We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC092: Bitcoin Energy & Custody w/ Parker Lewis & Will Cole (Bitcoin Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this Wednesday's release of the podcast where we're talking about Bitcoin. Well, back by popular demand, I have Bitcoin thought leaders Parker Lewis and Will Cole from Unchained Capital to talk to us about everything happening in the energy space. Additionally, we talk about how and why the financialization of Bitcoin is so difficult for various platforms to do in a responsible way. We talk about some of Parker's concerns with the energy situation in Europe from a macro standpoint. and the environmental fud that currently exists and much, much more. So without further delay, here's my interview with Parker and Will.

Starting point is 00:00:40 You're listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by the Investors Podcast Network. Now for your host, Preston Pish. Hey, everyone, welcome to the show. Like I said in the introduction, I'm here with Will and Parker. Guys, welcome to the Investors podcast. Welcome to Bitcoin Fundamentals on the Investors podcast. Good to be here, Preston. Hey, so one of the things that I just see this theme kind of coming up and you see a lot

Starting point is 00:01:15 of it maybe being missed with a lot of the proof of stake conversations. And I don't want to like pull that up here into the front of the conversation. But what I do want to talk about here at the beginning is just energy and Bitcoin. And Parker, I know you have talked about this quite a bit in how these two sectors are merging, the energy sector realizes it or not. And I think the Bitcoin mining, I think they definitely see where this is kind of the direction some of this is going. But for people that are joining us and maybe not dialed into all this, explain to them from a very top level kind of framework of why these two things are coming together in a rapid pace.

Starting point is 00:02:04 Yeah, absolutely. So since I've been helping to organize the Houston, and Bitcoin meetup over the past year and a half or so. I've started to pay a lot closer attention, not just the mining side of Bitcoin and proof of work, but also the energy sector as a whole, but also kind of how it interplays with Bitcoin. And I've started to learn a lot more about energy and power production and drilling and natural gas and oil. And I think that to start on the context of Bitcoin, we can talk about in the context of proof of work and proof of stake, is that I like to simplify Bitcoin down to being of fundamental value to the world because there will only ever be 21 million. And that the killer app or the real fundamental value in Bitcoin is that

Starting point is 00:02:51 it affords everyone the opportunity to be able to opt into a form of money that can't be printed. And that there are a lot of people, you know, myself included, who, you know, at least up until the last 18 months and I'm still on my rapid descent down the energy rabbit hole that take energy for granted. And how I relate that to Bitcoin, though, is that everyone took money for granted and that there's a lot of people that think that Bitcoin wastes energy, but people who do not understand why Bitcoin is of fundamental value to the world could never understand or justify the amount of energy necessary to protect it and to secure it. And if all value and Bitcoin derives from the fact that there will only ever be 21 million, you don't get something in a

Starting point is 00:03:36 value in the world without a cost. And in this case, and in Bitcoin's case, that part of the core backbone of what secures Bitcoin and what enforces that fixed supply of 21 million is real world energy. There are a number of other intricate puzzle pieces that also secure Bitcoin, but the energy component of it, the thing that makes it very costly to forge Bitcoin transactions or to write invalid Bitcoin transactions to the Bitcoin open public ledger, is a energy. And the consequence of that is that, you know, Bitcoin is money, at least in my view, and energy is what secures it. And what Bitcoin represents to energy is a fundamentally new source of demand and a new incentive to develop energy resources. And that will have profound

Starting point is 00:04:27 implications for the energy industry as a whole. And I think a lot of us always focus on the money side. But the world of Bitcoin and energy are rapidly combined. converging to one. And what I've seen in the last 18 months is that, you know, it certainly feels like we've crossed over a tipping point where the energy industry as a whole and it's not just oil and gas, but also the power sector, maybe more importantly, the power sector, is starting to figure out that this thing Bitcoin can really not only help solve a problem, but also be a huge source of profit for their businesses. So happy to go into more detail there. But I really do think that Bitcoin will help transform energy as much as it transforms money, albeit I am still

Starting point is 00:05:10 someone who is, you know, I don't consider myself an energy expert. I know just enough to be dangerous. Will? No, I mean, I agree with Parker. I got into this not from the mining and energy side, but after attending the Houston meetups in particular, which, you know, since the Chinese ban on on mining, as it were, a lot of that, a lot of those companies and a lot of that hash powers flock to Texas. And this has become kind of a central point for those discussions. No, I mean, everything of value, I mean, gold has the same issue, right? You know, gold's price determines how much energy is expended to extract more from the ground. When it goes up, we can expend more energy. We can get more gold. Bitcoin has other, you know, safety measures in place where you can't

Starting point is 00:05:56 get more Bitcoin. But at the same time, understanding that nothing of value comes without expending energy and that when I think of proof of stake, as you mentioned at the very beginning, you know, it much more resembles like sort of, you know, shareholder voting agreements or governance and in like a public stock or something like that. I don't think that's where value comes from. And in order for Bitcoin to have value, proof of work is essential for it. Yeah, one thing I was just going to add there, you know, kind of leveraging off of Will's point is that one other way that I think about proof of work and Bitcoin mine, is that really, and this kind of comes back to a fundamental point around money, which is,

Starting point is 00:06:38 and again, this is my perspective, but I also believe it to be a fundamental economic truth, is that we all truthfully only need one form of money. It's not coincidence that most of us have only ever interacted and traded with one form of money, that money converges in a consensus forms because it's actually necessary to converge in order to solve a problem of trade, and that's functionally what money does. and that via Bitcoin's proof of work along with a number of other puzzle pieces, it actually solved this problem. And when I talk about solving a problem, it is being able to issue and validate currency. And for everyone being able to credibly rely on the fact that there will only ever be 21 million or more importantly,

Starting point is 00:07:22 that there will only be a fixed amount of money without the need for trust. The credibility of that is important and without the need for trust of that is important. And proof of work was critical to that equation. And if money converges to one, then Bitcoin already solved the problem, then any other arguments around proof of stake of whether it works or doesn't work, it can only work as well as Bitcoin already does. And more importantly, in this to Will's point, the proof of stake system, part of that proof of work function separated ownership from validation and security of the network,

Starting point is 00:08:03 such that everyone within the Bitcoin network has equal rights. The consensus rules are the consensus rules and nobody can change them. And what effectively a proof of stake system does, much like J.P. Morgan, Chase, and Wells Fargo and Bank of America, it combines validation with ownership. And what we've seen historically is that that has really bad outcomes. And we actually solve this problem via Bitcoin and proof of work. And we would basically just be uninventing the wheel or going back to a screwed up world. And so the proof of work function is not only very necessary, but it functionally obsoletes the need for any other form of money in the context of Bitcoin, which therefore obsoletes, you know, the need to try to even think about proof of state. Because the best it can do is match Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:08:50 when being able to credibly enforce a fixed supply without the need for trust. Can't do that, but part of the reason why I can't do that is because Bitcoin and proof of work already solved the problem. So you were getting into a little bit of in proof of stake, how it has this JP Morgan like Fiat-based incentive structure built into it. There was recently a video that came out this week where a person was talking about the Ethereum merge and all of the concerns that they had around. regulatory capture. And what they were getting at is by people staking their coins in order to do

Starting point is 00:09:28 the validation of the new supposed protocol that's going to be rolled out with Ethereum, that there's regulatory capture happening at the exchange level because people are incentivized to just take their coins, put them on the exchange, and then all of a sudden the government can come in there and tell the exchange what it is they are or aren't going to do with all those coins that are being staked into the exchange's hands. And so talk to us about your thoughts on how you see this progressing through time. I laid out a little bit of the person who made this video and hopefully we'll have it in the show notes here so people can check it out to see his thoughts. But what are your thoughts on do you agree with him? Do you see it maybe even being worse than that,

Starting point is 00:10:13 better than that? What are your thoughts? I mean, I'll start. Yeah, I mean, I see, I see, some of that, the regulatory capture side of it, you know, you're starting to combine different layers of counterparty risk, right? You already already had certain amount of risk of having your coins on the exchange to begin with, and now layer on top of it that you're trying to get, you know, certain rewards from staking from that and that you're putting a target on pretty much anyone who wants to have a say in the protocols development. You're putting a target on their back, making it very easy for, you know, governments and to, to influence decisions on the protocol level. But also, I mean, is this not true? I could be, I could be wrong here. So I don't,

Starting point is 00:10:55 I don't want to, you know, say any untruths. But I think it's also true, at least at the beginning, very similar to like the beacon chain that you can stake on right now, is that you can't withdraw. Like, once you make that decision to stake, you're, you're essentially locked up. And that's an indeterminate amount of time. And there's even more risk. other than just regulatory or typical exchange counterparty risk there, which is the same risk of what happened to Celsius. Which is crazy. Which is crazy.

Starting point is 00:11:20 I mean, I hate to interrupt you. That's nuts. Yeah. It's just risk later on top of risk, later on top of risk. The sort of regulatory capture risk, I mean, it doesn't even have to be a government having malicious ideas of how to control the protocol. But if you're on an exchange, you're already subjecting yourself to jurisdictional risk of where that exchange is located.

Starting point is 00:11:40 If they're in New York and they decide that, you know, proof of work rules and proof of stake is terrible or vice versa, you're again, risk layered on top of risk, layered on top of risk. So yeah, I mean, I haven't read that or seen that video yet, but I would tend to agree that the incentive to keep things on an exchange in general, in addition to the risk that already exists, is going to be bad for the protocol overall. Yeah, it's 100% a centralizing force, but I always try to come back to the fundamental, which is Bitcoin already obsolete at all other forms of money.

Starting point is 00:12:15 Everyone else is just catching up. And that if we are going to kind of talk about it, it is like the most important part of this whole thing is that in order to affect it, it requires the hard fork. And other protocols do this all the time. But when I talked about, you know, the fundamental value in Bitcoin deriving from the fact that there will only ever be 21 million, and that that happens credibly and without the need for trust, well, that is dependent on decentralization. And proof of work functionally just continues to decentr further and further decentralize the Bitcoin network. It's not the only layer of which Bitcoin decentralizes over time. But the mere fact of, quote, changing a protocol that that's even possible demonstrates in front

Starting point is 00:13:01 of everyone's face that thing is so centralized that you could change the rules. And that defeats the entire purpose because if one rule can change, then any rule can change. And this obviously isn't the first time this happens with other protocols on a quarterly basis. It's pretty comical, I think, to the people in the Bitcoin world who are paying attention. But just like with a lot of things, there's a lot of noise in the world and people have to figure out by touching the hot stove. And hopefully podcasts like these help people kind of learn without having to deposit their Bitcoin in a Celsius or, God forbid, hold their, money and something other than Bitcoin and then even worse potentially have it be in an even worse position than just being on the exchange, but it's staked on an exchange.

Starting point is 00:13:48 So Parker, you had mentioned earlier that you were doing this Bitcoin meetup down in Houston. I would imagine you have some major players out of the energy sector participating in these meetings. Is that the case? And is there anything that you've heard or seen, just on that front that has kind of surprised you or that you think is noteworthy. Yeah, I think that there's certainly people from the majors who come through. I mean, it's an open meetup. We don't check IDs and also we do value privacy. But it's really interesting because if anybody's ever been to Austin BitDevs,

Starting point is 00:14:28 and for those that aren't familiar, we host the Austin Bitcoin Developers Meetup at the Bitcoin Commons downtown in Austin. And if you walk in that room, it's a group of developers that are working, you know, there's a mix of people, but it's a very tech-centric group that's working on protocol development or application development that is impacted by protocol development. When you walk in the Houston meetup, it is an entirely different complexion. It is an energy first group of people. And it, you know, it's not just oil and gas drillers and landmen. It's power producers. And I think that, What I've seen, and there's kind of a combination, but there are people who come through the meetup that work at the majors. There's private oil and gas. There's large power producers. There's power brokers. And they kind of have different cross sections where some end up focusing on grid. And those might be power producers that are kind of a key part of the supply chain to building substations or manufacturing transformers or procuring.

Starting point is 00:15:34 power or producing power, but then there are also oil and gas guys that are focused more off-grade of how Bitcoin mining can solve a problem there. So I'd say my greatest takeaway, you know, kind of zooming out, is that the energy industry, I wouldn't maybe say as a whole, but that we've we've passed over a critical point, a tipping point where enough people have figured it out that there's real signal here, that it's only going to accelerate, that enough people have looked at this and said, you know what, there's something real here and it can solve a problem. And once you cross over a critical mass, there's no going back. And what we're witnessing right now is an acceleration in terms of the conversions between the energy sector and Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:16:22 Do you think we're there right now? We've already passed over that. Yeah, I think we've passed over the critical mass. And Will, do you agree with that? Yeah, I mean, in Texas, it's obvious. But You know, right now I'm sitting in Cheyenne, Wyoming. And, you know, I've been having these discussions here for, I don't know, since 2014 or so. And the big hold up here, you know, off grid has become very popular here amongst, you know, not even, you know, oil and gas people, just landowners. But the utilities were always the, you know, more difficult, you know, side of the equation in Wyoming. And we've seen a lot of deals being made just in the past year, a new capacity that will come online over the next six, eight months in the state here because, you know, after seven years of trying to wrap their heads around this, there is sort of a tipping point that's been reached. And, you know, honestly, Texas has sort of set the standard.

Starting point is 00:17:15 There's jealousy involved. There's a, you know, if they can do it, we can do it. Obviously, Texas has a lot of advantages given, you know, the nature of their independent grid and the size of that grid already being what over, I think. I think it's 70, 77 gigawatts or so of capacity. So places like North Dakota and Wyoming are going to have to catch up. But off grid, it's very, very exciting here amongst the oil and gas people, landowners, and then even on grid, you see it happening. There's hardly a discussion that happens or a meetup in the state where there isn't

Starting point is 00:17:47 some contingency from the energy sector present and participating. Yeah, one thing too, like I didn't want to like oversell it in terms of There's a lot of people from the energy sector that don't understand Bitcoin. And I'm not suggesting that there's 50% of people and now the other 50% are going to be dragged along. But I'm talking about enough of a contingent that looks at this and says there is something real here and being able to see month after month the type of crowds and the type of people and that they are energy first people, right?

Starting point is 00:18:20 They are oil and gas operators. They are energy professionals across the industry where it's the energy-professionals. It's not, they weren't Bitcoin miners and then started to learn about oil and gas and power production. And that one of the things that I've witnessed is that a number of people got into Bitcoin to solve a problem, whether it was they had drilled a well and they had natural gas that was stranded and that wouldn't have been economical to build a pipeline. And Bitcoin solved a problem for them. Another kind of story that one producer out in West Texas told that not the last me to put the meter before was that a permit got pulled because I think it was, I can't quote

Starting point is 00:19:01 the number, but on an order of magnitude, it was like a 20,000 MCF pipeline and got a permit pulled because they were flaring like 400 MCF a day and went to the railroad commissioner and said, if I show up with Bitcoin miners and capture this flare, can I get my permit? Yes. And then in other instances, you know, I think people in the power sector started selling Bitcoin or started selling infrastructure or helping procure power and working on PPAs for Bitcoin miners, just recognizing that there was a signal that they could, that there was end demand and that it was worth investing their time and energy in. And now they're backfilling on the Bitcoin knowledge side.

Starting point is 00:19:43 And we're at that point where enough of them have started to find the true signal that I think this is true in all cases when peers hear things from themselves rather than, you know, Bitcoin enthusiasts telling them about. how Bitcoin's the best form of money, but it's more Bitcoin can solve a problem and they can actually see it and hear it from their peers. That's the point where we're at, where there are a sufficient number of those that nobody gets, I won't say nobody, but it's a lot harder to laugh people out of the room. And once we get to that point, a lot of entrepreneurs and innovators, which is core to the energy industry, not just in Texas, but in America, that when they get

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Starting point is 00:24:32 All right. Back to the show. You know, this past week, I saw something about BlackRock coming out. and basically saying that they found Bitcoin to be in alignment with their ESG initiatives, and that it wasn't bad for the environment. And to be quite honest with you, I was kind of blown away. And I thought it was a really big deal. And not because I put this importance on BlackRock necessarily.

Starting point is 00:25:06 I mean, they've got trillions. It's more because of all the companies out there that are cramming ESG down the throat of every company board on the planet, it's them. And I guess I was just kind of surprised to see this out of them because I would have expected the exact opposite. Were you guys surprised by this? Is this a bigger deal or is this a nothing burger? What are your thoughts?

Starting point is 00:25:34 I mean, when you put it that way, if you're at the top of the food chain as a confidential stricture around like a scheme like ESG, you kind of get to set the terms, right? And so am I glad? Like, yeah, it makes things a little bit easier, right? I don't know if it's genuine or if it's just because all of their clients are begging them to get into Bitcoin and use the vehicles that they have in order to do it. In order to do that, they had to come up with their own narrative. I happen to think that they're right, right?

Starting point is 00:26:03 I'm not sure if they think that if they would agree with me on the reasons that they're right. I won't complain, but no, I mean, like, it's a. I see it as kind of like an unholy alliance, but one that works in our favor for now. I agree with that. I totally agree with that. Go ahead, Parker. I would just say, like, whole ESG thing is a fraud. They're all scammers. Tell us why. Tell us why. Go into details. Because BlackRock, they care about making money and charging investment management fees. And I think that the whole premise to think that the people that, you know,

Starting point is 00:26:42 you know, incepted this and then push the rules, you know, like they don't actually care. And it's all about control. And I think that the more that you pay attention to this, that it's obvious. And so like in this case, I'd say beware of the, you know, wolf and sheep's clothing, which is they recognize an opportunity to make money. They back solve the rules. And then they'll do things to, you know, just like they've done to the oil and gas industry, they neuter it. They figure out how they can make money off it, but then they virtue signal or do whatever they want to do to control the behavior that they want. They do that via the money system, right?

Starting point is 00:27:25 And so I think that I would be very cautious around this of celebrating it because I think, you know, I would say ESG is a fraud and therefore Bitcoin's not ESG, that Bitcoin will do all the things that all of the people who espouse all of the people who espout. to have principles around ESG just because of the incentive structures around hard money, and that we should celebrate the energy producers, particularly natural gas, particularly oil. It is our lifeblood. And if BlackRock could basically make the entire energy industry bend their knees, that just because they see a profit opportunity, don't think that they're going to not try to influence

Starting point is 00:28:11 things just the way that they have in ways that have been incredibly harmful for our energy, stability and security. So I think, you know, when you get down to the brass tax, we should we should not be celebrating Black Rocks, you know, kind of working with Coinbase to enter into Bitcoin. I mean, it's fine, right? Like, I'm not worried about it at the same time. I just wouldn't be out there being a champion for Black Rock because the incentive structures are broken. And they don't actually give about anything other than their investment management fees and exerting control. Like they exert control through the financial system here in the state of Texas.

Starting point is 00:28:56 It was either the, I think it was the lieutenant governor sent a letter to the comptroller basically saying that Larry Fink, I believe who's the CEO of BlackRock, came out and said that, you know, they're supporting a net zero policy. and the Texas lieutenant governor basically instructed the comptroller to pull all funds. I don't think it actually happened, but to pull all funds from BlackRock managed funds because a net zero policy was destructive to the Texas energy industry and the Texas Statehouse had passed a law that public funds could not be invested with anyone that, from a financial perspective, that worked in opposition to an industry that is an important and strategic to Texas.

Starting point is 00:29:38 in this case, I'm almost positive was BlackRock. So, yeah, I would follow the incentives and just watch for the next move. If, you know, someone like Marathon, now they reverse course, but if they started getting into ESG mining and we start labeling what is and isn't okay in terms of what energy can be consumed to secure the Bitcoin network, that's a really bad path. And Black Rock has a really bad track record. Love that. Shake down artists will find a way to shake you down eventually.

Starting point is 00:30:08 I like that, Will. That's so true. You know, I just like the way Jeff Booth frames a lot of this, where he says, if the money isn't scarce, everything that's desirable on the planet will become scarce. And when I just look at, you're seeing this narrative run around on Twitter quite a bit where we've got a quote unquote energy crisis. And I think for people that are looking at it without any type of understanding of financial markets or what's kind of playing out with fiat currency, I would rephrase or re-cage that as we have a Fiat crisis where banks and Black Rock being one of the major players and all of this that are pulling strings are flooding the planet with fiat currency. And as a result, the things that truly are valued, and I think

Starting point is 00:31:03 you're seeing the barometer in energy first and foremost, especially over in Europe. Those charts are, I got a chart. I'm going to pull up a little bit later some of the electricity costs and things like that. I mean, it's like Weimar hyperinflation looking charts. And I think that's the barometer. That's how you're actually seeing the crisis, which is a fiat currency crisis. And the desirable thing that everybody wants is energy because it's at the core of everything. So, So sorry to go on there. I'm just kind of piggybacking and agreeing with everything you guys just said. I think it's important for people to have their guard up.

Starting point is 00:31:40 But I did find that quite interesting this week with their announcement. What do you guys think about paper Bitcoin? Caitlin Long talks about this quite a bit and just concerns of the financing of Bitcoin and turning it into paper Bitcoin and people owning that and losing touch with reality of what it is they even own and whether there's a way for regulatory capture, similar to what we were talking about with proof of stake and Ethereum, does Bitcoin have a concern from your vantage point in this area? Is this something that the community's got to be careful with? I don't, I know that this has been a long-term concern of every gold bulk. You know, I've known

Starting point is 00:32:26 since 2006 or so. They've always explained it to me. And I'm sure there's, you know, monkey business that goes on, you know, with the paper gold and the paper Bitcoin, at the same time, like, zoom out enough and I don't really worry about it. I think it's kind of a loser's argument at the end of the day, is that, first of all, you have no control over, you know, how those things turn out and what regulations get passed and whether there's going to be futures markets and whether there's going to be ETFs and whether there's going to be all these things and how they end up getting regulated is that I don't think it ultimately matters for Bitcoin long term. I admit that there are probably schemes in order to try to depress the price over a short term that could

Starting point is 00:33:06 be deployed. But in Bitcoin's case, again, I see this kind of a loser's argument because, you know, what else are you going to do? Being concerned about it doesn't matter, build things that are valuable. Bitcoin has a core value proposition that exists with or without, you know, these paper Bitcoin markets that most of the people that play in that world are going to get rug pulled anyway because Bitcoin's a bare instrument. And just like the gold people have learned, you know, there's no substitute to actually holding Bitcoin. Yeah, and I think the other thing I would just add there is that while very few people in the U.S. financial system can take physical delivery of gold or do, you can take physical

Starting point is 00:33:44 delivery of Bitcoin and that, you know, if you borrow Bitcoin and presumably the only reason to borrow Bitcoin today is to short it or to sell it, that if you are borrowing Bitcoin and shorting it, you can only do, it's not say someone can't buy that Bitcoin and lend it out again, but in that individual operation, you can only short it once and what you do is you create demand on the other side. If you're short Bitcoin, then you need to purchase it back. And using the perfect example, so I think as Will stated it, it was perfectly correct, which is you could potentially manipulate the price over the short term. You can't over the long term. The perfect example of that is Celsius. Celsius.

Starting point is 00:34:27 People deposit their Bitcoin to Celsius, and Celsius lent that out. And now Celsius doesn't have the Bitcoin. Bitcoin eliminates moral hazard. When Bitcoin are lent and they are lost, there are no bailouts. And those Bitcoin that Celsius lent out that were sold, they're in somebody else's hand. They're in someone else's cold storage. And the market cannot ultimately be manipulated over the long term because Bitcoin's supply cannot be manipulated.

Starting point is 00:34:52 The supply of paper gold can be manipulated, but you can't functionally take that paper and say, give me the physical goal. That it's mostly hedge funds that have no interest in owning the physical. And in Bitcoin's case, if Bitcoin gets onto an exchange and then is withdrawn, it's withdrawn. It's secured by private keys and there are only ever be 21 million. There's currently 19 million of issuance. All 19 million of those Bitcoin are controlled by keys. And if Bitcoin was sold to you and you withdrew it to your own keys, that those short-term

Starting point is 00:35:22 financialization manipulation games that can happen cannot be sustained because that you the Bitcoin is all accounted for by someone, right? And that when you live in a world where you can take delivery at virtually no cost and secure it at very low cost, you're incentivized to do that. And then when the tide goes out, those who are swimming naked are revealed. In this case, it was Celsius, other platforms, three arrows, block fies got issues. So I really don't worry about it. And also kind of coming from a world of having shorted stock, you know, again, you can only short stock once. You can short more of it, but then you've got to buy it back on the other side.

Starting point is 00:36:01 So every time you create a liability, it's creating artificial demand on the other side. So as much as you might suppress it, you're going to send it the other way on the back end. So I really do believe this is noise. I mean, I understand why people have concerns over it. But when you get into the fundamentals of actually understanding the flow of funds and the ability to influence price, I really, it's a non. non-issue in my phone. I agree with you guys.

Starting point is 00:36:29 Yeah. Go ahead, Will. I was just going to say I have concerns, but they're for the people that buy paper Bitcoin, not for the marketplace of paper Bitcoin. Yeah. And if it is double in out, your borrowing costs just keep going up and up, right? Which is only making that realization point of realization to the timeline to slide, slide further and further to the left.

Starting point is 00:36:54 I'll just say this. this. If you're buying Bitcoin futures and not a physical Bitcoin taking delivery, you're playing the wrong game. So true. So true. And I think for people, especially in the gold community, you mentioned this will, that feel like they've been burned in this area, I would just challenge a person if you've never taken physical custody of Bitcoin and you either have or haven't taken physical custody of gold, start your stopwatch. and do it and then secure it after you eventually receive it. One's going to come a lot faster than the other.

Starting point is 00:37:35 Then secure it and look at the deltas between those two approaches. And then I think people will understand why I think the physical market isn't nearly the concern that you have in the physical gold market. But I mean, it's one of the primary things that Bitcoin now competes gold on, right? make sure when you're doing that transaction that your counterparties in France. Yeah, exactly, exactly. You guys are with Unchained, and Unchained takes a lot of pride in helping people hold on to their own keys and help people secure their Bitcoin in any kind of way.

Starting point is 00:38:12 Do you guys have anything Bruin, any new products, anything that you think will help people take ownership so we don't have more paper Bitcoin? What are you guys up to these days? Well, I mean, I think just like at the core of it, and it's part and parcel with this discussion, which is what we ultimately do and with the foundation of our platform is helping people hold their own keys. And so when we think about what's happened in the markets over the last three months, Bitcoin, I hate using the term crypto more broadly, but that all these discussions that we've been having about kind of the state of the markets, the consequences of what's happening in the broader

Starting point is 00:38:55 markets, ultimately in Bitcoin comes down to the ability to how you secure it. And that the key differentiator in Bitcoin and the key differentiator kind of in terms of the currency itself and how you can hold it, but also the network is that it's permissions. It's permissionless. It's decentralized. Anybody can access it. and anybody can transmit Bitcoin to anyone in the world. And that the most, I'd say, core thing at least to me about that,

Starting point is 00:39:25 is the ability to hold Bitcoin with your own private keys. Because it doesn't matter what anybody else in the world is doing. If you can control your private keys, then you have the ability. Truthfully, whether you have a node or not, you can spin up a node, and that becomes your permissionless access to network. But if you have your own keys, you're controlling your wealth. And you can take that wherever you want and go wherever you want to, in the world. And so really that's at the core of what we do. And that's, you know, kind of our

Starting point is 00:39:52 underlying mission and we continue to build that out. Bitblock boom is next week, or I guess probably by the time that this gets released, we'll be in Bitblock Boom week. And we are planning to make an announcement there. But it's really just an extension of what our core mission is, which is helping more and more people hold their own private keys. But we're kind of going to expand what kind of had initially been a private launch around the trading side. Will, I don't know if you want to talk about that, but really kind of we focus on the, you know, kind of private key ownership, expanding that base, solving a lot of these problems that people have come to face in these last few months around losing their Bitcoin or giving it to somebody they shouldn't have. And we're just

Starting point is 00:40:32 trying to kind of further that mission by being able to help more people hold their own keys and also being able to buy directly there. Well, if you want to kind of go into more details. Will, can you spill the beans on something? Yeah. So without bearing the lead, yeah, the idea is you know, buy Bitcoin directly to cold storage with keys that you control with an added value proposition of affecting final settlement faster than any place else in the world, right? So, if you have an unchained vault that you are sovereign over the keys and over the funds, we can affect final settlement Bitcoin in your hands faster than anyone. Like in the next block, it's straight into your vault or what? Well, it depends. So we, we, we, we,

Starting point is 00:41:17 We take USD through wires to speed things up, you know, because it's the fastest Fiat settlement. So if you've pre-funded like a large amount or something like that, then typically within the next hour or two, we can affect final settlement. Typically for most people, it would be like T plus one. Once the wire clears, then we set off an operation to settle the Bitcoin to your vault. And of course, that's the entire thing that we're going to be working on over the next year. You know, the idea being, you know, as we get MTLs around the United States, you can pre-fund those vaults. You can, therefore, like the USDA settlement side has already taken place. And therefore, when you execute a trade, you know, if we're signing, you know, multiple times a day, you'll get same-day settlement that way.

Starting point is 00:42:04 You compare that, you know, even to an exchange, even if you've pre-funded, you're subject to withdrawal limits, you know, oftentimes unless you have some sweetheart deal. So if you've let things build up or you're doing a large purchase, it can take quite a while. If you're DCAing on a platform like Square, which I love, I've used, but Bitcoin then triples in price. And you have weekly withdrawal limits. It could take you weeks to get your Bitcoin off. This is sort of like in my own personal story, something that I've wanted, well, I didn't know to want it in 2011, but I knew to know to want it by 2013 or so. And we never really had the ability to cut out part of that counterparty risk, which is just the time it takes from purchasing Bitcoin to taking full sovereign control over it. And so right now, most of those transactions are settling around T plus one, but regardless of the size of the purchase, but we'll be working to get that into the same day over time. I think that, again, for my personal story, it's not just time of settlement is a really big deal because there's so many different, you know, we talked about earlier.

Starting point is 00:43:13 the layer on top of layer on top of layer, on top of layer, counterparty risk you take when you're with an exchange or any other way to buy Bitcoin, is just that it's not just withdrawal limits. It's not just exchange hack risk. It could be jurisdictional. I've had friends that, you know, here in Wyoming that bought Bitcoin, you know, before 2017. And between 2016 and 2018, it was stuck.

Starting point is 00:43:36 Not because, you know, Coinbase was hacked, not because, you know, they were doing anything nefarious, but because they read the money transmitter license rules in Wyoming and decided they couldn't do business there anymore, which included allowing you to withdraw funds. And so people's funds in Wyoming were locked up for two years. And because Wyoming's so small, most people have never heard of that. And then we changed the law in 2018 and then people got their money back, right? But if you think about what's going on in New York with proof of work and like what could they do,

Starting point is 00:44:05 you just have so many different risks that we say not your keys, not your Bitcoin. And at Unchained, we've been facilitating people taking custody of their coins. But when we look at that, we say, every one of those coins was bought somewhere or mine somewhere, right? Everyone took a certain amount of risk getting it from whatever situation they were in before to where they ended up with and unchained. And wouldn't it be great if we could, how do we cut that down to the, you know, the bare minimum risk that someone could take when transferring dollars in order to get Bitcoin? And so, yeah, that's, you know, what we'll be launching. will be in 26 states at the time of launch for working to get all 50. But it's pretty exciting.

Starting point is 00:44:46 It's something that I personally wanted for a long time and hoping that other people see the value. It's awesome. It's awesome. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination. Risk and regulation are ramping up and customers now expect proof of security just to do business.

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Starting point is 00:48:13 All right. Back to the show. Let's shift gears into some macro talk. Parker, I asked you before we started chatting if there was any charts or anything that you wanted to kind of look at, you had told me that you think one of the most important charts out there is just the global central bank balance sheets. So for people that are listening, describe why you think this is important. I'm going to throw it up on the screen for people that are joining us via YouTube.

Starting point is 00:48:41 But talk to us about this chart. Are you going to pull it up so I can see it? Yeah, I'm trying to. I'm having a little technical difficulty. I mean, I know what it looks like, like the back of my hand. So are you pulling up the Fed balance sheet? Yeah. The Fed balance sheet.

Starting point is 00:48:57 Yeah, the Fed balance sheet. Yeah, I think that there's been a lot of talk about the Fed increasing interest rates and out of control inflation. And I think in the last meeting, the Fed increased interest rate 75 basis points. But what really matters is the dollar supply. And all dollars are created and destroyed by the Federal Reserve. And the size of the Fed's balance sheet is really what dictates dollar interest rates. rates more so than short-term interest rates. Essentially, when the Fed increases short-term interest

Starting point is 00:49:33 rates, they do and can potentially seriously screw up some short-term funding markets, but the dollar supply is really what influences everything. So the Fed's balance sheet, so goes the Fed's balance sheet, goes to the world. Every other balance sheet that's dollar-based or really just fiat-based is levered to the feds. And that, you know, this is so interrelated to Bitcoin because I think Oftentimes people intuitively come to understand why it is so destructive to have your money be printed, but it's really on either side of that equation. It's the process of creating money and eliminating money from the system on either side of that equation is destructive to the economic structure, that manipulating the money

Starting point is 00:50:23 supply is really the fundamental problem. And what the Fed is signaled is that they're going to start to unwind the back. But despite the fact that they've been raising short-term interest rates, they haven't really moved the needle at all. If you look at the chart, it's a flat line effectively. It's down, I think, like $30 billion, but they printed $5 trillion in the last two years. It's a rounding error. And so that truthfully is the whole reason why Bitcoin exists, and that when we look forward

Starting point is 00:50:53 to what might come in the broader financial markets and the potential disruption, you it is the Fed's balance sheet that really is the greatest influencer. And the Fed signaled that they're going to start to unwind the $5 trillion. The truth is they won't be able to. But when it comes back to the energy discussion, too, it is that the Fed increasing interest rates is going to do nothing to create more energy. It's only going to further impair those supply chains. And so, you know, like I think, you know, it's just whenever the Fed comes out and says anything

Starting point is 00:51:28 that they're planning to do, it just reinforces why we do what we do in Bitcoin, not just what we do is unchained, but I think what all Bitcoiners do in terms of helping to spread the knowledge base. But I do think the Fed's balance sheet more so than what the Fed is doing in terms of raising short-term interest rates is really the more important financial, more influential kind of driver of everything that happens in the market and the relevant thing today is they really haven't done much, but that they've signaled that they will. and I don't believe that they're going to be able to drain a lot of dollars out without breaking the system.

Starting point is 00:52:03 But what they choose to do from an actual balance sheet side is more consequential than anything. So I have to tell you guys, this is the first interview I've done with a new computer. And as I was trying to share it here with Zoom, Zoom gave me a message that I had to stop recording and reload the software in order to share. the charts. So no charts for anybody. And don't want this interview and then show notes. Show notes. Show notes. There you go. I'll just, I'll just describe it. So in 2007, the Fed's balance sheet was about a trillion dollars. And then they increased it by 3.6 over three series. So imagine three humps. And then they took out 700 billion

Starting point is 00:52:51 and then they printed five trillion. And now they're, you know, they've, they've, They've been flat for like, you know, six months and they signal that they're going to reduce it. But fool me once. Shame on you. Fool me four times. Shame on me. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:53:10 You had made the comment that as they're tightening, you think it's going to break supply chains and, you know, potentially even lead to further inflationary prints. I think this is in the realm of possible here. And I think that that's a very contrary intake to people that are heavily involved in financial markets for years and decades. They would say, we're on the cusp of a recession and we're probably going to see a lot of the interest rates reverse course that we might even see deflation here in the next six months. Walk us through your narrative, Parker, because it seems like you don't share that belief.

Starting point is 00:53:52 Yeah, I think that it's just a very complex. common sense perspective, which is essentially the Fed is trying to destroy demand to bring prices down. Yes. Right. But when you destroy demand, you can also destroy supply chains. And if you destroy supply chains and producers' ability to produce, then you can end up in a much more situation.

Starting point is 00:54:18 So the demand for energy over time has proven to be very inelastic. We need gasoline. to get in a car, go anywhere to produce and deliver goods to market, and that, you know, just hearing things interacting with more people in the energy industry, just kind of give a few anecdotes, but I hear it consistently, is talking about how, and this is kind of also part of the function of ESG, but I think also has a big impact now, is that there's been a large underinvestment in CAPEX across the board in the oil and gas space. And that a lot of the drilling is necessary to just sustain current demand. But when you have

Starting point is 00:55:06 a very tight and constrained market where I went up to the Minneapolis Bitcoin meetup a few weeks ago and flying back, I sat next to a guy who'd been working on well sites for the past 42 days. And he was talking about how they were at max capacity. They couldn't, they They were starting to reduce the quality of people that they were hiring. They couldn't keep people. They were paying people, they started to hire people straight out of high school, paying them $75,000 is a straight out of high school job, and they couldn't keep people on staff.

Starting point is 00:55:40 And that basically the industry is at a maximum capacity and such that if you start to make the costs of capital more expensive, or if you start to massively reduce the reserves and the emergency reserves and start to artificially bring energy oil prices down specifically, you impair the ability, you do two things. You impair the ability of producers to capture that price. But then when you start to raise interest rates, you start to increase the cost of capital such that if people wanted to go finance more production activity, it can now cost them

Starting point is 00:56:18 more. What's going to happen in that environment where the producers are capturing less price, they can't hire people. You are actually going to get less of the goods and services to market than you actually need. And the things that are most inelastic are oil and gas and then the more refined products down market. But it all comes back from a very common sense perspective that you do not get more of these things by essentially cutting off the cap. or making the capital significantly more expensive to finance these activities. And it's one of the problems of the fiat system as a whole, which is cheap debt is what has financed infrastructure, including oil and gas.

Starting point is 00:57:03 And so if you make that more expensive, you're just going to impair the ability to produce more of it. And so I think that that's what we'll see. People will actually need as much natural resources and as much gasoline, as much, you know, power as they've ever have, but less and less of it will be, you know, coming to market or not enough to meet the demand. So I don't. It's like the symptoms and the problems of money printing are vast.

Starting point is 00:57:30 And I think that we're going to find it out in a bigger way through this cycle. Will, what are your thoughts? Well, you know, I won't, you know, pretend to be able to hang with you and Parker when it comes to macro. But I'll just say that, you know, what Parker just said on top of, you know, supply chains that are already strained by shutting down an economy for two years. And you think that raising interest rates are going to help the situation seems, again, from a common sense perspective.

Starting point is 00:57:58 I look at all the other macro commentators, especially in the Bitcoin space. I listen to Parker and you and Lynn and others. And then if I watch any mainstream news, it doesn't make any sense to me. Which means you totally understand everything that's happening. I mean, maybe that's the first step to understand it. Yeah. And I just think that, you know, it's like anytime the Fed comes out and does anything, you know, it's just like there's a very loud signal being sent that something's wrong. Right.

Starting point is 00:58:32 And big time. And people, you know, energy prices are up through the roof. Even the United States, like if you look at natural gas prices, they're, I think it was like Henry Hubb, I believe it was like two, you know, $2 an MCF, and I might get my units wrong, but it's like $2, three years ago, and now it's $9 today, right? What does that translate into? That translates into higher electricity prices, and it's just starting to ripple through. Not today, Zoom.

Starting point is 00:59:06 I got my phone out, and I pulled up the chart off of my desktop. Let me just look at that Whopper. It's insane. It looks like a hyperinflation chart. It looks like a startup. It's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:59:19 And so I think everyone feels it in their daily lives. I don't think that many people connect it to the issues with our money system. What's that one? This is natural gas in the UK. And my screen is like refer. I've got all sorts of technical issues tonight. But pull up natural gas. Pull up Henry Hub natural gas.

Starting point is 00:59:39 My light's getting in the way. I mean, just look at that. It's totally. I can see a reflection of myself in your phone. of myself in your phone. What a disaster. It's a pro-operation. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:59:50 We're just trying to make things happen. This is a total boomer move. I know that Preston is not a boomer, but like we're descending down the path of being our parents. In Bitcoin, I'd classify myself as a boomer, I guess. Yeah. But, yeah, even if you look at the U.S. prices, too. And I think that, again, most people do not make this connection to the fact that, you

Starting point is 01:00:14 that our money is broken. And, you know, it's kind of like it can be really difficult to kind of operate in an environment, not from an investment perspective, although I'm sure everyone who's investing is chasing their tails as well. But when, you know, it's just every single day, the more that happens, the more convicted and the more, you know, important Bitcoin kind of as a project really, you know, It's like, I think we probably all feel that way, but more people figure it out. And so it's like I see the kind of chaos that the Fed and centralized institutions all over

Starting point is 01:00:57 the world create and that people have to start keying into it. But also people do as a function of the market test that what we're here for of building Bitcoin and helping deliver infrastructure that provides a more sound mind. monetary system is the most important that anybody can be working on. And that includes you in terms of just kind of helping to expand the knowledge base around it. I completely agree with you. This is vital. I mean, when you just think about what it offers, which is settlement between any two parties, it doesn't matter who you are, who you know, to be able to transmit value instantly anywhere in the world, regardless of jurisdiction, and to physically take custody,

Starting point is 01:01:50 to me, without there being any debasement, the terminal debasement, is just indescribable. I don't know how people can't think that there's something just unbelievably massive here. What percentage of your audience you think holds their own keys? I bet you it's less than we would like to think. But I don't know. I have no idea. And the only reason I say that is because so much of our audience came from traditional finance and have come into it.

Starting point is 01:02:25 And I think for some of them, they're just like, hey, I buy into the idea that maybe the money's broken and maybe I need to have a hedge against that particular event happening. And so they're probably just looking for something to have exposed. to the upside, the asymmetric upside, and they just want to be able to do it in the easiest way possible. So we need to scare them off of paper Bitcoin as well. I mean, I'm trying with the show and talking about why I personally, I mean, that's not how I operate.

Starting point is 01:02:56 I mean, everything that you say, Parker and Will, like, I'm with you 100%. Like, I think this is a way bigger deal. You know what, Parker, your take on. this potentially continuing to blow out with respect to energy, I think is a way higher probability. And I'm not saying I completely agree with it, but I think it's a way higher probability than what most, because I think if you took most people, anybody on Wall Street, anybody who's a professional, like hedge fund manager or whatever, they're saying, we're going to

Starting point is 01:03:29 have deep deflationary forces here in six months to a year, like deep. and I think in some areas, some products and some types of services, I think that that may be true. But I think for energy specifically, look at Europe. Like, it's saying the exact opposite. There looks to be, there looks like there's no end in sight for where that's going. You've seen a little bit of a drop in oil recently, but you're not outside of like it continuing to rip. and I just think that it's an important consideration. And I think it's something people need to think about because I think it's in the realm of possible.

Starting point is 01:04:09 I don't know if I would say it's my base case, but I think it's in the realm of possible. I mean, I think when you start to understand, and again, I don't pretend to be an expert, but if you start to talk to energy professionals of people actually in the field that understand the supply chains, It is a consistent. We've underinvested massively and we are at max capacity. And that when you understand the disruptive impact of tightening financial conditions, you create, we already have a supply constraint issue and that only becomes worse, right? And so, or at least that's my perspective.

Starting point is 01:04:55 And there was a recent podcast that Griffin Haby on Marty Ben's podcast, that I encourage people to listen to where he specifically talked about, and he's a, he comes, he's a Bitcoin miner today, Griffin is, but he came from the oil and gas background, where he basically said, we don't really know what the price of oil is today because they, they are depleting the emergency reserves in a massive proportion that's basically flooding the system with, with oil that's not produced today at current costs, right? And then when you start to understand that producers are struggling to find the labor to expand capacity, that's the core fundamental driver. And anything that the Fed is doing to potentially, quote, destroy demand or increasing financing cost doesn't make the supply issue go in the right direction.

Starting point is 01:05:52 And so I do think, and I talk because when I go around and, you know, educate about Bitcoin, the more I get involved in the kind of in the energy community or develop friendships and relationships in the energy world. I've started to think about this a lot more, but oftentimes they'll ask me, because they oftentimes, they'll find their way to Bitcoin because it actually solves a problem for them before they actually understand the money, the hard money dynamics of it. They'll often ask me whether or not Bitcoin is savings or it's money or an investment. And I say it is the right way to think about it. And my view is that it's a better form of money.

Starting point is 01:06:31 It might not operate like a better form of money or might not be perceived to that because of its volatility and different characteristics that don't line up well with what people have known money to be. But there is a reality that most people have taken money for granted and don't actually understand why the dollar is of value. But that it is inevitable that people think about Bitcoin the first time that they buy it or definitely if they're buying paper Bitcoin don't do that bad idea, just buy the real thing. it's impossible not to think about it as an investment initially, that that is unavoidable.

Starting point is 01:07:04 And that the more that you go down the rabbit hole, listening to these shows, reading the Bitcoin standard, other resources on Bitcoin, when you get to the fundamental of it, you will start to see it as money, but that can't happen without going down that rabbit hole. And it certainly can't happen the first time that you buy Bitcoin. And a lot of people, I think, and you probably see this a lot in your world, Preston, where people talk about how Bitcoin's a hedge to inflation. And now they don't understand why, hey, if Bitcoin's a hedge to inflation, why did it come down? And there's this whole like massive credit bubble and the dollar was de-leveraging and everything's levered to the dollar.

Starting point is 01:07:39 So it's perfectly reasonable there. But Bitcoin is not a hedge to inflation. It is the solution to inflation, the permanent solution that it is a, if inflation is a function of money creation. And when money is free, or freer than free, as the people on CNBC famously once said, that this is what you get. You get economic distortion, economic disruption, economic imbalance. And the only way to restore that balance is by finding a better form of money. And that is what Bitcoin is.

Starting point is 01:08:09 And that's why my construct of it is like when we think about inflation, it's not just the function of people printing money. It is that the supply chains and the economic distortion actually create supply and demand and balances, just that the goods that we actually need cannot be delivered to market. And you actually need a reliable form of money to coordinate all the inputs. And that's why just, you know, my view is Bitcoin is actually the solution to inflation, not a hedge to it. Amen.

Starting point is 01:08:39 I just don't know how people can think anything other than that on a long time frame, right? How can't you think that if you add more units into the system that the prices, and it's not linear. And I think this is Michael Saylor's big point where inflation is a vector of all these different things depending on where you're taking the measurement at. But if you're continuing to add units into the system collectively on a global scale, like how can't people think that that's, that's what causes inflation? I just think it's really straight and very obvious. To your strategic petroleum. They've been telling us for, you know, eight months that that doesn't cause inflation. And then they came around to it. The Fed just learned this.

Starting point is 01:09:19 and their, you know, century plus, you know, existence that have just figured out that, yes, that is what actually causes inflation. To Parker's Strategic Petroleum Reserve comment, just to kind of give people a heads up. So I'm looking at the chart back in 2020, there were 656 million barrels in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Today we're at 464. So I think you could say about a third of it has been depleted just in the last two years. and still aggressively being depleted to offset prices.

Starting point is 01:09:55 But think about what that does too, because this is something very fundamental. It's kind of like it's the other side of printing money. They're printing oil right now, right? Because those oil that were in the strategic reserves, they weren't produced today. They weren't produced at current costs. So they're flooding the market, right? And they're manipulating the price of oil down. Well, the actual price response, if you're working in a stable form of money regime, which we're not, the supply response, namely the price of oil going higher is what incentivizes producers to be able to go produce more to capture those prices, such that when you're depleting the emergency reserves, you're basically hitting the producers on both sides.

Starting point is 01:10:45 You're raising interest rates, increasing financing costs, and you're artificially reducing price, which you otherwise could be capturing to go form new capital in the form of rigs and wells and new production. And so now the Fed's not releasing the reserves, but these two things are incredibly destructive to new capital formation, which would translate. into an increase in supply to alleviate price. So it's just it's like they're chasing their tails, and we all will be chasing our tails until we can do away with the entire, you know, kind of scheme and scheme, legacy structure, centralization, right?

Starting point is 01:11:35 Because this is also the functions of the perils of centralization at many different layers. So, yeah, it's a... Well, it's incredibly unpredictable. too, right? Because that's a political decision that's being made to deplete the reserves, as if they're just, you know, hard forking, hard forking rules and you never know what you're going back to our proof of state conversation. When you make that a possibility, you make it incredibly unstable, you know, an incredibly, you know, difficult area to operate them. Guys, I can talk. What do you? What do you think that oil producers would produce if the barrel

Starting point is 01:12:10 oil costs $5 versus three, right? And it's like, what's the only thing that's caused the or not the only thing, but what's a big thing that's caused those prices to come down? The U.S. government selling oil, and it is functionally competing with the oil and gas industry. And it's incentivizing more consumption because people have a price that they can afford it at three and not at five. So you're incentivizing further consumption, which is, you know, like you're just warping the incentive structure of free and open markets, period. Right. And look, we should all want cheap energy, right? And so it's not like we're not, you know, saying like, oh, well, I wish the oil still costs, you know, $120 a barrel and the gasoline still costs $5 versus coming down. It's that energy abundance is the key to reducing energy prices. And I think the point that you brought up about Jeff Booth's comment is like, Like the scarcity of money is actually what creates the abundance of all other goods, including energy.

Starting point is 01:13:19 Amen. Because money is the input required to coordinate all of the energy inputs to actually extract it. And so when you manipulate things, you ultimately get far worse outcomes in the end rather than just letting the free market work. Guys, I could talk to you all night. This was brilliant. Can you give people a hand off to anything that you guys want to highlight your Twitter feeds,

Starting point is 01:13:43 any of that stuff and we'll throw it into the show notes. You want to go first of all? Sure. I'm at Will Cole on Twitter. You can visit us at Unchained.com. If you're looking to find a way to not be subject to withdrawal limits or get your funds locked up for an excessive amount of time, look forward to our announcement on Saturday of the 27th around our new trading tool that's being released and a little bit over half the United States next week. Yeah, and I'm at Parker A. Lewis on Twitter, run a lot of meetups, and we help people hold their own private keys.

Starting point is 01:14:21 So people can check out our website, Unchained.com, and yeah, look out for our announcement during Bitblock Boom. And if you want to hold your own keys, come to Unchained.com. You can schedule a consultation. But that's what our mission is to help more and more people do that and to help people get off Coinbase and avoid the exchange all together. And the more that people do that, the less will have to worry about paper Bitcoin. Love it. Guys, thank you so much for your time. This was a blast. Thanks, Preston.

Starting point is 01:14:50 If you guys enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show on whatever podcast application you use. Just search for We Study Billionaires. The Bitcoin-specific shows come out every Wednesday, and I'd love to have you as a regular listener. If you enjoyed the show or you learned something new or you found it valuable, if you can leave a review, we would really appreciate that. and it's something that helps others find the interview in the search algorithm. So anything you can do

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We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC092: Bitcoin Energy & Custody w/ Parker Lewis & Will Cole (Bitcoin Podcast)

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