The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Mining Explained | Peter Wall, CEO of Argo Blockchain

Episode Date: April 1, 2021

Mining is a vital part of the Bitcoin ecosystem but is often mischaracterized and misunderstood by even seasoned crypto investors. Mining expert and Argo Blockchain CEO Peter Wall came on the show to break down all things mining. In this episode, Wall dispels the many myths surrounding the industry, revealing how the process actually works and giving a look behind the scenes. As the first mining expert on the show, this is an extremely illuminating conversation on this often reclusive sector.   In this episode, Melker and Wall discuss a range of topics including:   Mining myths Renewable vs non-renewable mining A shortage of Bitcoin mining rigs Mining all the Bitcoin Miner capitulation A good crypto citizen Adjusting for difficulty and halvings Managing massive facilities Hydroelectric mining A premium on virgin Bitcoin The forgotten metric of mining ---- NEXO Try Nexo’s full-suite, instant crypto banking service, featuring: Savings accounts with up to 12% interest on crypto, stablecoins & fiat Flexible crypto-backed credit lines at just 5.9% APR An exchange with 75+ crypto and fiat pairs and best-price guarantee All this and more wrapped up in a single Nexo Wallet. Start banking at nexo.io Or download the app on Google Play or the App Store.   ---- Legacy of Dead  This episode was brought to you by Bitcasino. The worlds leading Bitcoin-led online casino and crypto-centric gaming destination. Wager your way into a world of opportunity, with the ultimate Fun, Fast and Fair crypto-casino experience.  Deposit, wager, and withdraw in real-time with a host of top cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), LiteCoin (LTC), Tether (USDT), TRON (TRX), Ripple (XRP), and more!  Use the promo link Bitcasino.io/Scott, to unlock your 200 FREE SPINS in the Legacy of Dead Promotion. ---- MAKERSPLACE MakersPlace is the go-to premium marketplace for purchasing rare digital artworks from the world’s top creators (Ie. José Delbo, Trevor Jones, Pak, SSX3LAU, Shu Lea Cheang). New artworks are dropped twice a week, where they typically sell out within seconds of release and have been reselling several months later, upwards of 10x. Subscribe for exclusive drop notifications at https://makersplace.com/thewolf ---- Join the Wolf Den newsletter: ►►https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen/members ---- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworks.co

What's up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of All Streets podcast. Bitcoin's meteoric rise in price has caught the attention of the world, but behind this emerging asset, miners are working 24-7 to secure the network and earn profit. Investors have recognized this, and in their search for new opportunities, are quickly realizing that their indirect exposure to Bitcoin offers a chance to diversify risk, gain exposure to the asset, and fund the infrastructure that secures the network. Today's guest, Peter Wall, is an expert in everything related to mining. As he's the CEO of Argo Blockchain, a global publicly traded mining company, I hope to learn more about how the process works, why mining companies have suddenly become

popular, and what it takes to successfully run a mining operation. I also hope to clarify some of the rumors and likely misconceptions surrounding Bitcoin mining. Peter Wall, thank you so much for coming on the show. Hey, Scott. Great to be here. Awesome. Now, once again, before we get into the questions, you're listening to the Wolf of Wall Street's podcast, where two times every single week, I talk to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, trading, art, music, sports, and politics. This podcast is powered by BlockWorks, the fastest growing media company in the digital asset space. I can't recommend them enough. Check them out at blockworks.co for access to the highest quality information in the entire space.

And if you like the podcast, you follow me on Twitter, check out my website, thewolfofallstreets.io. You can see everything else I've got going on over there. Now to get into this episode. So miners are vital to the network, yet people get so mad when they learn that miners are selling their Bitcoin to cover their expenses in order to keep mining. Is this frustrating for you? Is that actually what's happening? Could you talk about that a bit more? It's a good point. It was really, it was kind of a 2020 problem this year. So many miners, we've done two fundraisers, miners seem to be really in a good place with capital right now. So for the most part, and I can't speak for all of the different miners out there, but a lot of miners are just hodling because it's a really good time to hodl right now. Bitcoin continues

to appreciate. We haven't sold a Bitcoin yet in 2021. We sold a lot in 2020 because we needed to cover expenses. Margins were tighter. We didn't have as much cash. But yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the big thing about mining these days, and I'm sure you can talk more about it, is like energy. You know, what kind of energy source are you using? And that seems to be the thing that's kind of the most controversial with the space right now.

Well, let's dive right into that then, because that definitely is an inevitable piece of any conversation about mining, as you said. And as I sort of alluded to in the introduction, maybe there's some misconceptions and poor information around what is actually happening there. So can you talk about, I guess, generally about the energy consumption of mining, whether that is actually environmentally damaging and what could be done about it? Yeah. So, I mean, from the start, when I started in this and kind of putting this whole thing together in early 2018, running the Argo operations team, I took over CEO in January of last year. The two things I realized that the two things that we need as miners are access to power, cheap and renewable, as cheap as we can get and as renewable as we can get, and then access to machines. We need a steady supply of good quality machines. So obviously on the power side, crypto mining uses an enormous amount

of power. Bitcoin uses an enormous amount of power because these machines are doing really hard work. They're out there, like you said, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, processing these massive complex mathematical puzzles. And for that, they use a lot of power. The question is, where's that power coming from? What's the source of that power? And how renewable is that power? And we were fortunate at Argo that when we first set up our operations, we got started in Quebec, which is not far. I'm in Ottawa today, so it's not far from here, just across the river. And the majority of power in Quebec comes from renewable sources, you know, 99.5% is, and that's all hydropower. So that's, that's a real advantage for, for us. And because we've, from the start, really focused on using renewables, but not everyone's been so lucky. You know, there's lots of, you know, miners, for instance, in China, historically, that might have been using coal power. There's some miners in North America that have been using coal power.

And, you know, so I guess what I'm trying to say is, on the one hand, there is renewables that are being used in this space. There's an opportunity for innovation. There's an opportunity for leadership with green power. And on the other hand, there are legacy power sources like coal, like natural gas that are still being used. And our feeling is as a company, the more we can move to renewables, the better. The better it is for the reputation of Bitcoin and the better it is for the planet. But I mean, are the equivalencies that people make about the destruction that Bitcoin mining is doing? Are they accurate? I mean, you'll see these things.

This is not a specific one, but. Yeah. One Bitcoin miner uses more power than New York City in 37 years, right? I mean, and it's like these endless hot takes. Argentina, Chile, they say, yeah, it's every week. It seems like it's a different country that Bitcoin uses this amount of power of.

I mean, I think it is true that Bitcoin mining uses a lot of energy. I don't think anyone's debating that. The question is, I guess there's two questions. One is, do we actually have a visibility into what the power sources are right now for Bitcoin mining? And I don't think we do. I mean, there's, you know, there's studies that have come out that said that have said it's 60 percent renewable or 60 percent not renewable. It's just hard because there's so many private miners right now in parts of the world that are using various power sources. It's hard to know, you know, what exact power they're using.

Well, what I can say is this. In the long term, we know that the cost of renewable power is going to be cheaper. It's going to be the cheapest type of power. Already you're seeing that in North America now. Using wind and using solar is cheaper than using to generate power, is cheaper than using coal. That's just a fact. So coal is getting priced out of the market, and that's a good thing. And the more that we as Bitcoin miners can push renewables

and use renewables, then the better it's going to be for everyone across the entire space. It's interesting because I think the conception is that China sort of doesn't care, right? And they're going to do what they're going to do. But recently we saw, now I can't remember if it's upper or lower Mongolia, that's part of China, but whichever one is a very heavy region for mining. And they actually shut down all operations that were existing operations and said, hey, we're not approving anymore because of the environmental impact. So we are even seeing China, who I guess was considered one of the worst actors, at least

publicly, cracking down on this from an energy perspective. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think it was Inner Mongolia, which I think it's like a region in China. But yeah, the Chinese government basically said, okay, no more mining in inner Mongolia, too much coal use, we're going to shut it down. I mean, the Chinese are not stupid. They know that, you know, we need to keep the air clean. They're investing in hydropower. They're investing in clean technology. There's no doubt that they're focused on clean energy. And I think there's going to be a ton of innovation coming out of China around clean energy.

And also, the other thing to remember is that the biggest time for miners, the hash power always spikes in the summer. And why does it spike in the summer? Because there's so much hydropower that comes online that's basically free like very very cheap below one cents at one cent primarily in the sichuan sechuan region of china and so that's why the hash power already goes always goes up in the summer and then comes down a little bit you know in october november so um it's there are these these cycles that are connected to you know the rainy season in china China. That's always been the case with Bitcoin mining.

So it's not true that all mining in China is taking place with coal. In fact, there's probably less with coal than there is with hydro. But besides the point, that's kind of besides the point. The point is there's more hash power coming to North America. That's good. We're part of that. We also just last week, Scott, we launched the world's first clean energy Bitcoin mining pool. So I don't know how many of your listeners or viewers are familiar with mining pools, but essentially as a miner, you can't really

compete for Bitcoin on your own. You need to pool your hash power together with other miners in order to really have an opportunity to get rewards in an efficient way. And most of those mining pools traditionally have been located in China. There's more that are being located in North America. And so they've been kind of more regionally based or more philosophically based. None of them previously to Friday when we announced this new pool with DMG had been focused on what energy sources they were coming from. So we saw an opportunity to have a clean energy pool. All of the miners taking part in this pool will be from, will be using renewable sources. And we think that's, it's kind of the way it's going to, you know, the way

things should be moving. It's an opportunity to actually give institutions or whoever actual green virgin Bitcoin that they know the providence of, they know that was not mined, producing carbon. So yeah, so we think that's a big step. Now, with all of you pooling, can that sort of be a self-fulfilling prophecy and perpetuate more of the network, more of the hash power coming to renewables, and that can continue and sort of snowball and bring more people into the fold for that? I think so. I mean, I think if there's a premium on green Bitcoin, if there's a premium on Bitcoin, and I think there will be because there's lots of institutions that have ESG mandates where they're not allowed to invest in certain technologies

or certain companies unless it's clear, unless the ESG credentials of those companies or projects are very clear. So I think that just like we saw Grayscale had a premium for a long period of time with their fund. I think we could see the same thing in kind of the green Bitcoin world, at least for a period of time until the rest of the space catches up and moves 100% to renewables. So I think it's an opportunity to push innovation in the space. So at the most basic level, Bitcoin does have an energy problem,

but it's being addressed. And you guys are one of the ones that are leading the charge to address it. Yeah, I mean, I listen to that guy, Scott Galloway, a lot. And what does he always say? He always says, a crisis is a terrible opportunity to waste. To waste. Yeah, so I think we need to look at the Bitcoin energy's problem as an opportunity to innovate and to be thought leaders.

That makes total sense. So I'm curious more specifically about your operation. As I said to you before we recorded, in my 100 plus episodes, for some reason, I've never had a miner. And I think that there's so many questions people have, and it's sort of this like shadow thing and nobody understands what's actually happening. What are your facilities look like? How, you know, how does this work?

Yeah, well, we've got some videos on our site. We just were actually shooting last week as well. So we've got more, more videos coming out. But yeah, essentially a Bitcoin mining facility is kind of like a scaled down data center that you might have for a Google or an Amazon. It's, it's a large building, you know, connected somewhere to, to a source of power. And instead of, you know, rows and rows of servers, you have rows and rows of miners. I actually brought a miner with me here. I have one of my office. This is what a miner looks like. So this is an essentially a mining facility is rows and rows of those kinds of machines. Now they're a little bit bigger and the form factor is not

universal. So they're always kind of tweaking them and changing them. Not like a traditional, yeah, not like a traditional server room. And you've got a hot aisle and you've got a cold aisle and you're bringing in cool air and blowing out hot air. And you need a whole bunch of, you know, power. You're going from high voltage to medium voltage to low voltage, voltage, and then you're getting that power into the, into the machines. And then they're connected to a network. And they're out there competing, you know, on the network to solve blocks. And how many of those can you have in

a single facility? So we, it's funny when we first started, you know, we built a small prototype facility. It was like half a megawatt. It wasn't very big. We thought it was a good start. And then we moved to a five megawatt facility and then we moved to a 20 megawatt facility. And now in Texas, we're building a 200 megawatt facility. So the scale is really kind of going, you know, quickly. In our 20 megawatt facility or 15 megawatt facility in Northern Quebec, we have about 15,000 miners in there.

So, you know, it's, yeah, just rows and rows and rows of machines. So I can't buy one of those and compete, right? I mean, you could. In fact, I had a friend of a friend, a friend's son called me the other day. He's like, hey, Peter, I hear you're mining. I want to get into mining. How do I do it? And I was like, you know, Ben, I think you might have missed the boat on this one. You're like about three or four years late because the hobby miner now to run a machine in your basement or whatever, somewhere in your house, I mean, your cost of power is going to be probably, you know,

between 10 to 15 to 20 cents, depending where you are. Just residential power costs are high. And then your ability to get machines at a decent price is very low because machines now, especially with the price of Bitcoin going up, they've skyrocketed. And so you're paying like a hundred dollars a terahash for a machine, which, you know, a miner like us would have paid in the 20 to $50 per terahash depending on when we, when we bought it. So it's not really viable anymore for kind of the average person to set up a mine in their house. Good form of extra heat though, if it's cold, I would imagine. It is. I mean, yeah. In fact, our CTO initially, you know, we live in Canada here, it's cold.

He initially, before I met him, right before we hired him, he had a mine set up in his basement, which was heating his entire house, a GPU mine. And there was hot air blowing into his furnace and then, you know, being circulated through the, through the vents. But, and that's the one type of mining that's, that's some people are still doing at home and that's kind of, you know, the GPU mine and, and there's still a kind of a grassroots movement to

keep that around, which is, which is great. That's cool. And I know you guys don't only mine Bitcoin, correct? What else do you mine? We mine Zcash as well. We've been doing that for a long time. And prior to that, we mined other coins. And we like kind of the balancing of having not all of our eggs in one basket and having kind of a bit of a risk. Now, these days, we're pretty heavy into Bitcoin, but that's not to say at some point we might not move to other points. We do like kind of looking at all opportunities in the mining space. So I'm actually curious. It was something that was sort of postulated and everybody waxed poetic on last year. And we hear every time price drops, miner capitulation, right? There's certain floor

perhaps where miners all of a sudden need to sell. And we touched on that earlier. Is that something that actually happens when price decreases quickly? I mean, we know that it's obviously blue skies when everything's going up, but what happens when we see a very fast decrease in price? Yeah. I mean, I was CEO when it happened last year, right? When that Bitcoin dropped from $10,000 to $5,000. And then you look at your Bitcoin hold and all of a sudden you've lost. We look at Bitcoin as cash, like in a way, you know, it's an asset and it's very liquid and we can trade it right away. So when Bitcoin fell from $10,000 to $5,000, you know, you need to protect to be able to cover your operating costs.

So at that point, we did sell a little bit of Bitcoin just to make sure we had enough cash reserve. In terms of capitulation, I think we've been so far away from that because our margins have always been like we've never minded a loss. Our margins have always been good. And we've always been smart about not getting us and getting ourselves into a position where things would be so drastic that we would have to start turning off machines or start selling machines or whatever it is, or sell all of our Bitcoin. But I think the crypto winter of 2018, 2019, for those of us that were miners that went through it, it was a really good learning experience.

It really taught us how to like run a mining company during lean times when your focus has to be on your margin, your focus has to be on your ROI. So now when you're in a time like this, when it's like a bull run, you don't get too like excited. I mean, it's amazing. You know, we're doing great. But you can't get too excited. You have to be smart. You have to like, look at, we know that mind difficulty is going to come up, like increase, you know, and if you want, I can talk a little bit about mind difficulty, because it's kind of the forgotten metric, I think in, in, in, I think, in the space, or at least for people who don't know the space. So if you look at kind of the key metrics for mining, obviously your cost of power, super important. It's going to be your number one

expense by a kajillion. So how much are you paying for power? Number two, how much are you paying for machines? What does it cost you to get into the game? You know, a machine like this, the S9 during the bull run of 2017, 2018 was selling for like $3,000, $4,000. It was initially marketed for like a thousand bucks. So when bull runs go crazy, machines increase by three or four times. Like the price of machines is correlated to Bitcoin. And then the two metrics, obviously the two other metrics, one of them is super obvious, the price of Bitcoin. It's your asset, your mining, it's your gold. So when it goes up in your mining, you do better. And then the last one is kind of the forgotten one is Bitcoin difficulty. So Bitcoin difficulty is the total

measure of how much hash power there is on the network. And it adjusts every two weeks. So if there's a lot of hash power on the network, it goes up and it gets harder to mine. And then if there's, you know, at the end of the rainy season in China, when some hash power comes off the network because people are moving rigs, it goes down. But for the most part, over time, it goes up. And what's been really, because just more machines are coming out. There's more tech coming out. There's more people buying machines. It continues to go up. And what's been really, because just more machines are coming out, there's more tech coming out, there's more people buying machines, it continues to go up. So it's climbing like this.

The question really for us and then the metric that we look at is what's the ratio between the increase in Bitcoin, the increase in the price of Bitcoin, and the increase in difficulty. And the reason why our margins, we put out a monthly operational update. We put our last one out in February. Our margins at the end in February were in the 80s, like, which is crazy, right? I mean, that's a very, very profitable business. And in January, they were in the high 70s. So the reason why our margins are so strong is that right now, difficulty has been pretty much flat over the last three months.

It hasn't increased with the price of Bitcoin. And so you would think, OK, well, what's going on? Why is difficulty not coming up? Mining is so profitable. And the answer is it's really hard to get machines right now. Machines are, you know, there's not that many being produced. There's a global chip shortage. Most of the machines, you know, that are going to be installed in 2020, 2021 are already spoken for.

So, you know, there's a difficulty adjustment happening in two days. It'll probably go up 5%. But compared to what Bitcoin has done over the last three months, even a 5% increase in difficulty is not that scary, right? Yeah. So that's the key metric. You know, if you say to me, okay, Peter, what's your number, what are your numbers going to look like in six months? Where are they going to look like in 12 months? Well, what has difficulty done? Okay. And what has Bitcoin done and how closely are, have they moved together?

If they've moved kind of in lockstep or closely, then our margins will stay the same. If you know, Bitcoin difficulty outpaces the increase in, in, in the price of Bitcoin, margins will stay the same. If, you know, Bitcoin difficulty outpaces the increase in the price of Bitcoin, margins will reduce. So that's really a key metric that we look at, we think about a lot, where is it going? What's, you know, what's going to happen? How are you able to predict potential changes in difficulty over time? Like, what does modeling that look like? Yeah, so you look at, you know, what's the production of miners coming out of China? How many are expected to come out? Who. So you look at, you know, what's the production of miners coming

out of China? How many are expected to come out? Who's bought them? Like publicly, you know, traded companies always like to kind of like put their flag up and say, hey, we bought X amount of machines. So that's one thing you look at. Then you just look at kind of, okay, what's the overall global chip supply looking like over the next 12 months? What percentage of that is expected to go to crypto? Okay, how can we correlate that to the rise in difficulty? So difficulty, we think, is going to go up. Margins are going to probably come down because it's been so amazing. And there are new machines coming online.

But those are the kind of things that we look at. It's so funny. It's similar to thinking about Bitcoin itself. You know, as a trader and an investor and the things that I think about, obviously, you know, supply side shock, right? You're talking about there not being new machines. We talk about there not being enough Bitcoin for all the buyers that want it. And we see the outflows from exchanges and all these things. It seems to it's very interesting to me that the two markets track each other so much. And

you talk about obviously a coming mean reversion, which is somewhat inevitable. Yeah. And there's like, you know, there's also some of those same instruments that are built around Bitcoin derivatives and futures. And there's some of that that's now being built around difficulty and being built around hash break. So miners can kind of hedge your risk and, you know, you're like, OK, well, we can lock in our margin at X amount for this amount of time. So that's kind of something that, you know, a of the most exciting use cases of crypto now is to earn yield and also to take low interest loans, especially since you earn next to nothing in your crappy legacy bank account. Nexo is leading the charge in this arena with 360 degree crypto banking services. One thing that I'm really excited about that's new is that they have the Nexo Exchange. It's a real game changer with more than 75 crypto and fiat pairs to swap between instantly without leaving the Nexo Wallet app and with prices fixed at order submission. Their smart

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obviously, Bitcoin followers know everything about it, but not only about what the halving is and why, because I think that most people know that, but how it's viewed by miners, because obviously, you know, theoretically makes your job a lot more difficult. Yeah, I mean, look, the key thing for hal having is planning, right? You know, you know, it's coming. We've got another one coming in, you know, three years, just a bit more than three years now. We went through the last one. I mean, the thing about the last having, which was in May of 2020, and it was when Bitcoin went from 12 and a half, you know, to 6.25. So all of a sudden, your revenue is literally cut in half overnight.

And you better make sure that you have efficient machines going into that and that you're in the top tier of efficiency in the world, because the point of the having is that it makes, you know, it kicks out the inefficient. It kicks out people who are no longer able to, and it makes Bitcoin more scarce. But on the mining side, it takes out old technology and it takes out inefficient miners.

So what happened with the last one was it was a double whammy because we had that kind of COVID effect coming into it. So there were so many signals that were happening at the same time, it was hard to get a pure read, like, is this happening because of, you know, the COVID recession? Is this happening because of the increase in the money supply? Is this happening because of the having, what's going on? And it wasn't really until like the fall, you know, September that we were kind of clear of it. And because the summer was, you know, margins were tight and things were settling down. And then, you know, Michael Saylor and the rise of institutions in September, that was like really kind of kicked off this cycle. Right. And I think a lot of that

was driven by coming out of the having, like coming out of the having in a good place. Mine was still profitable, wasn't amazing, but it was good enough. And then we just moved into this amazing cycle. So the having somewhat separates the haves from the have-nots in mining, it sounds like. Because if you've been just squeaking by with an old machine or older technology and maybe didn't have the funds to upgrade or something, you're going to get rinsed. You're done. Yeah, you're done. Those machines come offline. And I think post having, there were certainly people that we were talking into the space that had made plans and executed on those plans to take a lot of old machines offline because they were no longer profitable. Ironically, some of those machines would still be profitable today, given what's happened

over the last six months with the rise in the price of Bitcoin. And there are some people that shut their machines off and then turn them back on in December when Bitcoin kind of started running. So it's never quite as simple as you think. It's never like, oh, the halving is going to happen. You know, all the inefficient guys are out. Difficulty is going to drop for a period of time when they come offline because the overall hash power is going to go down and then it's going to steadily increase.

It's, I mean, you know what the space is like. It's never, you think it's going to happen one way and it never totally happens that way. There's always kind of a myriad of factors that are kind of pushing and pulling on everything. I have a question I've always wanted to ask a miner that people pose to me and I never have a good answer for. What happens when all the Bitcoin is mined? The big question at the end of the day, because there comes a time when you can't have it. I mean, I know that they say you can always step halfway to a wall no matter how close you are,

but eventually they're going to get a mind at all, right? So what happens then? Who secures the network? How does Bitcoin continue? I have two answers. One is you're not going to like, which is, you know, in crypto years, it's like, as you know, like one year in crypto years is like 20 years in the real life. It's like dog years times five.

Yeah. So 20 years from now or 30 years from now is so far away. It's even hard to conceive of ever getting there. And I think there's lots of water that we'll have to pass under the bridge before we get there. But I think the answer that most miners would say is what we've seen is in times of great Bitcoin excitement, when there's lots of people and lots of transactions on the network, the amount of revenue that a miner can generate from transaction fees is pretty significant. It can turn into 10% or 15% of your overall revenue. think that the theory is, is that, you know, 30 years from now, when all of Bitcoin is mined out, that mining will still be efficient or still be profitable, because it'll be the revenue from

those transaction fees that allows the network to continue to run. I would imagine that that would significantly reduce the amount of miners doing that, though, right? I mean, I mean, it's so hard to say just because it's again, so far away and we don't like, there's so much innovation just in the tech that's gonna happen between now and then in terms of, like if you look at this machine here, this S9, which runs whatever, 12, 13, 14 terahash

and used 1600 watts of power, the new S19, which is a couple generations later, is using, you know, double the power, but but they're double the power, but it's like 10 times more terahash. It's like 100 terahash. So I think it's hard to, it's hard to say exactly where the technology is going to be, it's gonna be so much much more efficient that, you know, it's just hard to predict. Yeah, it's impossible. Yeah, that makes total sense. I mean, like you said, 30 years in crypto is like Jesus to George Washington, right?

I mean, it's a completely, it'll be a completely different world. And there'll probably be a whole lot of innovation in between that will make any conjecture about what will happen now somewhat moot. 100%. Yeah, that makes total sense. any conjecture about what will happen now somewhat moot. A hundred percent. Yeah, that makes total sense. So, you know, with what's happening now, this insane bull run, like I said, supply side shock, more institutions,

what's your feeling on how far we can push this on this cycle? And I'm not necessarily talking about price, but even like a timeline before we see another winter or even a major correction or any of those things. I, in general, I leave like the price, the Bitcoin price predicting to other people, like what I care about is, is our, you know, that, that ratio, that Bitcoin to, to, to difficulty ratio, uh, because I, you know, we want to be profitable as a miner. That being said, I still think this whole, and this whole thing, it's early days. I mean, it is like, you go out

and talk on the street to like the average Joe, you talk to my, you talk to the average investment banker. They're like, you talk to, you know, JP Morgan, like they're just getting interested in this. They're still, oh, it's like early, they're dipping their toes. And when we start seeing like, you know, large institutions turning towards this, when we see the average person, the average gold bug kind of turn towards this, I think we still have a long way to run. In terms of the cycle, I mean, who knows? I think the cycle is markedly different

than other cycles. There's a lot of maturation that's happened between the last one and this one. I think it'll continue to run for a while, whether that's 12 months or 24 months, I'm not sure. But no, I'm excited. And look, I'm not just excited on the Bitcoin front or the money front. I'm also really excited about DeFi. I'm excited about NFTs. I'm excited about all of the other kind of exchange of value pieces that are coming into this space. The whole point of crypto is to get rid of these trusted intermediaries that we've been

giving. I mean, I don't want to, because we have relationships with banks, but I don't like banks. Like, like, do you like dealing with your bank? No, I tried to send money to someone the other day, just on a personal basis through my bank. And it was so challenging. And then I, then the guy was like, Oh, actually it was a guy in Cuba. Right. And like, have you ever tried to send money to Cuba? It's like very challenging. They make it almost impossible. And then he was like, oh, actually, it was a guy in Cuba. Right. And like, have you ever tried to send money to Cuba? It's very challenging. They make it almost impossible.

And then he's like, actually, there's a crypto exchange now that's open to my town. Can I go? And he was there. And like 30 minutes later, he had the money because I sent it through, you know, stable coin like that kind of innovation and that kind of like ability to disrupt these trusted intermediaries who have been taking their pounds of flesh for generations to get them out of the way, I think is really exciting. I just can't tell you how excited I am about that. Okay. So I agree with everything you just said 100%, but it makes me laugh because I sent a tweet not two days ago that said Bitcoiners and I said

shitcoiners, which offended, I guess, a few people, but I said it rhymed better. Bitcoiners and shitcoiners, something to this effect. It's time to get along. We're all on the same team. We all want the same thing. This triggered an explosion of Bitcoin maximalist anger, the likes of which I have never seen. So first, I was just trying to send a conciliatory tweet, right? Saying, hey, guys, like, you know, and my point of that tweet, when I said we're all on the same team is exactly what you said. Right? We're all against the banks, we all want to an option to opt out, we all want those, you know, 70 80% of the world that's unbanked or underbanked to have options. That was not how it was read, right?

That's too bad. That's too bad. And I, you know, in terms of how, like, I see us as a company fitting into that, because people look at us as like, oh, you guys are a crypto miner. Like you guys, that's what you do. You're mining Bitcoin, right?

And yeah, that's majority, like 99% of our revenue comes from mining Bitcoin and or whatever from mining coins. And that's great. But we want to be, we want to be like a trusted infrastructure provider that generates yield for our shareholders across all of the blockchain technologies, not just, you know, the proof of work technologies, but in terms of like long-term thinking, we want to engage in that proof of stake world in the DeFi world.

We want to, we've just made an investment into a startup out of the UK that's basically like a DeFi incubator. They're investing in very grassroots kind of micro investments in these new, you know, projects. One of them is a founder of Yop, which is a, you know, platform that's doing really well. I think that whole kind of other side of the equation, and it doesn't maybe have to be that binary, but sometimes it feels like it is, right? It's like proof of work, Bitcoin, mining, store of value, and then everything else. Everything else is really interesting and is worth our attention. And as a publicly traded company, we want exposure to that. We want to dabble in that. We want to be a good crypto citizen in that world

and kind of try to marry these two worlds as much as we can. I mean, I couldn't agree more. Like I said, Bitcoin is the most amazing innovation in the history of money, store of value, call it whatever you want. But that doesn't mean it can be everything. It can't replace everything in the whole world i wish it could i i wish it could but like you said i mean there's just so much more that can be done that that bitcoin unfortunately can't do it'll still always be the most secure it'll always be the grand granddaddy and i think it'll always be the most valuable but agree agree on all fronts i i mean i listened to an interview with raul paul recently and he was talking you know, kind of this exchange of value idea, right? Where, you know, the internet of value, where it's like, you know, the internet, internet one, internet 2.0, and now the internet of value.

And I came away from that thinking, man, Ethereum, like, wow, like, make sure you got some exposure to Ethereum. Because that, you know, that is is it's, and it's obvious. I mean, and people have been, you know, and I have Ethereum and Argo, you know, has played in the Ethereum space for a while, but it's, there's, there's lots going on that, that are above and beyond Bitcoin that we need to pay attention to. Yeah, I, I, I absolutely agree. So I touched on it earlier. There's a lot of people certainly we've seen, you know, institutions coming into the space, as you said. And there's a lot of people who don't want to buy Bitcoin, but have viewed mining stocks or buying micro strategy stock or any of these as sort of proxy investments in Bitcoin. What do you make of that? I think it's a good thing. I think the junior gold mining

company analogy to your gold, do you want to hold the asset or do you want to hold the picks and shovels? I think it's a good analogy and I think it holds true in this case. And certainly over the last 12 months, our stock has outperformed Bitcoin and obviously Bitcoin's done really well. So we've done well. And that's, that's been great for our shareholders. And what I am excited about too, Scott, and, and is that, you know, our shareholders, like we, we, we went public in, in 2018, we had a lot of institute UK institutions. We were, we're trading on the line of stock exchange. We had a lot of kind of hedge funds and that was kind of folks invest. And that was great. And then, you know, a lot of them lost faith because they didn't they didn't believe in Bitcoin. They didn't believe in crypto. They were kind of in it because they were, you know, someone told them that was going to go to the moon. It

didn't go to the moon right away. So they, you know, they kind of slowly some of them held on, some of them sold off their position. But we had this group of shareholders that over the last two years, you know, built their position. They were like, these guys, these guys are doing something interesting. They're crypto miners. And they basically took the same thing, which you just said, which is they're like, okay, this is this, these guys are a proxy to Bitcoin. They're undervalued compared to other folks. And many of them now have done so well. I get emails at least a couple of times a week, thanks so much for helping us become, having exposure to the space. Some of them have retired from their jobs. They become rich.

And they're like, they're just ordinary people that have, and I think that's the other thing that's exciting about crypto is that it gives ordinary people an opportunity, you know, to participate in this part of the economy that a lot of people, a lot of kind of elites, for lack of a better term, have been kind of just making money hand over fist for the last 50, 100 years or however long you want to go back. So that's exciting. And I think that's going to continue with the tokenization of things, you know, as things get broken apart into smaller bits and you can own something in a small way. I think that's cool. And I think that's how I think of, you know, our company. Yeah. And also, I mean, it's not lost on me or anyone else that until now, but still now, it's really daunting to buy and hold Bitcoin. I mean, for your average person, holding a stock is very comfortable. Opening your ledger and understanding private keys or going down the multi-sig rabbit hole or even just leaving it on an exchange and waking up each morning to check if you've been hacked is a pretty stressful, you know, it's pretty stressful thing. Yeah. And, and I think that, yeah, I think that also people like, you know, with, with a stock like us, they put it in their, their 401k or their, you know, their whatever equivalent in

whatever country. And that's good. And you can also do both. Like, you know, I have Bitcoin and I have, you know, stocks, like it's not one or the other. You can hold the asset and you can hold, you know, the companies that are working in that asset. And there's a couple ETFs out there. You know, one of our largest shareholders right now is Block, BLK. I think they are our largest shareholder. And they've got, you know, kind of 20 or 30 companies in the space, you know, miners, everyone, et cetera, et cetera. So there's lots of ways to get exposure. That's funny that you mentioned the ETF because Canada has approved, to my count, three, unless

I missed any. And the first obviously exploded and has largely, some would argue, exploded the GBTC sort of premium. And the ETF is obviously probably, I've always argued, somewhat the final boss for what we were just discussing, which is the most comfortable way for your average person, but especially for an institution to gain exposure to Bitcoin without the underlying. But that's it. So do you think that the ETF in the United States is inevitable? I mean, from your position? I think it's inevitable.

I mean, how many are there now that are like, you know, waiting to get approved? Oh, it's crazy. And even Fidelity, I mean. Yeah, I mean, there are big names coming in. I think it's going to happen. I'm glad that Canada has taken the lead in, you know, approving the first.

And certainly, I mean, I think it's the top traded stock in the history of the world or something. The amount of volume that's gone through that Bitcoin ETF has been nuts. I think one will hit in the US. And then the question is, from a clean energy point of view, is there then an opportunity to do a clean energy ETF where you have Bitcoin that only is coming from renewable sources? And that's kind of something that I'm excited about. So, yeah, I want to touch on something you said earlier. It's a term that I've started to see again in the press. I hadn't heard in a while, virgin Bitcoin. You were speaking of it from a environmental perspective, but I think to my understanding, the original term was just basically fresh from the miner, doesn't need to be concerned that it's been

used in a criminal activity. How important is Virgin Bitcoin to a lot of these larger investors? And what is it? I think it remains to be seen. So I think Virgin Bitcoin, you can think of it in two ways. There's kind of two interpretations that are out there right now. One is the interpretation that I'm pushing, which is it's well, let's first Virgin Bitcoin is Bitcoin that is freshly minted, that has never been through any other wallets that you can tell the exact providence of it. It's gone from this creation of this miner to your wallet. It's clean that way virgin then there's there's green energy virgin bitcoin which is bitcoin that is and you know has been created by a miner using clean power that has gone directly to your wallet and then there's you know some folks that are saying okay well that's not even enough there. It also has to be clean of making sure that it's never touched any, um, pools that have ever dealt with anyone who's

ever been on, you know, the OFAC list or whatever, like these, these kinds of band lists, right. Didn't go through North Korea. Yeah. Didn't go to an arms band in Russia and i i you know there's there's pluses and minuses of that thinking obviously the biggest minus being you know do we really want to get into censorship around you know um the whole point of bitcoin and the whole point of crypto is that it's decentralized and it's you know the censorship censorship resistance do as do as do we want mining pools or miners to start being the gatekeepers of, you know, like acting essentially like a bank. So I think that debate is still out. And there's, you know, there's strong views on both sides. Sounds like blood diamonds.

Yeah, look, there's definitely some analogies there to blood diamonds. So I went, unfortunately, probably in 2017, I went down the OTC Bitcoin rabbit hole for a while and tried to facilitate and broker a few deals, which was a nightmare of epic proportions that I would never wish on my worst enemy because it really was seemingly all scams. And the minute it came to show me yours, I'll show you mine. Every deal sort of fell asleep, but it was always the miners that everybody at least perceived were on the selling side of those huge OTC deals. Is that still the case? Is that how miners unload their coins? We obviously see a lot of conjecture that there's inflows from mines, most recently F2, everyone was talking about F2 coming into Gemini, you know? Yeah. I mean, to be honest, I don't know. I just don't have a ton of visibility into it. I mean, we're, we're pretty transparent. We sell our Bitcoin through an exchange, you know, when we

need to sell, that's what we did in 2020. We've worked with various exchanges over the years uh we try to you know we do it in a on a you know when we are in selling mode we do it kind of over we kind of dollar cost average our way you know over a couple trades a week um we don't do big dumps yeah i don't get the dumping um it would be bad for you right i mean it would make you less profitable yeah it just doesn't make any sense and and who wants their money in cash now anyways I don't get the dumping. It would be bad for you, right? I mean, it would make you less profitable. Yeah. It just doesn't make any sense. And who wants their money in cash now anyways?

I mean, we did a raise in January. We took some of that raise and we bought Bitcoin with it because we would rather have Bitcoin over cash. That's interesting because there's this conception that miners are rushing to get out of the Bitcoin because it's sort of their business and they need to get into cash to be profitable. But even you guys as miners are using your cash to buy more Bitcoin on top of what you're mining. We did. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. I mean, I just looked at our balance sheet and I said, okay, well, we got this cash. We don't have some of these machines that we've ordered, whatever. We don't have to pay for weeks or months down the road. Let's put

into Bitcoin. And we went in, I think our average was clear, like way under 35. And now we're at like, what, 58 today. So we've done, it was a good trade. But yeah, in general, we want to hold as much Bitcoin as we can Do you think that all miners have that perception or do you think that's unique to a certain group or some really just like it they want it to be a profitable business It's a good question. I certainly think that

miners now that are publicly traded have realized that their shareholders are often buying that stock because they want exposure to Bitcoin and they want, you know, the correlation to Bitcoin. So I think, and, you know, if you look at all of the mining stocks, like our correlation to the price of Bitcoin is pretty clear. Like when Bitcoin goes up, we go up. When Bitcoin goes down, we go down.

So, and that's across all of And that's across all of the various exchanges that we're listed on. That's consistent. So I think most miners now realize that holding Bitcoin is a good thing. That's interesting. So you guys, your stock price is somewhat like Bitcoin on steroids, right? It's amplified in either direction. So if you're really bullish on Bitcoin, buying a mining stock is a way to actually capture more upside. Correct. Historically. Obviously, nobody can tell what would happen kind of like, kind of, you know, be a little bit out of step with the rest of the miners. But in general, the correlation is pretty, pretty clear. Something interesting. So you guys,

obviously, you said your facilities in Quebec, but you touched on the fact that you're building a humongous facility in Texas. To me, that means you're not that concerned with regulators in the United States right now. Is that true? Because we always hear that's the biggest threat, right? To crypto as a whole is regulation and government, and particularly the United States government to some degree. Look, I think there's going to be some guardrails. I think, you know, the government is trying to figure out how to handle it. Regulation is coming, whether we like it or not. And I think we're already regulated. We're a publicly traded stock regulated by the FCA in the UK.

We know how to work through that world and work with regulators and governments. And that's part of life. That's part of life about being a large corporation. You have to figure out how to navigate your way through that. In terms of where the US is heading, I think it's pretty clear that the folks that are in the Biden administration now are more thoughtful than the folks who were there before and have more experience with crypto and are really trying to think it through. And I'm optimistic that whatever they settle on is going to work. You're not in the United States corporation, so I don't understand what the tax implications are of moving to the United States, of course.

If you're an American company, people move to where I am in Florida and Texas because we have no state taxes, right? And it just makes sense. Are you guys going to Texas because of the cheap energy and available real estate? Why Texas, I guess? You can go anywhere in the world. Yeah, Texas because of, you know, going back to what I said at the start, what do we need? Access to cheap power and access to machines and the power in Texas, the kind of particularities of that grid and the fact that most, you know, most of the power that is in the part of Texas where we're going to build out that, that facility is from renewable power. So when you, when you think about cheap renewables, like West Texas where we are and right next to like our,

our land that we're developing is literally right next to a substation. Like you can adjacent to the substation. So it kind of is kind of a perfect fit for us. You know, the main challenge in Texas is heat. And we're we've got a plan to deal with that. So so we're pretty excited about about up, building out down there. What's so funny is that I don't even think your average American would equivocate, like would be like, hey, Texas and renewables, right? We just think about oil rigs. And it's almost the dead opposite conception, I would think for an American of what Texas is. So it's pretty incredible, especially West Texas, right? To hear that that's-

There's a ton of wind power that's come online in the last couple of years and there's more wind power that's coming on. And that particular part of the grid is kind of like overly congested with renewable power. So to go in there and to be able to be kind of this accordion that takes some of that load off and gets it at really low prices, it's a perfect fit for us. to go in there and be able to be kind of this accordion that takes some of that load off and

gets it at really low prices. It's a perfect fit for us. And now I'm blanking on the name. It was many months ago, Level Someone. But we've seen people building operations in Texas where they're actually selling electricity back to the grid. Yeah, level one. Yeah. Level one. Yeah. I'm glad I got the level part. That's cool. Yeah, that's good. But another thing about Texas, I mean, their power grid was very much in the news recently when they had this hard freeze and it was not winterized. Is that of a concern in any way? Or are you sort of immune to that where you are? We see it as a feature, not a bug, actually. The opportunity, obviously the freezing was a kind of once in a century thing and that wasn't a good thing. But but we see this kind of opportunity to be able to to, you know, curtail your power when needed in times of high demand, which are really entrepreneurial and allow you to kind of like, yeah, sell power back to the grid

or shut power down and get a discount. It allows you to get some really, really cheap power. And if it's renewable and it's cheap, then we want access to it. That's awesome. I love it. So what other perhaps misconceptions or things that we just don't know about mining have I not touched on?

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, you know, I think that. What else? What else do do? I think one of the misconceptions about minors is that we're not very good kind of local citizens, community citizens. And I think, you know, people just like it's kind of like you set up a machine, a bunch of machines and you lock the door and you leave. We're trying to change that. We're trying to make sure that we engage in the local communities that we're working in, in a really kind of, you know, responsible way that we create local jobs, that we, you know, we're looking at building a greenhouse in Northern Quebec next to one of the facilities to be able to kind of grow vegetables in the winter there using the recycled heat from the power. We're also working not just on the green energy pool

and the clean energy pool, but we're also about to finalize an agreement with an environmental sustainability consultant that will kind of help guide us and build a climate strategy and, you know, make sure that we don't just talk about being a good ESG kind of help guide us and build a climate strategy and, and, you know, make sure that we're, we don't just talk about being a good ESG kind of corporate citizen, but actually have a plan in place and say, we're doing this. I think, I think there's, that's, you know, a misconception, misconception that that miners are all about profits only and don't kind of take into other, other things into consideration.

The other thing that we did that i that i just got when i because i was for the first two years of this company i was vp ops and then i took over a ceo in january of last year and one thing that i did was and you kind of alluded to this you're like oh the murky world of mining like oh there's like so little information out there so when i took over as ceo i was like okay starting, starting in January of 2020, every month, come hell or high water, we're going to put out an operational update. And that's going to say how much we've mined, at what margin, what revenue, how much revenue that Bitcoin mined was, and then how many Bitcoin we're holding. And that has kind of like really transformed our

relationship with our shareholders. People get excited about those operational updates. They talk about how many Bitcoin they were going to mine. And they have a sense of our operations more than if we were putting out quarter. I mean, this space changes so quickly that putting out like quarterly updates three months after that quarter ended is kind of a joke, right? Like we're about to put our 2020- Imagine March to like July last year yeah yeah we're about to put our 2020 numbers out like in a month or two like whatever with in line with you know our and that's it's like 2020 that was ages ago like in this you know in this space so we try to like three or four days into the into the month five or six days depending on on where the days of the week lie, we put out this operational update. And then I've also started in the last six months doing video updates along with those press releases. So kind of talking people through our numbers, doing Q&As on Twitter.

And I think all of that has built a sense of transparency to our shareholders and also more of a sense of credibility and kind of bringing people into, yeah, like we've built like a bit of a mining tribe. I think a lot of the shareholders who, you know, buy Argo stock, I think they kind of feel like they're part of the company. And I'm excited about that. I really, I can't tell you how much I like that. So eliminating some of that murkiness that I sort of alluded to and just say, hey, this is literally exactly what we're doing. This is why you should be excited about it. And yeah. And also like kind of bringing the culture of crypto, which is really at its source, like an open source, transparent, like the whole point of having a ledger is like, okay, this is where it's been. This is what's happened. That's,

that's what we're trying to do. create kind of take married marry again these two cultures like this public market world and this this crypto world and and and you see particularly people in their you know in their 20s 30s and 40s like younger investors they like that like they they they they want to engage more uh and they they more information. That's really interesting. So you're basically embodying the ethos of crypto within your own company and sort of trying to evangelize for that. And that leads me kind of to our last thing. I know we're sort of up against it, but how important at the core is decentralization, especially with what we see from central banks and governments and all of this,

and moving towards a truly open and permissionless financial system? I think decentralization is everything. Wouldn't it be awesome if there was a decentralized stock exchange and you could buy and sell stocks 24 hours a day all over the world. And you didn't have to worry about like, like these trading hours when you look at like, Bitcoin, you know, you're Yeah, I wake up in the morning, I check Bitcoin, go to bed, check. It's like, it's always trading. And that's a bit of a curse sometimes for my sleep. And you have to manage it. But like, why? Why is the stock market only open from, you know, whatever it opens, depending on where you are, 9 o'clock, 9.30. It's crazy, right? And why do trades take 48 hours to clear, which we saw was hugely problematic for Robinhood.

So the more we can move away from some of these old centralized, trusted third parties and into the new financial ecosystem driven by blockchain, I think the better. And it's going to be interesting to see how public companies engage in that world and how the kind of traditional financial markets are transformed because of that. I'm pretty excited about that. Well, it seems like they're all flooding in now, and I don't see that the floodgate holding personally. So I'm optimistic that, you know, we're seeing corporations, now we're seeing banks, soon it's going to be central banks and-

Yeah, and they're coming in now as investors, you know, but when will they become actual participants and actually help transform their systems. Because, you know, like sending my money, sending that money to my friend in Cuba, like I also emailed my bank and I was like, and they're like, oh, it's impossible. Like there's just the great thing about blockchain is that right now,

it's like the art of the possible. It's like you can basically really kind of see how it's going to transform the future of the exchange of values, the exchange of value. And that's going to be really significant for the planet. I agree, because there's nothing worse than having to go in my bank and send a wire transaction to someone in another country. It's a nightmare. It's an absolute nightmare. Yeah, and crypto really does fix this, right? I mean, we always make these jokes,

Bitcoin fixes this, but again, that's one of the major things. It fixes that, but soon it's going to fix your mortgage and it's going to fix your insurance and it's going to fix like, you know, all of these other things that we do on a daily basis or these instruments that we use on a daily basis,

you know, are going to be on a daily basis you know are going to be on the blockchain so it's going to fix you know fedex the supply chain and like it's it's and what's cool about nfts and there's been you know lots of people about talking about how nfts are like overhyped and blah blah and maybe they are but what's cool about nfts it's like it's another application of blockchain that we're seeing being used in real time, that real people are using, that makes sense to a lot of people. Like the dudes who are in their 50s and 60s who don't get it, that's totally fine. Like whatever, you're not going to get it. But for the kids who are like in their teens and 20s who are like, oh, it's a digital asset and I get to hold the one and only, cool.

Yeah. Sign me up. I'll buy that. Yeah. It's a pair of Jordans, man. Come on. We all understand the importance and appeal of scarcity, but to your point, okay, so maybe tweets shouldn't be selling for millions of dollars. So perhaps NFT art on the lower end is in somewhat of a bubble. Sure. I think it is, right? These things pop, but that doesn't take anything away from the use case or importance, or that the cream will rise from the top. Beeple's will be worth money, A, but it's what you touched on. It's your mortgage. It's your car deed. It's all these things that 99% of people who've heard of NFT don't even understand that that's the real application of a non-fungible token. It's not a piece of art.

Exactly. And you know, it's funny. It's like, you know, on the hype piece, like, you know, everyone talks about the dot com boom of like the 2000s and how that was like a bubble and it popped and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Well, what came after that? Amazon. Yeah, exactly. The hugest transition of like, you know, the economy that we've seen for a long time. So just because there was hype around something doesn't mean there isn't something that's fundamentally good and true and useful in it. I would say the opposite. I would say it means that there is something good and useful and true in it and that you've just got a lot of people who are excited and most won't execute. And so naturally, they'll be eliminated by natural selection from the market. Hey, we saw it last summer in DeFi. Yeah.

This isn't like a crazy thing. Everybody got really excited. They started farming food coins and trying to get 1000% yields. And yes, that was nonsense and it popped. But from that, we're starting to see sort of the more exciting and actual use cases that you even talked about before. I think NFTs could see some sort of action like that. Look, we signed in mining, right?

In 2017, 2018, there was so much hype. All of these miners everyone wanted to be a miner it was like crazy like when we started mining it was nuts and what happened there was a crypto winter you know the the wheat got separated from the the shaft is that right how did i use that expression right you know what i mean like the the the crap got cleared out and what what who was left over so a bunch of people who actually know how to mine and run a, run a mind of business and actually engage with, you know, all of the different groups and stakeholders that you need to,

to run a company. And, and, and now we're, now we're here. Wow. That's awesome, man. I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys have for us in the future. I keep getting, will you give tours of your new facility? I want to come check it out. 100%. Yeah. We got to get really, it's funny, you know, we've been getting shareholders emailing us saying, Hey, can we come to Texas and do a tour? And I'm like, yeah, okay. All right. Well, once COVID is over, let's do it. Yeah. Awesome. I'm definitely going to do that. So where can everybody keep up with your guys' progress? What's your ticker? Where can they

buy the stock and where can they follow you personally? So we're, we sell in London on, on obviously the London Stock Exchange ticker ARB. We also have an OTC mark, OTC trade. So you can, which is ARBKF, ticker ARBKF. And that volume has been, we've like set records, not, not to brag, but we have set records on the OTC. They can't believe the amount of volume that comes through our stock. And then on social media, our main engagement platform is Twitter, at Argo Blockchain. And then I'm at Peter G. Wall on Twitter as well. Thank you so much. It's really enlightening.

And like I said, it's almost criminal that I hadn't had someone on to discuss this, but clearly you were the perfect, perfect person to do it. So well worth waiting for it. Thank you again for taking the time. Awesome. Thanks, Scott. It was great to meet you. Awesome.