The Pomp Podcast - #476: Mason Jappa on The State of Bitcoin and Mining

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

Mason Jappa is the cofounder and CEO of Blockware Solutions, a blockchain infrastructure company and network advisory firm.  In this conversation, we discuss the latest Blockware research report on Bitcoin, including why $40,000 is just the beginning and how the network metrics suggest Bitcoin is stronger than ever. ======================= Exodus is an absolute game changer in the crypto wallet space, and we’ve teamed up to offer an exclusive discount for you, as listeners of the podcast. Sign up for Exodus today using my promo code Exodus.io/. This is a no brainer for both newcomers and crypto heavyweights - go sign up today.  ======================= Diginex is the first company with a cryptocurrency exchange to be listed in the US. Their ticker is Nasdaq: EQOS, and they are the first crypto company that you can buy stock in. They also have a crypto exchange called EQUOS, which has been built to institutional standards, but is available to everyone. You can trade Bitcoin and Ethereum spot, as well as Bitcoin perpetuals, and get a 5% discount on all fees, by signing up using http://www.equos.com/pomp ======================= Money On Chain brings Bitcoin to mass adoption with solutions to meet the needs of different types of users: a fully bitcoin-collateralized stablecoin (DoC), a bitcoin on steroids (BPro), and a dizzying bitcoiner option for lovers of leveraged trading (BTCx). All this, without requiring the delivery of private keys. Money On Chain - Bringing bitcoin into the mainstream. Visit moneyonchain.com/pomp to learn more

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. Let's kick this thing off. Mason Joppa is the co-founder and CEO of Blockware Solutions, a blockchain infrastructure company and network advisory firm. In this conversation, we discuss the latest Blockware research report on Bitcoin, including why $40,000 is just the beginning and how the network metrics suggest Bitcoin is stronger than ever. I really enjoyed this conversation with Mason, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors.

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on Chain that allows you to earn a rent on Bitcoin positions and gain free leverage. So yes, with a Bitcoin on steroids like Bipro, DeFi is definitely for Bitcoiners. Go check out more at moneyonchain.com slash Pomp. Again, moneyonchain.com slash Pomp. All right, let's get into this episode. I hope you guys enjoy this one with Mason. Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions

and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Mason here. Thank you so much for doing this, sir. Thanks for having me on, Pomp. Really excited to run through and jam on a million things that we have to talk about all Bitcoin related, all HypeFest. I'm really excited to be on with you today. All right, let's get after it. Let's just go through your background real quick.

Where'd you grow up and what did you do before you got into Bitcoin? Yeah, and a lot of that will actually lead how I got into it. So I grew up actually in St. Louis, Missouri. My family came from a wood manufacturing background. So my grandfather founded a wood manufacturing called JMC Wood in the 1970s. My father runs that company today. It's in bridge to Missouri. And that actually led me to Bitcoin mining. So in 2016, we had warehouses and machinery. We had some excess power and just space. And what you see within the mining space is lean and mean operations. So I was just thinking, what can I do with this energy and space? And that led me to the Bitcoin mining rabbit hole. In 2016, the S9 was just released. So I just started

filling and building racks in my dad's warehouse. These workers and employees were looking at me like I was an alien and we just started hashing. And then from there, I saw, you know, a lot of opportunity, right? Fragmentation in the market, you know, US miners struggling to order machines, the value of like the S9s I bought in early 2017, like 10 folding. And it really just led to the formation of Blockware Solutions, which I co-founded with my late and great business partner, Matthew D'Souza, who you had on your podcast last year, you know, rest in peace, God bless. What an amazing person. And then Sam Shorzensky, who's our current CFO. And we're still vertically integrating and doing a lot of really nice things today. I went to the Kelly

School of Business at IU, head of BS in finance and a master's degree in information systems. Prior to just going full-time blockchain, I'd worked in management consulting and I was a lead solution engineer at a risk management software company. Awesome. So when you start mining Bitcoin, how do you get from that to BlockWare? So great points. So what BlockWare is, is it's a vertically integrated Bitcoin mining and general blockchain oriented company. So just to give a background on BlockWare and what it is, first and foremost, we're a wholesaler and large distributor of ASICs. And just a fun throw out, what does ASIC stand for? I get this all the time. Application-specific integrated circuits. So think of an ASIC like a high-powered server

that runs 24-7 and just its goal is to generate and mine Bitcoin and validate the network and validate the communication that happens between nodes. So Blockbuster has actually sold over 200,000 Bitcoin mining machines or ASICs since inception in 2017. So that's one of our key offerings. With that, as a client, you may ask, where do I put these machines? So we host the machines. BlockBird has placed over 45 megawatts of hosting equipment across different co-location facilities. And over time with our vertical integration, we actually co-partnered and started and desired to operate our own facilities. So we're a part of a facility in Kentucky that currently has about 20 megawatts running. And as I go into BlockBird mining as an entity as well,

my second entity, we actually just got a financing and sale and lease back to build our second site in Kentucky, which will start out at 25 megawatts and scale to 100. And if you're following Kentucky news, there was actually a really interesting bill that was just passed that is incentivizing Bitcoin miners to come to Kentucky, which is amazing and great news. So really excited that we were already in Kentucky. This bill comes out, and our second load's coming. And it was just like the perfect time, perfect place for that. and then just to finish the blocker blurb we write industry reading uh leading research so i'm going to cover some of our research today i think we we're writing a really nice piece and it'll be

research and available on our website the title is uh bitcoin market outlook um in 2021 40 000 is only the beginning and pot between me and you we've got an amazing top track to run through there um and then also we all we operate a bitcoin mining pool a lot of my messaging is in key messaging, um, that, that you'll hear me say, and I'm sure you resonate with as well as, Hey guys, we need to get Bitcoin in the hands of Americans and we need to get Bitcoin hash rate in the hands of Americans. Um, it's a, it's a global race right now. Let's not lose this race. Let's get the messaging out, get Bitcoins in our hands. Um, we, we need to make moves now. Uh, the time is now. Um, absolutely. So let's get into the research report. Cause I think that that's such

like a, a bold statement, uh, maybe not for somebody talking to me, but, uh, for most people to hear. $40,000 is only just the beginning. And you've basically broken this report out into eight different sections. And I figured maybe we could kind of go through each section and you can give us a little overview of exactly what you guys talk in there and help people go in and download it. But the first section is all about mining rigs and kind of record demand. Elaborate on that a little bit. Yeah. And real quickly before we do that, I did want to touch on my second entity. My other business partner, Michael Stolzner, he has 30 years of derivative trading. It's Blockware Mining. It's actually our investment

vehicle. So I did want to highlight that we are a self-miner ourselves. So within Blockware Mining, we'll have 300-pen of hash. That'll be online by mid-February. We have over 200 hosted clients. That's our investment vehicle, and that's how we raise capital. It's our sister company to Blockware Solutions. And that's the entity that truly is going to have ownership of these hosting facilities and co-partnerships. But I agree with you. Let's jump right into the meat and potatoes of the research report. So starting with the first section, I'm talking about a record demand for rigs. So what you're seeing in this space right now, actually, is institutional participation as it relates to mining rigs. So if you look at an institution, and it's amazing what we're

seeing right now, we view this Bitcoin uptrend as being fully institutionally driven. So with that, as it relates to mining rigs, you're seeing institutions that are investing hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars on mining rigs and infrastructure. So not only do you have to buy the Bitcoin mining rig, you have to spend billions or hundreds of millions on the infrastructure to host the mining rigs. So because the institutions have entered, It's caused nine-plus-month delays for a retail miner or for somebody that reaches out to these manufacturers to buy the machines. You see companies like Merrill, like Riot, like Bitfarms, like Foundry. These companies are buying up tens of thousands of machines at a time and buying future batches.

So right now, you're seeing lead times of nine-plus-month because of the institutional participation. And that's fascinating. So it's not only institutions driving and buying Bitcoin, it's institutions sucking up all the Bitcoin mining rigs, which creates lead times that are off the charts than what we have never seen before. They want Bitcoin. They're going to either buy it or they're going to get their mining rigs. Exactly. The second section is all about Google searches. Talk a little bit about that. Yeah, totally. So what we've seen that is really interesting, if you remember in the bull market of 2017, Google searches were at an all-time high. And we searched Google Trends, so there was hundreds and thousands and millions of views as it related to just searching for Bitcoin or Bitcoin mining.

Right now, what we found was fascinating was that we're at 50% of the levels that we were at in 2017. So that just signals to us that retail has yet to enter. It's an indicator that the retail frenzy has not begun. And if you think about the cycle of Bitcoin and what happens in different commodities and equities, retail is the last to enter, right? They jump in after all the smart money came in or the institutional investors came in. So that's an indicator that we have not seen retail participate as it relates to this cycle. And we expect the Google Trends to uptick towards the end of the bull market cycle. And that could indicate that the bull cycle is over, right? Absolutely. The next section is all about Bitcoin exchange activity.

Elaborate on that one. Yeah. Yeah. So what we've done here is we've looked at and really honed in on three major exchanges, Bitfinex, Coinbase, and CME. And if you track over time from 2018 to 2020, Bitfinex, for example, completely dominated across the board. We've seen them lose market share. Coinbase has stably held market share and has from Q1 2018 to Q4 2020, very similar volumes. But the most fascinating thing of this is you'll see the CME volume. So CME from Q1 all the way up till Q1 2018 and Q1 2019 was just about even with the others. In Q2 2019, you saw CME explode. And the

reason why that's so important is because CME is driven by institutions. In order to trade a Bitcoin futures contract on the CME, you have to put up five Bitcoins, which is $175,000 in today's day and age. And if you look at Q4 2020, CME leads the pack as far as the quantity of Bitcoin traded versus the other two. Got it. And then this whole idea of the institutions come in and they only buy Bitcoin. They don't buy altcoins. Explain this one. Yeah, this is a great one. And so if you look in 2017, what we saw was a retail-driven market. So at that time, Bitcoin was actually at its lowest market dominance. And it was around that time that you really saw that crazy ICO craze, right?

And that caused Bitcoin's market dominance to fall to 35% compared to where it's at today. And then, you know, over time, as institutions take over and participate, we see, you know, the Bitcoin dominance research. And right now, institutions really don't have a gateway into altcoins like they do with Bitcoin, right? Institutions can buy Bitcoin through proven retail and exchanges and CME. They can trust the custody providers like Coinbase, like Gemini, BlackFive is building some really interesting things in that market. You just don't see that same type of custody and availability. I will note that Ethereum futures contracts will start trading on the CME in early February.

So that could change the script. And it's not like we're necessarily saying that institutions never will buy into altcoins, but they're certainly Bitcoin focused. And that is fact. And a little bit further, what we'll cover is some of the highlights and news that took place with these public companies that have entered the market. Absolutely. And central bank monetary policy seems to be everyone's favorite topic right now. Cover that one. That's a good one. And we're kind of jumping across the board here. So what I love about Bitcoin and what many people love about Bitcoin is the monetary policy of Bitcoin is driven by code. Right now, central banks or central entities

control the monetary policy, which is highly discouraging. So if you look just from a perspective of US dollar supply, in 2020, we saw circulation increased by over 24% in the course of one year. Now, let's backdate. 75% of all USD that is present today did not exist. That is an oh my God factor that I'm sitting here thinking hyperinflation, hyperinflation. 2020 proved once again that central bank monetary policy is a dominating force behind equity markets. And really, what's happening is the government's pumping stimulus and pumping treasury bonds and buying through treasury bonds into corporations. And every asset that seems to be not USD fiat has moved. I was laughing to myself the other day. All of us collected baseball

cards in the 90s. Baseball card values have vastly appreciated in 2020. Everything is going up. When you factor that in as well, this kind of also created the perfect storm for Bitcoin. So you saw that March bottom of $3,800. People started to perk up and say, what's my best counter against inflation? And the answer is becoming Bitcoin. And that's why and why we believe a lot of the participation has taken place. It kind of created the perfect storm. Infinite QE, negative incident rates, all of this are creating a lot of

skepticism against, you know, on the U.S. dollar in the future. And this is just, you know, not just backed up by data, but, you know, you see the legendary moneymakers, billion-dollar corporations, even insurance companies, you know, like MassMutual just recently entered. They're also, you know, proving that this is true. They believe that Bitcoin, you know, is a true hedge against inflation and the digital gold narrative exists. Absolutely. And what's so interesting to me about this one, I think, is most of the other things you've talked about are reactive, right? In terms of like, hey, we can look at this and measure progress based on what people are doing. This one is really kind of proactive, right? In the sense

that this is driving action. This is forcing people to go and move assets. Is that kind of how you look at it as well? I completely resonate with you. It's a total reactive. And just to highlight, you know, some of the few things that are the reactive is Citibank putting out a report saying called 21st Century Gold. They speculated Bitcoin would be at 318K by the end of 2021. Morgan Stanley owns and acquires 10.9% of MicroStrategy. I put out an interesting tweet today that essentially proves out that they actually own like indirectly by owning MicroStrategy like over 7000 Bitcoin, which is fascinating is that, you know, Guggenheim releasing that they believe Bitcoin is going to hit $400,000. JPMorgan Chase, who in the past was definitely

anti-Bitcoin, put out their speculation that Bitcoin will hit $146,000. Recent news, Goldman Sachs is thinking about offering custody service. You have Stanley Drunkenmiller, Paul Tudor Jones entering. You have MassMutual, Square Cash App, PayPal. I'm really excited to see what PayPal reports for their next quarter earnings, which are on February 3rd. It'll be interesting to see the volumes and their talk track around that. And then, you know, one of the ultimate evangelists that, you know, we can't miss here is Michael Saylor. You know, he's been the guy on Twitter and he's truly, you know, been an evangelist for Bitcoin. Absolutely. Bitcoin market today in 2021 versus the historical cycle in 2017. There's a whole section in the paper on this.

What stuck out to you here? Yeah. So if we're looking at historical cycles and as it relates to where we're at today, you can see that we're in the early stages. So if you look at prior Bitcoin runs, the average volatility or downtrend during these bull cycles is about 30.53%. We saw that 27% drop happen a couple of weeks ago, which is really nominal compared to some of the prior runs that took place. And what's really important to put out and align to is the halving cycles, right? If you look at all the prior halvings, so there's been three halvings since Bitcoin was incepted, right?

in 2012, in 2016, in 2020, Bitcoin dictated by code has a halving every four years, right? That's where the Bitcoin rewards are cut in half. Therefore, the reward next year will go from 6.25 and be cut in half in 2024. If you look at Bitcoin's performance in the halving year, the average return in the year of the halving is 206%. If you look at the average return year after the halving, it's 3,400%. So with that being said, and don't quote me on this, but we're looking at analytics and doing some comparisons. Bitcoin at the end of 2021, if we're looking at a 3,400% gain, that would put it at $700,000 by the end of 2021. Do you think that's where it's going? My honest take is, I'm definitely conservative. I would not be surprised if

Bitcoin crosses 100K. This is simply looking at where the prior halving cycles are at. And just like you, it's so hard to forecast. But you can look at data to try to help you. What was it from January 2017 to December 2017? It was like 20X, like 1,000 to 20,000? yes yeah exactly that it was insane i remember it was like that it was from thanksgiving until december 31st where we literally went from like a thousand to eighteen thousand i mean if that happened uh what do we start the year at forty thousand so it would be like you know you start seven hundred thousand call that i mean it's it's exactly that thirty four a hundred percent return and it's fascinating and each i mean it's crazy um and and that's the year after the having year

which is this year. And I love it. And if you look at the 2020 halving year, Bitcoin hit 304% if you look at the return rate of that year. Can I quote you as saying you think it's going to $700,000 this year? No, you cannot. But when my research report is out and we have all of our data and facts inside of there, for all those that want to find this research report, go to blockrestitution.com research and publications. It's in there. And if it goes to $700K, I'll expect you to send me a nice little bottle of champagne on December 31st. We can drink it together. I'll make you a deal. If Bitcoin goes to $700,000 this year, which I do not expect it to do at all, but if that happens,

not only when will I come back and pull this up and I will tweet it out and say that you were right, but two is in New York, I'll get dinner with you once we're allowed to and we'll go laugh about it, because that is a wild thing. But data is data, right? And if that's what the average returns are, then your math makes sense. It's just a question of, does prior or previous history actually predict the future well? Exactly. And that's something, I took AP US history. What is something you learned? History repeats itself. So it's always good to study the past to try to understand and predict the future. I'll take you up on that. we'll see if it happens you know obviously everyone will be a happy man if it happens

it's me you and and the whole bitcoin band camp absolutely amazing all right so when you kind of look at this uh institutions when they come in what are they doing are they buying bitcoin or are they buying mining equipment is it like 80 20 one or the other what are you guys seeing right now so um what i'm seeing right now is some fascinating inflows um i i believe that um You have public participants like Square, like some of these hedge funds that are taking percentages of purchases and microstrategy that are buying Bitcoin, usually OTC and the hundreds of millions of them out. I wouldn't be surprised in Q1 of 2021 if we've had inflows of between $100 million to billion

dollar tranches that are private and public institutions that have made purchases. So I wouldn't be surprised if we see a lot of releases of information that show that this company purchased this amount and it'll show up on their asset books. They may have not reported it now. Then you take a look at these public mining companies and what they're doing. So really, I'd say it's skewed right now towards most of the money is flowing into purchases of Bitcoin. But what you're seeing with these public companies is their foundry being a part of Digital Currency Group, which everyone knows of Grayscale, they're capturing a ton of the accumulation that's taking place. And we have a whole nice chart and a research report that shows that. So that also documents that this is institutionally driven.

But if you look at what some of the public companies are doing and how they perform in the market, they're putting all their eggs into the Bitcoin mining basket. They're investing the hundreds of millions and billions of dollars into mining rigs and infrastructure with the expectation that these machines they buy will last three to five years. They're buying an asset that they're not going to spot trade or doesn't have liquidity. There certainly is a secondary market, but these companies aren't buying these machines to just capture an appreciation, flip them, and sell them. They're buying to mine them, hold the Bitcoin, and they're buying them because they're hyper bullish on Bitcoin going forward. So seeing really the emergence of these public companies like Mara, like Riot, who I'm a part of on the advisory board, like BitFarms, and a few other names, putting their eggs in this basket is fascinating. And I will not be surprised if there's a lot more public companies that will start doing the same. There's certainly others like HiveOS,

HUD-8, which actually Fidelity owns 11% of. So it's fascinating to see that. When you think about corporations and them coming into the market, we talked a lot about institutions, kind of the financial service companies. When the institutions come, or when the corporations come in,

are they putting Bitcoin on the balance sheet? Yeah, they're putting it on as treasury, right? You know, it's exactly what MicroStrategy does. It's shown on the balance sheet. Man, I love looking at MicroStrategy's balance sheet with what they've done and the timing they made their Bitcoin investment. And if you look at how much their stock's been appreciated, it's really interesting. But yes, Bitcoin's going in treasury.

It's on the balance sheet. They're capturing their quarterly revenue. There's certainly tax implications as to when they sell or how long they hold. So strategically, it makes sense for them to at least hold that for a year. These companies, I don't believe, they're not buying to just buy Bitcoin and sell at the tops. I think they're buying with a long-term vision that extends 5, 10, 20, maybe 100-year cycles. It's a counterbalance inflation. It is absolutely wild to watch corporations considering this, but I got to imagine a lot of boardrooms around the country, publicly traded and privately traded companies are all considering, should we go put 1% of our assets or 5% of our assets into Bitcoin? And then you've got people like Michael Saylor, who's, you know, was the 85, 90%, maybe 95% of his balance sheets in Bitcoin and seems to be working out pretty well for him. Oh, yeah. And I mean, he also purchased personally like 177,000 Bitcoin himself as a side trade.

I think I think what really will trigger like a massive run is when we start tapping into pension funds. And I've seen you write about this as well. Like imagine capturing like between one and five percent of pension funds. I mean, you're talking 1% to 5% of trillions of dollars. I mean, that would be the boom. A stat that you can look at, too, is, you know, and this is what everyone talks about. And everyone, you know, Peter Schiff's like a hilarious person to follow. And on the side, you know, he's like, he brings awareness to Bitcoin more so than his down talk does. And he has a whole cult following of people that troll every one of his posts.

But if Bitcoin doubles gold's market cap, Bitcoin value per coin will be a million dollars. So as we slowly take on and consume Bitcoin's gold market cap with Bitcoin as a digital gold narrative, you're just going to see that price appreciation. And, you know, it's already taking place. You know, there's websites that are just tracking by the minute, you know, Bitcoin's at this level. And there's those tweets go out, which I love to see. Foregone conclusion, in my opinion. I absolutely think that's what's going to happen here. But, hey, what do I know?

I'm just a guy on the internet who, uh, who happens to have a lot of conviction and basically risked his entire net worth on all of it. And it's right so far, but, uh, nobody's, nobody's keeping track of any of that. Uh, what's the thing that you're looking for from a milestone basis in 2021 that would surprise people? Like what's the thing that you're paying attention to that maybe other people aren't. Man, what a great question. Um, I'm really paying attention to, um, a number of things I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to, I'm really paying attention. And a retail is going to enter. And there's certain indicators that will show that. If you look at the amount of active addresses in the 2017 bull run, they appreciated by 60%. Right now, we're at

a 18% active address appreciation. So I'm looking for active addresses to hit that level. And that'll be like, for me, hey, here's an indicator that retails in. And with that, it could be an indicator that Bitcoin booms. I'm also looking at the number of whale wallets, as I call them. These are addresses that have over five Bitcoin. If you look historically, the number of whale wallets are at its top during accumulation phases, when we're on the up and run of a bull cycle. When you see the number of whale wallets decrease, that means that those participants are selling off to retail. And that leads to the active addresses increasing, right?

One leads to the other. So that's something that I'm looking at. And that can help you find the market top. The best traders in the world, and I've had some amazing mentors, like Michael Stoltzner, who heads up Blockroom Mining. He has 30 years in derivatives and runs a company called Futrex. In the 90s, he was the largest Euro-USD clearinghouse out of the Chicago Board of Trade and was the Chicago Board of Trade pit boss. So he's taught me a lot of grit and mentality and also Jim Ruppel, who's a hedge fund manager and trader.

But what they'll always tell you and they'll say is you're never going to hit the bottom perfectly. You're never going to hit the top perfectly. But follow indicators along the way and catch the wave. follow the trends, you know, don't go against the trends, look for indicators. And these are the type of indicators and things that I look at. I also look at, you know, something, you know, I'm a Bitcoin mining company as well, which we've, you know, we haven't talked too much about, but my research paper is, is not as Bitcoin mining focus as you may think from a company like Blocker Mining and Blockware Solutions, right? But one thing that I'm actually looking

at as well is hash rate. So something that we're, that we're seeing that other people may not be looking at is hash rate is typically a laggard during bull markets. Right now, and we have charts in the report that show this, but hash rate is lagging behind Bitcoin price. So during all these historical cycles, the hash rate, Bitcoin price outpaces difficulty. And for those that don't understand what difficulty is, difficulty is correlated to the total amount of hash on the market. And that's how difficult it is to mine a Bitcoin. So during bull cycles, as I anticipate miners to do very well because price typically outpaces difficulty. Right now, hash rate's lagging. So that shows me that we're in the early stages of this bull market. And I'm

hyper-focused on that. There hasn't been a major significant jump that would make me think that we're there yet. So is it fair to say 40,000 in 2021 is just the start? it's just a start and that's the title of the paper and and and i will stand by that we're just at the beginning man what a frenzy it was i'm sure your your mailbox blew up um from december like 15th to like early january i mean i i'm still behind and like email is just like you are catching up from you know this this market frenzy that took place which is fascinating and i love it you know, the net capital inflows coming in institutions. And that causes, you know, a parabolic rise in Bitcoin price. It's absolutely incredible. Before I let you go,

I got three questions. And then you get to ask me one question. The first question is, what's the most important book you've ever read? Oh, my God, that is a great question. And this is kind of a corny answer. But the Lord of the Rings trilogy, like reading that, you know, in my early ages, um, I, I think like the, what you can learn from a book like that from a master writer is, is a lot about morality, um, integrity, um, general philosophy and, and, and just an amazing storyline that I really just resonated with. Um, and it, you know, it's a fascinating, you know, series of books. I love it. Uh, second question is, uh, from a sponsor, uh, eight sleep. They basically do a thermoregulation for, uh, for mattresses. Uh, it's by far the most

comfortable mattress. And also basically, uh, now I'm rested all the time because I sleep on this thing. Uh, what is your sleep schedule? Like what do you like these four hours or 10 hours? How are you from as a sleeper? And it's funny enough, I follow your Twitter. I am a minimum eight hour sleeper and, and seriously to be a high performer and to, and to, to have your hands in so many assets and to be able to get there, I'm usually between the eight and 10 hours. And that, you know, I try to go to bed early and I try to get up early, um, try to exercise. Um, I, I like, I like that. I like what, what's going on with that company and it totally resonates with me. Early to bed, early to rise, leaves a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. That's what my dad used to say

to me. I love it. Yeah. It looks like some sort of family's background. It's your dad is a fascinating guy absolutely uh last question is a little bit more fun aliens are you a believer or non-believer a total believer and i was laughing like during the last uh during the last covid bill that was released like the like the the uh request that all like alien information is released i forgot the time when um i definitely believe her the universe is way too large of a place um you know every like literally by the month there's like more information that proves that you know there is life um the problem is when you're looking you know deep into the galaxy you're looking at years past so it's like if we look into it and find something we're looking at

like a something that was from a year like millions of years past it's like is it there now like what's going on what about yourself uh definitely believer i don't know i don't know if little green men have come to earth but uh but but for sure there's something out there it's just too big yeah i agree um all right so you can ask me one question what you got for me What are your thoughts on Bitcoin mining? I know Pomp, and Pomp is a Bitcoin evangelist. In general, what are your thoughts on Bitcoin mining? And my second and transitional thought, since you're calling me out for my forecast, where do you potentially see Bitcoin hitting? uh i still just stick with the same price prediction that i've had i think since like 2019 was 100k in 2021 uh you know that seems pretty reasonable to me at the time it wasn't so reasonable people thought i was a little crazy they're like how the hell could that ever happen

well you know we're on track we'll see what happens uh but the price stuff is like less exciting to me uh when it comes to whether it's bitcoin mining um or actually using you know the protocol or things of lightning network uh i just think that we're going through a paradigm shift right and it's less about like me trying to convince people anymore it's just like hey if you can't see what's happening then like you're just not looking like you're intentionally trying not to pay attention at this point um and so yes there's institutional adoption happening corporations are going to do this eventually central banks will uh when it comes to mining it's like anyone in the world with electricity can start to earn that's a pretty powerful thing

um and so i think that's pretty cool uh but same thing is true about now anyone with internet connection has a payment network and anyone can exchange value anywhere in the world with anybody else without any permission. Like that stuff is really, really impactful on a global basis. And I think a lot of people just discount it because they frankly don't understand it. So, uh, I got into, uh, Bitcoin and crypto with mining, actually. Um, it was with a GPUs and, uh, an ether. Uh, I didn't really know what the difference was. All I knew was I just plug a machine in and then like there's cashflow and like, this is basically a data center on steroids. So this is pretty cool. and uh and then as you kind of go down the rabbit hole you're like wait a minute this bitcoin thing

is like literally you know once in a lifetime uh type opportunity and disruption so i just naturally gravitate towards it oh that's all i didn't know that's what led you into uh the whole crypto space as well mining led me into crypto and yeah same thing for me i like in my friend's basement we had a bunch of gpu mining or i just plugged in we were mining ethereum like in 2016 and it's cool to hear that you're a part of that one and yeah i think bitcoin mining you know you know, is, is, is fundamental to the success of the network, right? Like you'd have to turn off the entire world's power to shut down Bitcoin and that would shut off all the nodes. I mean, that's, that's a fascinating output of that. Absolutely. Uh, where can we send people to

read more of the report, uh, and to find more about both, uh, both companies you have Blockware Solutions, uh, and mining? Yeah. So, uh, blockwaresolutions.com, um, has all information about us, go to the research and publication section. Front and center and top left, you'll see our new report that we just released, 2021 Bitcoin Market Outlook. $40,000 is only the beginning. You can see our historical research there as well. Blockware Mining, reach out to us from the website if you want more information there. That's an investment vehicle we take on institutional and accredited investors. It did really well. It launched in December 2019. um you know we caught the early cycle we're rapidly expanding um and you know really excited

about what blocker mining's potential you know with our goal of taking that public um you know we're already competitive at pentahash levels and public mining companies so i'm really excited about blocker mining and and uh shout out once again to mike stolzner and all his work there absolutely all right my friend thank you so much for doing this we have to do it again when you guys write your next report all right thanks bob take care and uh take care everyone look forward to hearing from many of you after this is released.