The Pomp Podcast - #1497 Adam Haynes | Will The Government Mine Bitcoin?!

Starting point is 00:00:00 What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. What's going on, guys? Today, we've got a great episode with Adam Haynes. He's the founder and CEO of Simple Mining. In this conversation, we talk about what's going on with hash rate,

Starting point is 00:00:37 how that affects the efficiency of these Bitcoin miners, what Simple Mining is, how they built the business, what his background is that led him to actually get into the mining game. And then we talk about the geopolitical concerns around Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining, which countries are mining Bitcoin, who's holding it, and whether the United States should actually get into the mining game or not. This and much more if you listen to this entire episode. And so here is my latest conversation with Adam Haynes. 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

Starting point is 00:01:13 make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Today's episode is brought to you by Nasdaq-listed Bitdeer. They trade under the stock ticker BTDR. They're led by a seasoned management team. Bitdeer is a global leader in Bitcoin mining and high-performance computing for artificial intelligence, and they are backed by technological innovation and a massive 2.5 gigawatt global power portfolio. Recently, Bitdeer launched its own Bitcoin mining ASICs named the Seal Miner to target what Wall Street analysts project to be a multi-billion dollar annual market. Their proprietary seal miner ASICs are redefining efficiency and performance,

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Starting point is 00:04:48 heavily in growing their kind of portion of the network. But we know that Bitcoin tends to be very volatile. And so it's kind of this big buildup in a bull market. There's usually some sort of crash. During that crash, miners have to shut off machines. Some miners go out of business. It's kind of this game that gets played over and over and over again. What is different maybe as you guys look at it? Are miners being a little bit more cautious? Is hash rate or price having a different impact? How do you see where we are right now in Bitcoin's life cycle that may be different than past cycles? Yeah, I think that this is, you know, certainly like any other business, this is a this is a hard business. If you looked, you know, back in the last few years,

Starting point is 00:05:29 we saw lots of bankruptcies, lots of companies taking out significant leverage, getting over leveraged, and, you know, getting totally wiped out with a drawdown. So I think you're seeing, you know, a little bit more intelligent investment. Certainly, everybody's continuing to look for the lowest power cost. But I think everybody, you know, like you and I know that in the long term um were very bullish about bitcoin and um you know hash rate has continued to kind of prove that um you know the market is very long-term bullish on bitcoin so um continuing to um make a little bit you know more strategic investments in um lower cost of energy long term um you know maybe being a little bit more careful with debt and leverage i think is a you know

Starting point is 00:06:15 as something that we're seeing going on currently and talk to me about uh you guys are in the business of uh selling mining equipment you guys repair mining equipment um one of the things that i've always thought was pretty interesting is there's kind of the depreciation from an accounting perspective and then there's like the actual you know life cycle of this machine uh machinery and that has a huge impact on how much should i be buying today how long is that going to last me um what do you guys see there like how long do these machines actually last for that are being bought today? Yeah, yeah. So our business is hosting repairs in the sales of, we're kind of a vertically integrated service provider in the Bitcoin mining segment. There's two different

Starting point is 00:06:56 ways to look at it. You can look at it for the lifespan of a machine from just physical, is it able to operate? And with our repair team, we can service the machine and bring anything back to life. And it could run indefinitely. What you come down to is the economics of the machine. And certainly at some point in time, the Bitcoin that that machine is producing is not going to cover the electricity expense associated with running it. So there's a certain lifespan there. We've seen, generally speaking, in the five-year range, historically, possibly a little bit longer. As you're seeing over the last several years, the machines have gotten much more efficient. Up to about 12 joules per terahash currently is the most efficient machine on the market today.

Starting point is 00:07:43 You know, when we first got started about four years ago, we were in the 35 joules per terahash range. So we've seen a substantial increase in the efficiency of the machines. And we're expecting that to be diminishing over time. Just, you know, to continue to, you know, advance at that pace is pretty difficult. So there's some people that are expecting that the lifespan could be a little bit longer. But obviously, that comes down to the network difficulty and the price of Bitcoin, ultimately. When you talk to these miners, how much of their machines are having to get repaired versus they just let them run?

Starting point is 00:08:19 Yeah, it's, you know, we have across our facilities 20,000 machines running at several different sites in Iowa. Certainly on a percentage basis, it is a low percentage. For the most part, these machines do just run 24-7, 365. However, you know, any computer that's running 24-7 is inevitably going to probably have issues. Now, whether that's a small issue like a fan or a power supply failure or a more advanced, you know, chip failure on the actual hash board where our technicians have to go in and do that advanced microsodium repair. There's a decent amount of repairs that take place. And that's why I think the repair side that we bring is such an important value add. And you guys are doing this for a lot of the publicly traded miners and private companies

Starting point is 00:09:10 as well? Yeah, yeah. So we have a repair facility in Cedar Falls, Iowa. We have the capacity to fix several thousand hash boards per month. We work with some of the largest public and private companies across the country. They'll send their machines to us. We'll fix them. We'll test them and then send them back out in addition to doing all of the repairs for

Starting point is 00:09:30 our own clients as well. Got it. And then there's been a huge push into artificial intelligence and high performance computing. What are you guys seeing there with your customers? And is this something where you guys could also help on some of the non Bitcoin mining side? Or is it just stay focused 100% on Bitcoin? Yeah, we're focused on Bitcoin right now. You know, it's my personal opinion that the AI, you know, HPC, you know, high power compute stuff is a little bit overblown. You know, there's a lot. You're looking at the, you know, mag seven companies, the largest companies in the world that are really making heavy investments into this space. And I don't know if there's a true, you know, business case at this point in time. You know, very optimistic about AI long term. I think that there's going to be, you know, an enormous amount of productivity gains and, you know, certainly very optimistic about the future of AI. However, I think today over the course of the next, you know, certainly two, three years, you know, it would be, you know, possibly we could look back and see this period would be a period of malinvestment where, you know, we're just throwing money to see what works. And there's no clear revenue or customer where that investment is going to make sense. And in that world, how do you all evaluate when maybe, okay, hey, it does make sense to do AI-related stuff versus just stick with Bitcoin mining?

Starting point is 00:10:56 Yeah, I think it'll come down to if we're seeing demand for it. Naturally speaking, you are seeing, especially across some of the larger public companies, Core Scientific, for example, they have some big contracts with CoreWeave. But that's pretty isolated. And, you know, there's several other companies that are working in the space. And I think it's, you know, as far as the public image goes, and the public companies, you know, they need to do certain things to, you know, maybe from a press release standpoint, or, you know, whatever it may be, at least consider those options. You think a lot of it is just kind of fluff that there's not as much reality in the AI stuff? Yeah, yeah. Again, I think long term that there certainly will be some good opportunity there. I think maybe on our side of things, we've seen no demand and it's not really something that we're pursuing actively. I think that would potentially change if we, over the long term, somebody contacted us and said, hey, we have a lot of GPUs we need to plug in, H100s, and we don't have anywhere we can plug them in at. I think a lot of that demand is being fulfilled currently by the large public companies and so on and so forth. So maybe not a perfect fit for our business. Certainly we'll evaluate it. And I

Starting point is 00:12:11 think that if the market has a demand there over the long term, certainly it's something that we would- I saw recently that Microsoft was canceling some of their data center contracts, which I thought was pretty interesting. What, you think they just ran out, signed too many of them and realized that maybe they don't need all of them? Yeah. Well, in the AI world, I think we're just the early innings still it's you know kind of trying to see through the fog um you know the deep seek thing happened a a few weeks ago and you know there's still not perfect clarity on maybe exactly how all that played out but um yeah you certainly wonder if it could get into a situation where the ai um you know investment is um uh you know in data summer overbuilt and if it becomes

Starting point is 00:12:51 overbuilt you know who's going where is the demand going to be from for for all of that compute power You know, certainly, like I said, a lot of these large companies are making investments into their, you know, large language models and so on and so forth. But at the end of the day, where is that demand going to be? It's kind of like, you know, if you go back 20, 25 years ago, like there's a cost to do a Google search. And that cost is trended towards, you know, basically zero over time. And I think, you know, AI, certainly there's going to be more costs there, especially now. But over time, that cost is going to continue to trend towards zero too as well. When you look out at the Bitcoin mining kind of landscape, it seems like energy detractors are still loud and being annoying. But ERCOT and other maybe electrical grid providers, they are very much pro-Bitcoin mining and they seem to see a value there.

Starting point is 00:13:46 Uh, if I remember correctly, there's also been a, uh, at least pilot with some of the larger oil and gas companies where they're trying to see, Hey, is there something that we should be doing here with this technology? Um, how do you see this all kind of playing out in the incumbent world? Like, you know, there's people who will go set up a native Bitcoin mining facility and they'll say, Hey, look, it's purpose-built to mine Bitcoin. Uh, we're going to consume power at the lowest cost we possibly can find. And we're off to the races. But it does feel like to go from, you know, kind of like 101 or 201 class to the upper level, you have to start to interface with the legacy world and kind of get scale. We see Bitcoin do this with Wall Street now with ETFs and obviously that's been a big boom. Is there an equivalent thing like that in Bitcoin mining? Yeah, I'd say as it specifically relates to our facilities, we have unique curtailment strategies and agreements where during those peak times, we will actually curtail our operations. We can shut down 98% of our load within 120 seconds to help support the grid during maybe the hottest days of the year where everybody's running their air conditioner, coldest days of the year where everybody's running their heaters, so on and so forth. And I think that those are going to be, especially as it relates to new energy production, renewables such as wind and solar. If the sun's not shining, the wind's not blowing, the energy still has to come from somewhere.

Starting point is 00:15:07 You know, they're forecasting capacity constraints in 2028. Now, fortunately, that won't affect our business because we have, you know, the ability to be reactive and shut down very quickly in those times where, you know, demand is maybe exceeding the capacity for generation. On the AI side, unfortunately, you know, they need that demand all the time because they can't just turn on and off their, you know, AI data facility. So I think that's only going to become more and more important over time. Um, you know, the, the relationship with the grid operators, such as, like you said, ERCOT, MISO, and in our case, um, SPP, so on and so forth, where, um, they, the, the closer, the, the closer and better we can be an asset to them to react to these different situations is going to be, um, a really, you know, long-term benefit.

Starting point is 00:15:56 And, um, over the last four years, uh, specifically in Iowa, you know, it's gone from kind of a small, you know, niche, unique situation to you have a full-blown industry now. And, you know, we're talking about, you know, hundreds of megawatts across the state of Iowa, let alone in Texas where you're talking gigawatts. So yeah, I think long-term those agreements will continue to be very important. When you look at the hardware itself, there's been immense amount of innovation on that front. Liquid immersion is obviously this huge, you know, kind of trend that I think it's really becoming the default or the popular kind of approach. Talk about the hardware and what you guys are seeing there in terms of dropping the cost, but also this

Starting point is 00:16:41 efficiency that you mentioned earlier. Yeah. Yeah. So there's, you know, just like any other technology out there in the world, they're continuing to try and make improvements all the time. Right now, I would say the market is probably, you know, 85% air cooled, you know, globally, if we were to look, it's cheap, it's easy to do, so on and so forth. We are seeing a push towards more hydro. We're actually in the process of building a 50 megawatt hydro facility in Iowa with our partner, Alps Blockchain. We're really excited about that project. I think it's a new technology that possibly will reduce the number of issues. It's a little bit more reliable. You don't have the dust getting into the hashboards,

Starting point is 00:17:22 potentially causing corrosion and those sorts of issues. So we could see benefits from the reliability standpoint of the hardware. And then I think that, you know, there's also some other components to it as well, where the hydro is also maybe a little bit easier from a, you know, local approval standpoint, because there's a little bit less noise from the hydro as well. And hydro, what advantage is there to using that? It's just that it's able to cool the hash boards more directly. And it's a little bit more efficient system. Now, there's some additional costs and maybe some additional plumbing required to do that.

Starting point is 00:18:04 But really, it's just a newer way of doing it where maybe you can get a little bit more efficiency out of the machines. So you're not talking about hydro, like the power generation. You're talking about hydro in terms of the actual liquid cooling. Exactly. So this, like our project that we're working on is a dry, it's a closed loop system. So we have a liquid that goes into a dry cooler. That liquid then passes through each individual machine. That cool liquid gets warmed up from the machines, goes back into the dry cooler.

Starting point is 00:18:33 That dry cooler cools the liquid back down, so on and so forth. So yeah, not hydro from a power generation standpoint, but actually a liquid that is used to cool the individual machines in the containers. And how much or how large can a facility handle with liquid cooling versus air cooling? If you have 50 megawatts, is it the same number of machines? The hydro machines are actually a little bit more, a little bit higher power capacity. We're seeing them around the five kilowatt range, even a little bit more versus the air cooled machines are traditionally closer to three to three and a half.

Starting point is 00:19:10 So you get a little bit more density there. Um, there is a little bit larger footprint required as far as the number of, um, you know, you have to have a cooling tower for, for the dry cooler, so on and so forth. So perhaps a little bit larger, um, real estate footprint. Um, but you know, more or less it's, it's pretty simple. And then what about costs, right? If you want to go and do air cooling versus, uh, liquid. Yeah. Traditionally the, the air cooled has been a little bit more, uh, cost effective. Um, certainly it's, um, all you have to really worry about is exhaust fans at that point in time.

Starting point is 00:19:42 You don't have to worry about any, uh, cooling towers, you know, plumbing equipment, so on and so forth. Um, special liquids used here. Um, so it's, it's potentially a little bit more, um, cost effective to do the air cool, but we're starting to see the costs come down on the hydro. Um, and we're really excited about the project that we're working on currently. Got it. Um, talk about your business and with Simple Mining, you guys are hosting, you're doing

Starting point is 00:20:06 sales of hardware, you do repair of hardware as well? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So we like to think of ourselves as a vertically integrated service provider. We, you know, we're really trying to offer and make it the easiest place to mine Bitcoin, if you will. So we have clients from all around the world that are, you know, looking to participate in the service, whether they just want to be a part of the ecosystem or whether they're doing it as a part of a business. You know, there's some unique tax advantages of Bitcoin mining as it relates to depreciation. um and uh you know we've lots of different things but um yeah hosting um for clients and then the repairs um and then the sales of the equipment we we carry inventory we have machines and stocks

Starting point is 00:20:46 you can go live same day as payment and walk me through the economics right so i come and i say hey i want to start mining bitcoin what does that look like yeah um so we're really big on you know just trying to sell on our service you know certainly in the bitcoin world uh as you know forecasting any sort of return on investment is difficult. And I think our strategy has been more so we're going to be the best service provider as it relates to doing this business. So we're going to have a very high uptime. We're going to provide the repairs. We have the customer service support, so on and so forth to offer the highest level of service possible in this industry. Well, just walk me through, let's say one machine, right? So I want to install one ASIC,

Starting point is 00:21:31 How much is that going to cost me? And then how should I think about what I'm getting from a hash rate standpoint or anything like that? Yeah. So some of the newest machines out there, you know, there's certainly a range, you know, depending if you want the newest, most efficient machine or possibly if you want to have an older machine that's a little bit less efficient in the, you know, maybe five to nine thousand dollar range is currently where the pricing is for some of the newer equipment. um you know our operations we charge between seven and eight cents for hosting just depending on capacity and um you know that value that you're going to get every single day is just going to be a function of where the difficulty is at and uh the value of the bitcoin obviously as the price of bitcoin goes up or down um you're getting a sort of fixed amount on a daily basis amount of bitcoin and then you have your fixed utility cost and then the thing that varies there is the difficulty adjustment every two weeks you're going to get a little bit less or a little

Starting point is 00:22:26 bit more Bitcoin. And then certainly the value of the price of Bitcoin. And so what does that look like over the last 12 months or so? It's impossible to predict what's going to happen in the future. When you look over the last 12 months, let's say somebody spends $7,500 on one of these new machines. What has that looked like in terms of payback periods? Yeah. Yeah. Historically speaking, and by no means, obviously things are subject to change in the future, but- Things could change tomorrow. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's been a while last week. Yeah, Trump could go announce another strategic reserve. Yeah. So, you know, we've had some of our clients that have, you know, returned their investment, you know, quote unquote, within six months.

Starting point is 00:23:05 We've also had some that have certainly taken, you know, if they bought the top of the market and then, you know, wrote it all the way down, certainly maybe in the two year range, you know. So there's certainly a time period there. And, you know, as it relates to even just buying Bitcoin, certainly timing is a, you know, plays a factor in there, too, as well. I think one thing that, you know, we've seen and we've conducted some surveys across our clients is, you know, the emotions and the, you know, of the market and, you know, even as it relates to buying Bitcoin, because that's a common question that we get asked. Should I buy it? Should I mine it? You know, what's the perfect answer there? And I think, you know, it's certainly not one or the other. As it relates to mining, I think mining is a great tool where it's a force to DCA. So you're going to get Bitcoin every single day, no matter what.

Starting point is 00:23:48 and there's also other advantages that come along with that such as the depreciation of the equipment running it as a business you still retain that machine as an asset you know on your balance sheet and we have a marketplace where you can sell it at any point in time and then you know what I tell people is if a good buying opportunity presents itself if you get a nice dip yeah buy the dip but if as it relates to mining you know we've seen and conducted some surveys where a lot of our clients have net net ended up with quite a bit more Bitcoin than that they otherwise would have had just because it removes the emotions from having to buy. You know, when price dips down, we all know, you know, we should be buying, but it's, it's, it is hard to, you know, pull the

Starting point is 00:24:28 trigger. Um, so I think that's something that's really interesting about mining as well. It is, um, the ultimate dollar cost average, right? Uh, I think it makes, uh, makes a lot of sense. Um, what are the challenges with running a business like this? Like obviously there's hardware, which immediately every software developers, like, I don't know what that means. right? But talk about some of the challenges. Yeah, I think, you know, it's a really fun business. There certainly is a lot of challenges, you know, as it relates to having thousands and thousands of machines. You know, we've really, we have a CTO who's been with me since I started my first company in the cell phone repair world. And we have, you know, several other developers

Starting point is 00:25:07 on staff. And we've really tried to build out all of our, you know, software and, you know, dashboard and all those other types of features to optimize our operations. And, you know, especially as it relates to serving, you know, you know, retail clients where, you know, somebody has one machine in that one machine offline, it's very critical to get that machine back online quickly. So it's, it's a very difficult business when you're looking at thousands of different machines, different repairs that have to happen, different model types, you know, agreements with the utility company where we need to power down. But I think that we've really, you know, over the last four years built everything from scratch to be able to, you know, um, really optimize

Starting point is 00:25:47 our efficiency across our onsite operations, our repairs, um, and, and keeping machines up and up and running. And when I think about, uh, these businesses, it takes somebody who understands Bitcoin, take someone who understands software and hardware, and also take someone who, um, has like emotional control because of the, uh, ebb and flow of the market. What is your background? Yeah. So, I guess going back a ways before Simple Mining, my first business was cell phone repair. And that was really born out of, in high school, I dropped my phone and broke it at the pool. And my parents told me, tough luck, you broke it, you have to buy a new one. And I didn't have it. I was in high school, small town, Iowa. I grew up in a town of a thousand people in Iowa. They said,

Starting point is 00:26:37 tough luck. You got to fix it yourself. So I figured out how to fix it and then kind of realized that maybe there was... How'd you figure it out? Just YouTube. Yeah. I just went on YouTube, kind of figured out how to fix it. It fixed my phone and then realized that maybe I could make a business out of this. This is when I was a sophomore in high school. I think I had a lot of this from my dad. My dad was a grocery store manager. My mom was a nurse. And growing up, my dad was always going and buying cars off craigslist he'd buy a car off craigslist uh you know 1930s chevy for 500 bucks on craigslist and then part it out and you know it'd be me and him in the garage wrapping up old car parts shipping

Starting point is 00:27:12 him to new zealand and uh you know he that's kind of what he did on the side as a side business and you know i always wanted to do something like that um and you know i think the phone thing kind of fell in my lap so after um practice in high school i would sit on the phone and call all the cross country to people on craigslist having them send their broken iphone to me you know, broken iPhone fours for 40 bucks. I'd fix it and then sell it on eBay. Uh, so I did that throughout high school, um, ended up going to college. And how does that work? So you buy their phone for $40. It's broken. Yeah. You fix it. And how much were you reselling them for? A couple hundred, you know, 200, 250. So, um, parts were, you know, 20, 30 bucks. So pretty, pretty good

Starting point is 00:27:51 margins for, you know, uh, uh, business out of my room in high school. And you were doing it yourself? Yeah, yep, yep, yep. So, you know, kind of did that eBay business fixed. And, you know, I'd go to the local McDonald's and, you know, offer to fix people's phones on Craigslist. There wasn't really a lot of repair shops around at that point in time. So it wasn't a crazy business by any means, but it definitely kept me busy for a high school student. And, you know, I was able to save up some money and so on and so forth. So after high school, I went down to the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, where our current headquarters is for Simple Mining. I was there. I was, you know, pre-med. I was a computer science, a doctor, lawyer,

Starting point is 00:28:33 finance and real estate, so on and so forth. And ultimately... You did all that? Yeah, yeah. I was changed by major, you know, four or five times when I got down there. After my freshman year, I moved back home and I worked at a cell phone repair place that was about an hour drive. So I commuted an hour every single day over the summer because that's what I knew how to do. Really enjoyed doing that. And by the end of the summer, the owners of that company wanted me to move to a different city where they're opening a new location. And I was like, no, I got to stay in school. You know, that's what my parents want me to do. So I ended up going back

Starting point is 00:29:06 to school, was there for a short period of time and realized that, you know, I wanted to take that job and I wanted to, you know, because I wasn't getting anywhere in school. I was changing my major. I didn't know what I wanted to do. Ended up taking that position. The plan was to stay in school. Um, but that didn't happen. It was very short lived. Um, ended up moving to Mankato, Minnesota, uh, to open this location for them. I convinced the owners of the cell phone repair business to let me sleep in the back of the store for free. So I lived a rent free. I slept in the back of that store for about a year, right when I got up there, I kind of knew that I wanted to do my own business and, um, you know, just focused on saving as much money as I could. I, you know,

Starting point is 00:29:44 soup and yogurt every single day, uh, lived rent free. And then, um, uh, in 2017, I moved down to Cedar falls and opened, um, my first cell phone repair location. Um, so that location went well, uh, we kind of expanded and, uh, grew over the next several years, um, opened, uh, another location shortly after, and then ended up acquiring five additional locations, uh, across the state and one down in Kansas City after that. COVID happened and, you know, kind of put expansion plans on pause because it was very uncertain times. And one of our employees was actually mining Bitcoin at the time. And I had heard of Bitcoin, but I'd never taken the time to, you know, do a deep dive and, you know, fully understand it. So, you know, like every Bitcoin

Starting point is 00:30:31 maxi, you go down the path of reading the Bitcoin standard and, you know, listening to your podcast And, you know, just going down that rabbit hole and learning more about it and got very, you know, long term bullish about Bitcoin and its place in the world and all that good stuff. So then we started looking at how we could possibly, you know, create more Bitcoin. And that led to mining. Iowa is a really beneficial state to do this business. We have, you know, about two thirds of our energy. It's the highest state in the country for wind power production from a percentage standpoint. So in Iowa, we have a lot of cornfields and a lot of windmills.

Starting point is 00:31:05 And that's about it. But very competitive state to do this business. We started mining with a bunch of GPUs in the back of our store, mining Ethereum. Realized that, you know, that wasn't the most efficient way to do this business and started having conversations with our local utility company on how, you know, how we could possibly do this at a more industrial scale. Uh, one thing led to another and, you know, we started mining down there in, uh, 2021 with, uh, 50 machines. And, uh, that's kind of where, where our journey started.

Starting point is 00:31:37 What was the conversations like with the utility company? Yeah, we were, I think we were very fortunate in the beginning. Um, you know, the utility company that we first started working with, I think they're very, um, innovative and forward thinking. Um, you know, certainly there is a lot of utility companies out there we've had conversations with where, um, we call them and say Bitcoin and it's click, you know, hang up the phone. They don't want anything to do with it. But that's certainly greatly improving, you know, over the last few years. You're starting to see a lot more utilities open to it. We have great, you know, we have several different utility partners across the state, great relationships with all of them.

Starting point is 00:32:11 And, you know, they see that this is a business that's here to stay and how mutually beneficial it can be. You know, we usually, when we look to go in and partner with communities and utilities, we look for win-win-win scenarios. So win for the local community is where, you know, we're going to bring in jobs. Um, it's a win for the utility company. You know, they're going to obviously make a profit off of it. And then it's a win for our company too, as well as we can expand and grow our business. That, um, that makes sense. And then what are some of the lessons that you've learned over the last couple of years kind of doing this, right? Like you come from, uh, that repair type background, but obviously Bitcoin is very different. Maybe what's some surprises or

Starting point is 00:32:44 lessons learned? Yeah. Yeah. It's, um, it's, uh, learned a lot the last few years, certainly. um you know this is a uh it's a fun business um you know certainly it ebbs and flows you know you're gonna have um days where bitcoin price just rips and it's euphoric and then you're gonna have the bear markets where it's um you know um certainly not as fun so uh but i think it's a good all good long-term opportunities um you know during the bear market um you know i think that's a great time to just be accumulating obviously and that's you know kind of relates back to why I personally like mining a lot. It's just because it's that forced DCA.

Starting point is 00:33:19 You're always getting the Bitcoin. But yeah, it's a unique industry. I think you're seeing this industry starting to mature. You know, certainly in the last few years, you could have said it was more of the wild, wild west. You're starting to see some consolidation and kind of, you know, some industry standards be put in place.

Starting point is 00:33:37 And yeah, I'm sure there's a lot more growth that has to take place, but it'll be cool to see where things go. We've seen the crypto strategic reserve get announced. Do you think that the United States should start mining Bitcoin as well? Like, should we use government resources and or energy that the government controls right now? Well, you know, I'd love to say that's a great idea. But also, you know, as it sits right now, the government operates pretty inefficiently.

Starting point is 00:34:02 So I don't know how, you know, if they'd be able to do that. I don't know if the government would be able to do that at an efficient scale where it would, you know, it makes sense. But I think the, you know, strategic Bitcoin reserve is a great, you know, long term idea. um there's several states that we've seen to get introduced iowa being one of them recently and um i think if we can just get um you know if we can just get a small allocation of bitcoin in these strategic reserves um it'd be a great long-term situation for the states and for the federal government yeah well it feels like the government when it comes to energy it's a whole different conversation than like should we buy you know bitcoin or altcoins or whatever um and

Starting point is 00:34:41 things like mitigating flare gas and landfill gas. You kind of go through this, that seems way less controversial than maybe which coins are we going to buy? Right. Yeah. There's several companies out there that are working on the flare gas situation. That adds an additional layer and I think makes this business pretty difficult, but you can see the opportunity with all the wasted energy out there. And as it relates to some of the larger energy producers such as Chevron, BP, so on and so forth. I think that they're evaluating that. And as this industry continues to grow, we're going to need more and more energy. Bitcoin mining industry today is plus or minus 15 gigawatts. I've seen some forecasts

Starting point is 00:35:24 and some of the experts are expecting it to be double that in five years, all the way up to 30 gigawatts. It's a lot of energy. And there's plenty of opportunities out there, including the stranded energy where either governments around the world were already seen taking advantage of that, whether that's not the United States government right now, but we're seeing governments around the world that are mining or large public and private companies. Yeah. One of the parts to me that I think people kind of forgot, I think the UAE has already announced a joint venture with one of the publicly traded miners in the US that they're

Starting point is 00:36:03 mining Bitcoin. And it's unclear where the Bitcoin's going. Yeah. right? Is that going on the UAE's balance sheet or not? Russia has come out and said they're mining Bitcoin. They're definitely holding that Bitcoin. They've said that they're holding that Bitcoin. So it does feel like Bhutan, El Salvador, these countries are mining. The US kind of feels like we're behind a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it would be a great opportunity. The United States is one of the largest energy resources in the world. And I think it's just a matter of our

Starting point is 00:36:34 government being, you know, uh, efficient at doing that, you know, some of these other countries like Bhutan and El Salvador, you know, they're, they have, um, I think they can pivot and move much quicker compared to our government. Um, but yeah, it's a massive opportunity and that kind of just plays into the, you know, the long-term long-term game theory of Bitcoin, you know, we're, we're seeing it play out. Um, and, you know, thinking back even a few years ago to where we are now, um, interesting to think about where things will be in the next five, 10 years. Yeah. What, what do you look forward to the most or think are like the big milestones that we still have yet to go? Yeah. I'm just looking forward to continuing to, to build our business. You know,

Starting point is 00:37:08 it's a lot of fun. Um, you know, we definitely are in the weeds and, you know, working really hard with our team. And, uh, sometimes we have to take a step back and, you know, realize that we're working on, you know, these magic internet money machines every single day. It's a, it's a lot of fun. So no, just continuing to, um, you know, grow the business, um, you know, um, look for, you know, it's a lot of fun working in Bitcoin. So where can we send people to find out more about Simple Mining? You can visit our website, simplemining.io. You can visit us on Twitter, you know, at Simple Mining IO, visit our LinkedIn page. You know, there's lots of great information there. We're really big on the education piece. So we have a lot of great

Starting point is 00:37:47 content on our website, simplemining.io backslash insights. There's a lot of, you know, information there as it relates to, you know, self custody of your Bitcoin. You know, how does Bitcoin mining work you know even to more advanced stuff like utxo management so um the website is an incredible resource i think people uh they wouldn't expect a company like yours to have really high quality research but a big part of it probably is the more educated your customers are the better uh one they'll view you but also two probably the better customer they are yeah yeah i mean it's just something that we're really big on you know we want we're going to put that you know content out you know regardless it's um something that we're really passionate about especially as it

Starting point is 00:38:27 it relates to. In the early years, you know, we had several clients that had, you know, their funds lost on FTX or Celsius. And, you know, we just really want to promote the education so everybody can be, you know, understand fully what's going on. That makes sense. Where can people find you on the internet? People can find me on LinkedIn, Adam Haynes. I'm not very active on Twitter, but LinkedIn, no, no, but LinkedIn, you can find me. Why not active on X? Yeah, should be i should be but uh no linkedin linkedin's more your thing linkedin yeah yeah all right all right sounds good simplemining.io yep all right thank you so much for doing this yeah thanks anthony appreciate it

The Pomp Podcast - #1497 Adam Haynes | Will The Government Mine Bitcoin?!

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