts receivable. And then, you know, like a 30,000 accounts payable. It was rob and peter to pay paul and um you know his first five years he was just trying to survive

Starting point is 00:45:35 and then really my dad like i said he got his mba he learned finance um we almost moved to midland texas uh but he decided to stay in dallas because that's where investors were and so uh you know my dad started out doing a third for a quarter which was kind of an early private equity ish structure for oil and gas guys um how does that work so really it's uh you find an investor you know the doctors the lawyers and you put up they put up a third of the money uh to drill the well in exchange for a quarter of the ownership in it so it's kind of like a front end um uh private equity structure to where hey we'll put up a million dollars but then the operator or like a cholla would keep a quarter ownership so there was an incentive and you could structure us all

Starting point is 00:46:24 kinds of ways but day one you got skin in the game and my dad would always keep um you know at least 50 of his deals um but yeah so he just he just militantly he knew what he was good at he drilled about 50 wells a year for the last 10 10 years of his life i mean he and he just even on his uh on his deathbed he passed away from cancer i mean he was just militant i mean he was wanting to drill one more well and um we were like please don't drill this well and uh you know we just we've been growing our team and everyone was i mean my dad was just one of a kind while the trap last through wildcatters so we drill you know we're spending millions of dollars and we drill this well 6 000 feet and we had problems and i was like hey dad there's problems let's call it he's like

Starting point is 00:47:08 this might be my last damn well you slide the rig and you drill that hole and so that's what we did And then we drilled another 6,000 feet and it was a dry hole. And at the same time, we had a bunch of unplugged miners and he was just screaming from his bed. I mean, it was, he wanted to be with his family and he wanted to ensure that I did not become a country club bum. Was that a concern of his? Like, just in general of like, you've built something and you know that you're going to hand it over to the next generation. And the joke is always, you know, the first generation builds it, the second generation keeps it going, the third generation gives it all back. right of uh businesses across industry is that something that you guys talked about like uh over

Starting point is 00:47:52 the years he many times the third generation losing it is something that has been hammered into me and so i think you know my dad did a really good job of he never told me go into the oil business he was like i love the oil business you go figure out what you love so of course you know i said oh i'm gonna go do my own thing but i'll never forget i sat down to get some feedback and just wisdom from a guy named Hans Helmerich, who was like a third, fourth generation guy who built, professionalized a massive drilling company called Helmerich & Payne.

Starting point is 00:48:23 I was like, hey, Hans, I'm thinking about going back to work for my dad. You work for your dad. Can I come up to Tulsa and just pick your brain? He goes, absolutely. So I flew to Tulsa. You know, he introduced me to all the guys at his team and, you know, different divisions.

Starting point is 00:48:38 And then that night we went to dinner and um he utica square and he was he was like gideon you know we talked he instilled wisdom and then finally he's like look gideon no one has a more vested interest in your success than your dad and he was like you can go work somewhere else but your dad's gonna care way more than anybody so even though my dad and i didn't communicate effectively at the time that was like oh man okay so i was like all right i'm gonna go back to work for my dad i had a vision a strategy i pitched my dad he said great let's go and so yeah that was some of the most blissful years was just running around the permian i don't have a damn i mean our board approval process was you know me barking at

Starting point is 00:49:17 my dad hey we gotta buy these leases over in howard county or dawson county and then if i you know if i yelled loud enough or had enough conviction then he'd say okay and that was our approval process it's funny because um uh recently we had a deal uh we made an investment years ago and uh the founder sent me an email and he goes we're doing a transaction on wednesday It's like on Friday before I'm like, okay, uh, is it a good transaction or bad basically? And, uh, he goes in this deal, uh, you guys are gonna get some money back. Uh, so you made some money, uh, but you have the option to roll forward 30%. And I only have one question for him.

Starting point is 00:49:52 I said, what are you doing? He said, I'm rolling mine. I'm interested in rolling then. Right. And there is this element of like the skin in the game, the conviction level, the, the, the signals that actually other people will give you. Now, do I know it's the right decision or not? No, I have no clue, but that's about as strong of a signal as I'm going to get out of any of the other data points I could look at or any of this stuff is somebody who's near it, in it, and thought about it more than I have and probably will.

Starting point is 00:50:17 What are they doing? Do what they do. Yeah, and I think that's another – I've been humbled many, many times, but I think just experience. I think a lot of us – information, social media is so liquid. We see a lot of things. We want things fast, high time preference, but I've been humbled by a lot of the mistakes I've made. and there's just something i mean i read a lot of books uh my father was famous for saying gideon quit your book shit and put oil in the tanks because i have great theory joke uh but um

Starting point is 00:50:46 but yeah that just experience and i think one of the most the you know in the wake of my dad's passing it was just so humbling how much he was handling and you know i just had really i was naive and i think you know i do miss the the fighting and just you know but we always respect to each other. When he passes away and you step in, you take over the whole business and you're going to run this thing. Like what is that transition period like? And what I think is interesting, um, people hear about business transitions. They hear about, uh, the second or third generation taking over like the family business. I don't think people quite understand the shit that goes on in this, right? You're usually, especially private companies that are

Starting point is 00:51:26 family held that usually they got pretty good records, but maybe it's not as good as a public company obviously uh the teams usually end up deferring to uh whoever like the patriarch or matriarch or the family like there's these dynamics to it what was your experience like kind of stepping in to run the business well we're still one year in i'd say we're still deep in the transition but okay really you know i was very lucky we sold a deal in 2016 which is when i took time off and got into bitcoin mining but i you know co-founded this bitcoin mining company learned a ton that i was so unaware of and then when we sold that um and i think like 2018 19 maybe um i basically came back to my dad and said hey i and at the same time i'd gotten an education

Starting point is 00:52:13 on company culture so i was like hey dad i am now equipped with a dialogue or a language you know i really want to come back to cholla you run the whole thing what what if we built a management team to support you and so really this idea of like let's build a team to support you and you know my dad was in his 70s and he years before he wasn't ready to slow down but he was really like when i had that conviction i had the vision i had a lot more professionalization i great and so i i basically pitched him on let's bring on let's change company culture more into you know kind of what i've learned but also you know you moving from authoritarian tell everyone what to do to give feedback and of course you can overrule everyone but just a general

Starting point is 00:52:58 let's shift and get some decision rights off your plate and he was very open to that it was hard we hired a third party intermediary but so luckily before he and really the goal was a couple years he was going to slow down spend time with my mom and the grandkids but then he you know we found out he had cancer and three months later he was gone and so it happened really fast but if we didn't have that management team if we wouldn't have the foresight if i hadn't gotten plugged in to stand together i wouldn't have had the capabilities if i didn't have the support of my wife who's she's actually worked at big companies that is super professional um so she's giving me a lot of feedback um but also wives are good for that oh my gosh yeah i mean

Starting point is 00:53:40 my wife and i are so values aligned it's unbelievable um and she slows me down it annoys me but it's a good annoyance yep um it's and so really my my my dad and i already had officially structured some things in place mechanically which was no dividends are going to come out of this company we're pretty hardcore committed to long-term value creation so when he passed there was it was very clear that you know and when you know my family and i talked about hey lloyd dad did everything do we sell the business and i think um if i wouldn't have met a lot of the people that i've mentioned through this we would have sold the business but i uh thankfully my with my family's support you know they were like let's let's do this so really we

Starting point is 00:54:26 decided to double down on you know technology and culture and really really hard things but my brother caleb um he'd spent you know he was trying to find himself we're all trying to like run away from our fathers and all that but you know he got some great experience at some other companies and got an mba down at acton but before my dad got sick he was um we called him like chief of staff but really he was my dad's bitch joke okay i might need to edit that one out but i love you but but really caleb coming on he had skills i didn't have i'm like always you know if i wouldn't have been born into a wealthy family i'd be you know a theoretical physicist or a phd like professor so i'm very focused on theory and philosophy that's very fun for me setting a vision

Starting point is 00:55:12 but my brother had and my my dad actually told me uh years ago he was very mad at me and he goes your brother needs to run this company not you and you know that's like kind of hard to hear but um and i don't know if my dad was trolling me or if he was you know 100 confident was he right absolutely my brother has so many capabilities i mean you know and it's been an awesome example of complementary capabilities so you know my brother's just a better communicator than i am Um, and he's, you know, he's very focused. I mean, even I was like, Hey, I'm gonna go to this other, you know, event here in a couple of months. He was like, how's that, how is that going to create value for Joya? And I was like, damn, I hate hearing that because I love going to conferences,

Starting point is 00:55:52 but he's a really good sounding board. And, you know, I really respect his opinion and he's gained a lot of the respect. I mean, he, you know, he doesn't have to, you know, none of us have to, you know, continue running the business. We do it because I don't have any hobbies. I like building stuff um and my my brother caleb but also just the support of my brother luke like i said you know um i'm really proud of my brother because he's got a daughter he's leading and you know we've had a good relationship for the last year and he just even his support and him you know showing up to the christmas party and asking he's just luke comes into my life and just it's bad truth like in college he's like getting people are scared of you and i was like oh i thought i was really

Starting point is 00:56:32 nice and he and he like you know the principle of solicit feedback he's been doing that for a long time i mean he says it like it is but you need people like that in your life yeah i think soliciting feedback um and even you know going back to one of the just mind-blown aha moments for me was so i talked about you know the coke organization stand together how they created immense value and liberated thousands of people out of jail um so i was at a stand together event and i saw charles and he's got bodyguards around him and i'm kind of slowly trying to say hey to him without getting you know making eye contact bodyguards make sure they don't shoot me but i i got to just shake his hand and i and i said hey charles i'm gideon um you know i just wanted to

Starting point is 00:57:10 say thank you when the first step back that night i was texting and emailing with all your your organizations and just how much it meant to get that across the finish line and he goes oh gideon i really appreciate that is there anything i could be doing better and i was like no charles like you've built massive philanthropic you've created immense value all your employees are fulfilled in their job and reaching self-actualization but just one of the most powerful men in the world asking me a kind of a pleb how can how can he get better just that so that was like i mean yeah and my wife and everyone in our company always gets annoyed when i come back from these conferences because i come back ready to like we're not doing

Starting point is 00:57:53 enough how do we do more um but yeah that idea and you know solicit feedback i think it is because we it's a slow fade into whatever good or bad things you know you don't wake up one day and you're a heroin addict there was something that occurred decades ago and so i think that's what i'm trying to get distilled you know in our kind of family values is solicit feedback my kids are amazing at it and i ask them i think there's like we can learn a lot i take life very seriously but my kids i always ask them um you know hey what could i be doing better and they're like just come play and i've got a i was done with down syndrome and it was really hard to hear that you're having a son the firstborn my son is gonna have down syndrome that was really hard to hear

Starting point is 00:58:31 um but i i got feedback from another uh parent who has a child with down syndrome they're like gideon you're gonna come home someday really stressed the world business life whatever that kid's not gonna give a shit he's just gonna want to play yep and i was like oh my god like god gave me this gift of this child and like my son his initials are mvp micah von powell babe we made the right decision with that name um but he's the mvp was there a debate i wanted to name him actin von powell v-o-n and my wife's like that is a that is like german for of like that makes no sense but i'm like yeah but it sounds badass and then um so we but then we settled on on my i just think that's a cool name yeah so mvp pretty good initials oh yeah uh talk about the

Starting point is 00:59:21 company culture because you've mentioned a couple times and i know the cook uh industries is very well known for uh being intentional about creating company culture what did you learn uh from studying that organization and those leaders and then how did you actually change because it's interesting right you didn't have a company culture that you started from scratch you're like this is the way it's going to be you had to actually kind of build the plane while in flight which can be much harder than just starting from scratch so like walk us through like what did you learn and how did you actually change yeah i'll never forget there's a guy named dale gibbons who was head of coke industry's hr uh he's seen stuff and he's just got so much wisdom and he's arguing

Starting point is 01:00:00 you got to go write down your principles because your principles inform your culture strategy and then everyone has a culture whether you know it or not so when i started thinking about these concepts you know of course i'm like all right i'll just copy what coke did well that doesn't really works we're a different business we're more wildcatters um you know and we want to think a little bit you know not we can't copy paste stuff uh so i you know started writing and okay let's we want humility we want respectful communication but i'll never forget i wrote down all this stuff i was like hey dale i did the hard part i wrote it down it's like oh oh gideon that's cute now you got to effectuate it and i'm like okay yeah yeah what book can you give me you know and it's

Starting point is 01:00:37 like there's experience and but yeah so really what we've tried to do is move away from i mean my dad was a you know a legend and he was the smartest guy so he just told everyone what to do and i think that's how a lot of every company starts with kind of an authoritarian type a get stuff done but if you want to be successful in the long term i think slowing down and really being intentional with your company culture is the most powerful way you know if you want to go fast go alone if you want to go far bring a team and so i think you know we tried to develop principles that would inform you know you set the vision which is where are we going the mission ties everybody to the vision but then your culture strategy informs how you get there and principles

Starting point is 01:01:18 are really the framework to inform that and so and it's not just you know like we have them written down but we you know again hans elmerick i asked him for feedback um and he was like yeah yeah getting a company culture is everything and he was like i talk about it with my guys what are examples? How can we get better? But yeah, I think soliciting feedback, you know, respectful communication. We're, everyone in the world, we're in very fast changing businesses, our daily lives. And so one of the things that's really hard is to tell someone how they can get better. And so what we try to do is pair up, these are all dynamic, but it's like, okay, invite, solicit feedback, which invites someone. We all know what we're good at, but how do we tell people,

Starting point is 01:01:58 you know, hey, here's an area you can improve, which is very delicate communication. Um, and so that's where I took a lot of lessons from my mother, which was my mom would always say, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. And I think that was just like the most powerful. So we talk about respectful communications and I think, um, uh, there's a book on Netflix's culture and they, uh, what they said was, um, say things with positive intent. And so I think we try to really emphasize, look, one, everybody should be inviting feedback. How do we get better?

Starting point is 01:02:29 What do we, what do we learn from it? but then also how do we respectfully communicate that is i think one of the because nobody wants to be told what to do but if you invite in how do i get better it's just a lot more palatable and also just you know continuous learning i mean that's kind of one of the biggest things i mean every single energy company that is not thinking about bitcoin mining as it relates is wrong they need to be getting feedback this is the most revolutionary energy technology but if you don't have a culture that invites continuous learning then you're just gonna oh well this is the way it's always been done okay great that's what blockbuster did where's blockbuster you know

Starting point is 01:03:08 and so i think this there's another concept of you know creative destruction let's invite let's identify businesses that can and strategies that can disrupt our own businesses and because i want to know about those before you know becomes a thing i think that's where bitcoin mining is like the greatest thing ever. Why do you think Bitcoin mining is so disruptive and innovative specifically for the oil and gas industry? I think a lot of people think of Bitcoin

Starting point is 01:03:33 as a store of value. They think of it as a medium of exchange. They think of it as a speculation tool in financial markets. But you're specifically talking about this intersection of Bitcoin mining and oil and gas being such this like match made in heaven.

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Starting point is 01:05:43 and use promo code POMP. Navigate the market with confidence with Masari Pro. Really what Bitcoin mining is, it's a lot of things, but it's the democratization of energy innovation. So if you wanted to innovate in the power sector or in the energy business, you needed to be independently wealthy

Starting point is 01:06:00 with billions of dollars or you needed to work at a massive corporation. You're going to work at that company for 10, 20 years. And, you know, once you control the purse strings, you know, you're probably not going to innovate near as much. So what Bitcoin mining did is it leveraged several principles, which is, you know, bottom-up solutions and skin in the game, permissionless innovation. So anybody globally now can be an energy entrepreneur. I mean, literally, you can have, you know, there are no barriers to entry.

Starting point is 01:06:29 You can rub two nickels, and if you can plug in an ASIC, you can innovate. So we are all thrown out. I mean, I remember three years ago, we were like, okay, what's some of the best from a first principles standpoint? What's the lowest cost energy? okay it's waves okay well the biggest most consistent waves are in the middle of nowhere sweet let's take the bitcoin mining there and then really there's all these engineering tech and this is what we were studying five years ago was there's these engineering technologies that are in energy or energy technologies but they're they're engineering successes but they're not

Starting point is 01:06:59 economic successes and so what bitcoin mining does is it gives anybody a line of sight to profitability and so really like i like this the app store you know before the app store if you want to innovate in software, you need to work at a big oligopoly or get backed by VC or something like that. What the App Store did was it gave a democratized innovation in the software business. So all of a sudden you had a clear line of sight to profitability if you could innovate. And so the same thing with the Nakamoto of it basically just sent a private, you know, a signal to the market and said, if you lower the cost of power, then we will give you more capital. And so really Bitcoin mining is the most beautifully savage venture capital company. And it's focused on

Starting point is 01:07:39 one thing and one thing only. If you lower the price of power, you get more Bitcoin. You get more resources in your success. And so we're going to see this iterative process play out for the next century, usher in a Kardashev type one society, but really you've democratized it. Bitcoin is a venture capital fund. It's not something most people have thought about. Explain that further. Yeah, so this idea was popularized by a guy named Jesse Pelton, who worked on Hollow Ranch with me on the, and really was one of the pioneers of demand response in Texas. So yeah, basically, you know, venture capital looks at what are disruptive things, and then how do we give capital and make asymmetric bets? And, you know, there is, you know, everyone wants to go, it's an efficient market.

Starting point is 01:08:23 It's not. You got to know people. You got to have the networks. So there's all these people that have been disenfranchised because they didn't go to the high-pedigree schools. And so what Bitcoin money does is it strips out all emotions, all relationships. The only thing that matters is if you lower the price to power, then you spend less on your operating expenses go down, which means your profit margin goes up, which you get more capital from the Bitcoin network through the algorithm that releases blocks every 10 minutes. So you get more resources. And so if you have A over here that can get power to $0.05 and B over here, which innovates and gets power down to $0.02, well, B is going to get more profit and has more resources, and then we'll redeploy that.

Starting point is 01:09:10 And so I think this is very early, but you're seeing it. All of us, and now we've got this great – I can literally get on my phone, and I unfortunately do this too much. Oh, well, that's a great idea. Who are the experts? We were looking at Wave stuff three years ago. Oh, they're all in Europe, in London. Okay, great. And I literally got on with three of the world's experts on wave turbines, just like that.

Starting point is 01:09:31 And so I think not only do you have liquidity in the capital markets with Bitcoin now, you don't need to have cool relationships, communications. And so I can hop on and find experts on any idea and then, you know, throw shit against the wall and see what sticks. You mentioned that Bitcoin will have an impact on civilization as well. Describe what you mean there. How much time do you have? i think i think it you know i talk about bitcoin in two frameworks one it's an energy revolution um and two it's a human freedom revolution and so if you live we have the greatest financial uh markets in america full stop and because of that mass there's a high amount of trust so the

Starting point is 01:10:13 higher trust can be the more value that's created there's a company called trust ventures they that's like literally their concept thank you brian and sal um but really if you can elevate trust so but globally we that doesn't exist you know and so like you know nigeria venezuela you hear about these places they don't have trust in their financial systems and they can't save so if you and now with the lightning network and other innovations on bitcoin you know if you wanted to savings is very critical to elevating your family out of abject poverty but if you're living in an inflationary environment that's impossible to do because you're always trying to trying to saving is easy investing is hard and so really what you just did is you democratize

Starting point is 01:10:55 savings with bitcoin so anybody can stack sats anybody all you need is a cell phone and cell phones are super cheap thanks to innovation and so really you've got all these disenfranchised developing nations with individuals globally who now have an opportunity to save and knowing that they're the value they're saving cannot be printed away and so i think this is going to play out over the coming centuries where you know america is the land of the free and it was created by dissidents who left the old world and i i think there is massive amounts of distance globally and now you've given them the greatest human savings technology you know anti-fragile technology i mean nobody can shut it down so i think this is going to play out and equip families

Starting point is 01:11:40 and individuals um who and i think that's the beauty of and need for education and in the market of like bitcoin unless you're like a ron paul audit the fed person here in america bitcoin is difficult to grasp but like that was one of the greatest things i went a few of us were invited to the human rights uh freedom forum in oslo a few years ago and i'd i'd hosted dinners with my american friends i'd hosted all these events trying to bring education and alex gladstein orange pill a lot of people that some of the events i'd host but but it was always like yeah but i don't need it was always a brick wall but when i went to the oslo freedom forum and i was like oh hey here's what bitcoin does they're like okay great how do i get that like they wanted it

Starting point is 01:12:20 they need it so innovation happens on the fringe so i think that's where you know the lightning network and everything that's happening the innovation isn't going to happen in america exclusively it's going to happen where the people need it most and when you think about 20, 30, 50 years from now, what does that look like in the world? Is it running on a Bitcoin standard and it's like hyper-Bitcoinization? Is it Bitcoin is a savings technology

Starting point is 01:12:47 and people still have other assets that they're investing in? How do you think about it, full well knowing, predicting 50 years out is nearly impossible? Yeah, and so I have an opinion on the energy side, but on the just broad, Bitcoin is not just the money.

Starting point is 01:13:04 you know and i'll use the analogy when people came to america um why why did america become so powerful why was so much wealth created here and i think you tie it back to property rights so when people came to america they could own land and the founding fathers could never have conceptualized you know apps and social media so how do we get well really we had land and on top of land which is like the base layer of bitcoin people built farming people built shops built real estate but then they built an llc a corporation like these are those are layer one two three on you know of land and so none of that was possible and then the internet comes along and supercharged it so when i think about the future of bitcoin to me it's an elevation of the principles

Starting point is 01:13:54 that made america great and so it is taking you know the united states constitution and enshrining it into code to where it set a vision and it you know it gives more clarity and confidence to if you create value in the ecosystem it'll be mutually beneficial so i think there's a lot of fascinating that bitcoin's going to intertwine with all our lives in ways that we can't really conceptualize but you know we'll be able to run things in a decentralized manner um you know on layer two and i'm even hearing about layer three that's just way over my skis but on the energy side you know all the taking the you know the history of the oil and gas business i mean it one of the most fun things is the oil and gas business was pioneered by the texans i mean full

Starting point is 01:14:39 stop and one of the most fun things is talking to some of these you know field guys or you know guys that have traveled the world and really what happened was the training occurred in texas and then we exported those capabilities globally um to where you know we were like developing oil gas reserves around the world but it was largely led by the capabilities and strategies developed by the americans and largely the texans and so the bitcoin mine is going to play out the same way where right now texas is the most important um and relevant uh ecosystem and really goes back to principles and so ercot and this was so fun my best job was i got to travel the world um talking about how great texas and ercot is and people like oh it's too hot it's like look

Starting point is 01:15:22 at physics you're all wrong um it doesn't matter how hot it is it's humidity particulates but really ercot has the most bottom-up solutions free market solutions of any grid globally and really when you look at the history it's like okay texas is known for its oil and gas reserves what's the largest uh wind resource uh wind production capacity oh it's texas okay why well it's because there were few barriers to entry and the grid was set up in a way that allowed for bottom much entrepreneurs with the line of sight that's not happening on the federal level that's not happening in other rtos where they're regulated and they're monopolies and so you saw this mass value accretion out in west texas which is the convergence of the wind and solar belt

Starting point is 01:16:06 and so really you know now we got 18 gigawatts of solar being added next year that you know and the ira absolutely did it's in what it was intended to do it supercharged uh the economics of renewables um and so really over the coming years you know renewables have their issues they're the lowest marginal cost so they have a place but they also are unpredictable and so bitcoin mines this perfect load so all the capabilities regulatory framework and protocols that we're developing in ercot this is we need we need you know there is a sense of urgency people want to get plugged in but you're talking about ercot which is you know a lot of people People have been hired away, and you've got a convergence of Bitcoin miners needing power, more wind and solar.

Starting point is 01:16:47 So a huge amount of resources are needed at ERCOT, and they're doing the best they can, and they've done an amazing job. And so really everything we're learning on the regulatory framework, we're going to export that globally, and we're already seeing it happen. I mean, there's some innovators in Kenya that are doing demand response. And so that's what I see. But ERCOT, we need to be thinking about doubling the peak capacity over the next couple of decades. And Bitcoin mining is a beautiful way to help balance that out. You also told me that West Texas is going to dominate the future. Explain that.

Starting point is 01:17:19 Yeah. I mean, when God created the world and put Texas down, he ensured that everything, all resources and, you know, develop, you know, everything was made for commerce and for industry and for high quality of life. and really, you know, you, I mean, I'll never forget when we were thinking about putting a Bitcoin mine in West Texas, it was 2017. Nobody had done that. And everyone told us, please don't do that. And we said, we hear you, but we disagree. Um, but I'll never forget. I was trying to get feedback for some of the people. Cause like there were no services. There no, were no capabilities. We're talking about building in Pio, Texas, which is more than an hour West of Midland. There ain't, there is very little out there, but the oil and gas companies were out there. They had services,

Starting point is 01:18:03 they had capabilities so i did is i called an electrician like five o'clock on a friday and he called me back around midnight i was like hey thanks for calling me back you know but it's late why are you coming back he says this is a goddamn oil patch i'm 24 7 and i was like man that is a big pointer he just doesn't know it yet and so there's it's not west texas is going to dominate not just because of the mass amounts of the wind and solar belt and natural gas there's these capabilities and these this culture of be effective and get stuff done and so really the bitcoin miners are going to continue to come and everyone talks about sustainable energy um and its needs but we have to focus on is this profitable because that's a critical component of sustainability

Starting point is 01:18:44 and so when you're looking at the hyperscale data centers or latency agnostic data centers you know they're running out of resources in northern virginia washington arizona like you can't and you know it used to be 10 megawatts i remember the first time i told a data center guy I was going to build a 100 megawatt substation for a Bitcoin mine. He was like, that's the biggest thing I've ever heard of. And I was like, okay, well, I don't know what's big and small, so that's what we're going to do. But we're moving towards gigawatt campuses in the data center industry. And so really, people talk about sustainable energy.

Starting point is 01:19:15 From purely on the electrons, West Texas has the highest amount of wind and solar of anywhere outside of a few hydros. So when we talk about, you know, sustainability, we need to be like, I don't know, industry consumes like at least 50% of global energy. We need, you got to be thinking about sustainable industry. And there is nothing more prolific than the wind and solar and natural gas resources of West Texas. And so as more 18 gigawatts of solar coming on, you know, and it's projected by 2030, there's going to be 74 gigawatts of additional wind and solar in West Texas. And so the Bitcoin miners are going to continue to increase their amount of gigawatts they're consuming. well then they turn off when people need it more and then they're consuming through the troughs when no one needs it well that's going to stabilize the grid bring on more reliable and affordable

Starting point is 01:20:01 energy and then you know the data centers and we've actually had two different data center companies approach us wanting and i was like whoa i thought this was going to take a decade but they're seeing that we can get gigawatts in one location so and that's that's and there's some other resource constraints over in you know high population areas so you've got this convergence of a willing and able workforce, the largest wind and solar resources, a convergence of them, so a high capacity factor, and then Bitcoin miners increasing their penetration rate to be able to effectuate more reliable and affordable power. And I think this is something that's going to take time. So we've actually, we did a, we're in discussion, we did a grant to

Starting point is 01:20:40 help on the training for Bitcoin miners. We partnered with Texas State Technical College. that was a grant my wife and I did. And that's going to be taking place for just Bitcoin mining. But the long-term vision, and we're already having conversations, is how do we build out the services and capabilities that data center companies need?

Starting point is 01:20:58 And I think there's a lot of complementary capabilities. I mean, managing a gigawatt Bitcoin mine and a gigawatt data center are not the same, but they require similar capabilities. And I think that's what's so fun is like, you know, the oil and gas field workers of West Texas, they know how to get shit done. and really you don't need a college degree to be a technician at a data center but it pays really

Starting point is 01:21:18 well and so you know talking about the roughnecks one of the hard things about being a roughneck is you're always chasing the drilling rig you know and you're on all the time and you're missing your kids events and it's a hard life but you're doing what you got to do to survive so the idea of we can put a bitcoin mine or a data center and all of a sudden that's stability that's economic development that's jobs that is going to be coming to west texas i mean that's like i do this job for free and i think that's what's going to play out again there have literally been data center companies that have approached like whoa we're we're not ready but like let's have a dialogue like how can we get better what can we do to like ensure this happens and you know state agencies

Starting point is 01:21:57 and other philanthropic groups we're all getting involved in again ensuring the resources are ready in the coming five years you mentioned earlier that uh you read a lot of books i pride myself on reading a lot of books as well how do you pick what books you're going to read next well i used to read a lot of self-help books and i'll never forget i was in midland it was friday one of my friends called me and said where are you and i was like oh i'm at the bookstore he was like oh god where what aisle and i was like self-help he was like giddy like please so um i try i read less self-help books i'm reading one book on coaching that i really like um but i'm really interested in stories now i think as i've you know i'm not old i'm only 35 but as i've gained wisdom

Starting point is 01:22:38 and experience i'm 34 you're old as shit i know i was gonna make a joke about my wife who's a beautiful anyway i will not make that joke um um but uh what kind of stories people that have overcome adversity you know i think it kind of goes back to i don't know if you can see it i got a chip on my shoulder um but i i think there are so many cool people in this world that didn't have the chances i had and i wanted i was seeing my dad die i it really re-architected my mind and i want to be involved in a small way of you know really ensuring like and going back to like when i was arrested you know i was in a really dark place you know the internet people are mad and all that and you got

Starting point is 01:23:30 people hate but my dad looked at me and he said you messed up but i love you and so and i think you know really just stories of the underdogs who had people that believed in them i think that's one of the coolest things and so i think you know thinking about okay we can continue to start foundations how do we start businesses that you know and i have this i bought this one picture um of a buffalo and my dad as he was passing my brother-in-law shared this story about when a buffalo sees a storm they don't run from the storm they run into the storm and i so anyway like the buffalo has we have socks that say into the storm it's just become this really good story um and my dad took cancer head on and um but really i bought this painting or this picture of this buffalo

Starting point is 01:24:15 and you know i showed it to one of our geologists mike dropkin and it was so fun because he brought a new light to it. I was, I liked the picture of the buffalo because it's standing in the snow and it's miserable. And I think that's what, you know, when there's chaos, when you're in a fimbler winter, Bitcoin's collapsing, oil's collapsing, that's really hard. But if you can be peaceful and reflect in those moments, you can create a lot of long-term values. That's why I bought it, was to show this buffalo just in the, clearly in a snowstorm being peaceful. And, you know, but what Mike talked about was like, see the snow on its head?

Starting point is 01:24:50 That's because a buffalo will see a white landscape and then they'll go put their head in the snow and they'll ruffle around to look for patches of food. And I thought that was a great metaphor for how we can approach people. If you were to meet someone, you don't know that person's story. So how do we slow down in society

Starting point is 01:25:09 and really get to know people's stories, humanize individuals? schools and i think that's a huge opportunity um for businesses and venture capitalists and private equity is to like look do you check the box maybe not but get to know people spend time and understand this guy overcame adversity like you know i was meeting with a guy earlier um who literally came from india knew no one and got himself into college and then got his master's degree knew no one and his parents you know like didn't you know immensely help he but he came to america and he struggled to get in venture capital um and for what i'm not exactly sure on the

Starting point is 01:25:47 reasons but it's just like i'm sure it's difficult he's got an accent but he's brilliant he's ambitious um and he and you know it's funny too because he really wants to help people and he didn't even you know growing up in india he didn't know venture capital was a thing he didn't he was like oh i thought only rich people invested rich people money in other rich people friends and he was like then so he was on course to be an engineer and he you know he has a degree to engineer um but then he discovered venture capital he's like this is a and he didn't use the you know the word mutual benefit when i first met him but he's like he can help people and in a for-profit mutually beneficial way and so anyway that's his vision is he wants to start or join a private equity

Starting point is 01:26:28 venture capital firm to give guys like him um opportunities and even though i mean going around on immigration it's insane we disincentivized immigrant entrepreneurs because you have to be beholden to like the you know the hb1 visa and like i mean there's tons of technology individuals getting laid off they have 60 days to find a job or they have to leave the country that's insane america was founded by immigrants that is a terrible top-down policy so any politician that's listening you've got to re-examine that how do we have bottom-up solutions and ensure that the right people are coming into this country, but how do we equip to allow for, I mean, those are the OGs of entrepreneurs are the people that overcame adversity. And then that translates, you know,

Starting point is 01:27:11 if you, you know, came here, you overcame adversity, that translates incredibly well to running a startup, you know, and same thing. I think that's where same thing with criminal justice reform. You know, I think a lot of Bitcoiners are familiar with Ross Ulbrich. I mean, look, the guy made mistakes, but he's admitted it and he's rotting in jail. That's fucked up. That is an egregious. And there are so many more people like Ross that are sitting in jail that were entrepreneurs. And I think that's one of the things. My dad, I saw him love the oil business. And that was my North Star, was find something I'm passionate about. He had a business and that affected me. But for the individuals in society who grew up seeing someone sell drugs or

Starting point is 01:27:48 whatever, that's all they know. So to lock those people in prison is an egregious violation of human rights so i think there's an i think history can you reflect on history and you can look at who empowered the dissidents america empowered the dissidents we create a lot of a lot of wealth that way and huge mistakes were made so how do we continue to look at who's the most disadvantaged in society and how do we empower them i think you know the blacks lives matter push uh uh kicked off a few years ago and i'm already seeing a change in media like they got out they said hey there's not enough of us represented in society. I mean, I watched like 10 trailers the other night.

Starting point is 01:28:26 Every single one of them had a hero that represented the black community. And I think that's the power of a vision. So I think criminal justice reform, empowering those people behind, you can't even start a business if you're in prison. That's wrong. Like people in prison should be able to start a business

Starting point is 01:28:41 that could benefit their families. I mean, they can learn to code, to program. I think it's the same thing. So I think empowering immigrants, empowering individuals that made mistakes, I think that is one way to unleash prosperity and mutual benefit through society. It's a fascinating idea for people sitting in prison with a bunch of time on their hands, lots of opportunity to spend time learning, to trying things, right, if they can start businesses.

Starting point is 01:29:05 Yeah, and I've actually, you know, a few of us are very individuals that really want to effectuate change. We take a playbook from Silicon Valley. If you don't like something, you can try to operate in that framework. and i think you know like uber did this they're like okay can we compete with the taxis i don't know let's just go do it and so i think that's one of the most fun things we've been talking about for years and it was one of the most fun checks i've ever written in my entire life a few of us a few years ago decided prisons are messed up and we can spend millions of dollars and not change the laws what if we started our own prison company so i literally set out to start a a for-profit

Starting point is 01:29:43 prison company which people hear that like oh for-profit that's bad it's like look do you know what the incentives are the for-profit uh prisons are incentivized to keep you in prison they make money the more people that go to prison and so there are huge unintended consequences so it's not our for-profit person's bad our non-profit person's bad it's culture it's strategy it's incentives so one thing we a few of us this was not my idea we came a lot of us like what if we started a for-profit business that it wasn't paid per individual it was how do if we lowered the recidivism rate of that individual we got a delta on the back end of that profit and i think that was that was like an interesting kpi so that was a few of us had that idea uh and then a few got

Starting point is 01:30:28 feedback a few of my friends were like look and this was pitched to a few very wealthy individuals that everybody knows and they all turned it down because of optics it's like we can't be seen investing in a prison deal i was like look i'm getting pal i don't give a damn this will effectuate human prosperity let's figure out how to do this thing so just been putting that idea out there and a few months ago i got introduced um to brian and social profit corrections spc and and it was so unbelievably energizing he was worked at a prison he saw the atrocity he kept trying to get more resources to the mental health because basically the the you know we all feel sorry for kids and trauma when they're kids but then they reach a certain age and it's like we

Starting point is 01:31:08 keep feeling sorry for them and we throw them in jail and so i think that's where one of my proudest investments and so anyway brian pitched me on a hey so he registered as a 501c3 and i was like look i really want to do this as for-profit he was like here's why that's a bad idea and the optics and so but he's like look and this is when i was like oh god i have to write this guy a check and i love it he's like look gideon as a non-profit we'll have a lower cost of capital so we'll be able to out-compete all these for-profit companies that are bidding on contract and i was like oh my god i'm not supposed to do this but okay here's a three-year commitment 250 000 a year let's go um and people no one and so how does it work it's a non-profit prison yeah it's an operating

Starting point is 01:31:47 non-profit 501c3 okay and there's a physical location obviously no no not yet so that was another thing is it was like the architecture we need to reimagine like look yes people messed up in that matter but when you walk into a prison how the how do you design a building can absolutely affect your mental disposition um so what brian what my long-term vision is to literally buy raw land and build you know prisons uh from the ground up with an intentionality towards you know getting extra sunlight making it and this is not something you'd start you know you'd start with low level offenders and learn but it's like day one when someone shows up to a prison we want that person to know look you messed up but you're human and you matter and to have you know these capabilities

Starting point is 01:32:33 within the prison and that was another you know i was very angry i wanted to change society and so i was like okay when i when i can have financial resources i'm going to hire attorneys and represent non-violent drug offenders and that was you know kind of why we got involved in uh with brittany bardette and the buried alive foundation but people used to say well gideon and rightfully so people had concerns over that like well what happens when they get out of prison And I used to say, I don't give a shit. Let's just get him out. Not a good answer.

Starting point is 01:33:02 And that's where you've got to think multidimensional. It does matter. How do we get everyone who shows up the resources and the opportunity to better themselves? And I think that's what Brian's vision is, is he's worked at a prison. Like, I'm a nerd who has an idea. Ideas are cute, but there's way too many of them. How do you execute? So Brian has operating capabilities.

Starting point is 01:33:23 He's layered in some mental health capabilities. And I think that's what I'm most excited about in the next multi-decades is the convergence of criminal justice reform and mental health. And that's something that's very passionate to my wife and I. And so I think, you know, that was Brian's vision was like, and nobody wanted to be the first check. Everyone loves to follow. And so really my experience in Bitcoin mining and trying to raise money a little early was nobody likes to be the first. So I think that's informed my, I think one of our capabilities is like, if we can see your vision, you have complementary capabilities and shared values, like, let's go. And so anyway, we road checked to Brian.

Starting point is 01:33:59 He's been traveling. He's meeting with other investors. But yeah, he wants to day one. And I've been teaming, I've been connecting him. Just send him on emails. Hey, here's a mental health professional, the Meadows Foundation. They are the experts in mental health. And how do we get better?

Starting point is 01:34:15 And, you know, I mean, mental health, you're dealing with multigenerational trauma. that's what largely is feeding the industrial prison complex and so that's what brian's going to do is he's looking to win a contract and manage a prison um and there's a huge need for that and so and even he was like hey he texted me like hey there's a prison for sale up in this area i was like great let's try to buy it like i mean what what can we do and so that's kind of where he is he's up and running he's trying to bring in more investors um what is it called social profit corrections it's like spc.org yeah that's pretty pretty good uh yeah it's awesome and it's just a slight tweak you know it is it's not a for-profit it but it's going to create mutually beneficial

Starting point is 01:34:59 value through society so writing that check was like one of the just awesomest things it's mutually beneficial i'm a nerd i want i want to try crazy shit and i want it to work in the long term but i can't do that myself so i think that's the beautiful thing about communications share a vision. It was the same thing on that deal I did, my wife and I did for education. I was on a panel at a Bitcoin Commons event in Austin. I said, hey, I don't know how to build education stuff, but we'd like to support something at a college or a high school or whatever. And then a few months later, someone was like, hey, we hear you like this idea. I was like, okay, great. Y'all have capabilities. I don't. So yeah, just putting ideas out there. There's plenty to do in this

Starting point is 01:35:38 world. There's a hell of a lot to do. Where can we send somebody to find you on the internet if They want to find out more about what you're doing in energy with Bitcoin mining or with some of the philanthropic work. I tweet, so GideonOPal. And then I also post a lot of memes on LinkedIn. You're a LinkedIn meme maker. Yeah, I think, and if anyone at LinkedIn

Starting point is 01:36:01 or Microsoft is listening, y'all guys don't support GIFs. That's a huge problem. And additionally- You're a thoughtful meme maker. Yeah, I mean, we have to, I think, and I parent with memes. I think memes are so powerful.

Starting point is 01:36:13 There's a lot of stuff I struggle to communicate sometimes, but I can effectuate a very clear way of thinking with, you know, my mematic art. And so I think there's a lot, you know, I'll never forget, I was at some Bible study and this guy was like, oh, kids these days are ruining the human language. And I'm like, well, we used to like paint. And he was like talking about how we went from pictographs to, you know, spoken word and written language and now we're going back with memes. And I was like, dude, I don't know if you've ever made a meme, but, like, it can communicate things so amazingly more effectively. So, yeah, so LinkedIn, support GIFs, that's a huge deal, but also your user interface. Like, y'all can't, when I try to post a meme, I have to dig all the way through my whole picture album. I can't go to my various meme categories.

Starting point is 01:37:00 So I think a better user interface, if you, but again, if, you know, if you'd like feedback, holler at me. It'd just empower the meme makers and you'd be in a better position. Yeah, I say it all the time. The memes are the message, right? And if you think the world's richest man or one of the top three richest men in the world is probably one of the most lethal meme lords, Elon Musk. And whatever people think about him, he was asked in a Bloomberg interview a couple years ago, would you rather be a billionaire or a meme lord? and of course it's easy for a billionaire to say meme lord but he chose meme lord and i tend to think that uh you can have a billion dollars but not everyone can make just a fucking awesome meme yeah i i think that's gonna i i'm i have several business ideas i want to start around memes caleb i'm not starting them this year um but there's there's so much opportunity to take you know from the sports industry and capabilities there and apply them to memers you know i think

Starting point is 01:37:57 there's a lot there's just so much to do in this world but but um yeah i love it well thank you so much for your time i appreciate it i learned something every time i've talked with you um and uh i tend to think that uh we need more people like you who believe the uh bottoms up individual approach uh to problem solving the incentives uh and really just kind of the continued embracing of the american democratic ideals uh is incredibly important so i appreciate all the work you're doing and we'll definitely do this again in the future. Yeah, appreciate the platform.

Starting point is 01:38:29 So thank you. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to transition into a brand new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered.

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The Pomp Podcast - #1140 Gideon Powell On Bitcoin Mining, The Oil Industry, & Criminal Justice Reform

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