Twitter Spaces Transcript: The Evolution of Mining Pools with Ethan Vera

Synopsis: 

‍Ethan Vera, Co-Founder at Luxor Tech, joins Will Szamosszegi and Kent Halliburton to discuss the role that mining pools play in the Bitcoin ecosystem, the differences between firmware and software, and whether or not the centralization of mining is antithetical to the Bitcoin community's ethos.

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Link to Audio: 

https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1rmGPkWOBVLKN?s=20

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Transcript: 

Ethan Vera (00:01:29):

Hey, good afternoon.

Logan Chipkin (00:01:31):

Hey, good afternoon Ethan. Thanks so much for joining. Let's give everyone maybe a minute or so and I'll do a little introducing Will. Good afternoon. How are you?

Will Szamosszegi (00:01:42):

I'm doing great, man. Long time, no speak <laugh>.

Logan Chipkin (00:01:46):

Yes sir.

Ethan Vera (00:01:47):

Hey Will.

Will Szamosszegi (00:01:48):

Hey, great to see you. Ethan. How have you been?

Ethan Vera (00:01:52):

Good. This is my first Twitter spaces in like maybe six, seven months.

Will Szamosszegi (00:01:58):

Oh wow. You

Ethan Vera (00:01:58):

Bring me back outta retirement here.

Will Szamosszegi (00:02:01):

Yeah. Well I'm excited to hear what you have to share. You always bring up new ideas that I feel like being in the space you follow? We follow a lot of things, but I feel like every single time we've talked, you've blown my mind in a few ways.

Logan Chipkin (00:02:35):

Just one moment everyone. I'm trying to get Kent up here. I think we actually had this slight issue last time. Oh, Kent. Cuz you requested. Okay, one sec. Yeah, yeah. Cancel. request. Here we go. Here we go. Kent. Connecting. Yeah, same thing as last time. That's right. What happens is I invite Kent at the same time or that Kent request anyway. Doesn't matter. Anyway. Hey Kent, how are you?

Kent Halliburton (00:03:08):

Good Logan. Glad we work through it. We're getting quicker, at least

Logan Chipkin (00:03:13):

<laugh>. Totally. So, okay I know we only have Ethan for half an hour, so I'll go ahead and kick us off. Welcome everyone to SA Mining second ever Twitter spaces. We're very excited for you all to be here. My name's Logan, Logan Chikin. I'm with SaaS Mining and our guest today is Ethan Vera co-founder of Luxury Technologies and we also have Ken Halliburton, COO and president of SaaS Mining as well as Will Sam, CEO of SA Mining. But I think guess go first. So Ethan, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself.

Ethan Vera (00:03:46):

Yeah, thanks for hosting this guys. So my name's Ethan. I work for a company called Lucker. We run mining pool as well as software services. Been spending quite a bit of time in this space over the past half decade. Love kind of the mining pool side of things as well as data analysis. So excited to cover those topics today and then jump into the weed zone some stuff.

Logan Chipkin (00:04:13):

Yeah, we're all definitely very excited to learn a more about kind of luxer and mining pools. So do you wanna quickly introduce yourself and then we'll do Kent and then we'll go ahead and start talking about mining tools.

Will Szamosszegi (00:04:25):

Yeah thank you Logan. My name's William Sim SegY. I'm the CEO and founder at SA Mining. I also host the podcast where I've had the pleasure of speaking with Ethan the number of times and looking forward to the conversation today.

Kent Halliburton (00:04:44):

Yeah, will great to have you here from the get go this time. So my name's Kent Halliburton, president and CEO SA Mining who run the internal operations for the business and have a background in solar energy before coming to SA Mining. And I have met Ethan a couple times on some Zoom calls, but first time that I'm gonna be learning from him directly. So really eager to learn more about the evolution of mining pools in your experience, Ethan?

Logan Chipkin (00:05:16):

Yeah, so Ethan, I wonder if you can kick us off even before we explain what mining pools are, or maybe this will be part of your answer, but high level, what problem does Luxor Technologies solve in the first place?

Ethan Vera (00:05:30):

Yeah, let me start on the mining pool side because we do touch on quite a bit of the software services stack of mining. So mining pools really came about in 2011. Basically at that time there was an increasing amount of people competing on the Bitcoin network running CPUs and then GPOs. So much so that it became very improbable that if you're mining yourself, you would find one of every 140 blocks per day. And so your cadence of block fine just became to a point where you're looking at maybe months before you would find a block and get paid for your work. And so if you have an electricity bill every month, it's not really great to mismatch your revenue and your cost by so much. And so the first mining pool launched by Slush was basically a way to increase that cadence by grouping together minors.

(00:06:21):

So instead of say the four of us mining individually, the four of us would pull together a hash rate and increase the chances that we hit a block. And then if the block actually got hit, we'd distributed out amongst ourselves based on contributed hash power. The industry really went through an innovative change in 2013, so a couple years following that, the first ever pool called Bit Penny launched which utilized a payment method called Paper Share PPS for short. Essentially what this methodology did was it calculated the expected value of hash rate and it paid out minors upfront for their hatch rate contributions. And what that did effectively was it took the mining luck factor out of mining for individual minors. And so everyday mins got paid based on the amount of hash rate they contributed and they didn't have to worry about whether the pool found more or less blocks than it should have.

(00:07:18):

That logic has since been extended to something we call full paper share or fpps for short, where basically we take the expected value of both block reward the subsidy, as well as transaction fees, and we estimate how much each share is worth from an ASIC and we can pay out minors based on the expected value of that hash rate. And so that's effectively what Lux runs today is a full paper share mining pool where we partner with mining farms, they send us hash rate to our stratums, we credit their account and Bitcoin throughout the day and then pay them out every say 24 hours based on the value of the hash rate they provide. So that's very high level kind of the history of mining pools and the problem luxury solves for minors is we provide a means for them to get paid for their hash rate in a kind of consistent manner without too much of a technical lift.

Logan Chipkin (00:08:13):

And I was reading about this profit switching. I wonder if you can touch on that. What exactly is profit shift switching and how does that work into what Luxer does for minors?

Ethan Vera (00:08:25):

Yeah, profit switching is an interesting topic. So it began with our thoughts that on one hashing algorithm like Shock 2 56 or equa hash or script, there's multiple blockchains built on top of it. For example, Shock 2 56 has Bitcoin being the primary one, but it also has a number of other coins too. And so the theory was that at certain points in the day, it may be more profitable to mine on one blockchain versus the other. And so you could create a smart switching algorithm that basically jumps between blockchains on the same hashing algorithm to maximize uplift. We saw this really play out for some hashing algorithms. Equihash on average beat the main chain being C cash by 7%. And then in Eha it's quite popular because there's so many GP amenable coins. It never really came to fruition in shot 2 56 because Bitcoin is just by far the most profitable from a BDC per tesh basis out of any of the chains.

(00:09:24):

So you'd rarely kind of jump to any of the other shot 2 56 chains. So that's kind of how we thought about the logic originally was profit switching between blockchains. But if you think about that kind of theory, you can extend it to not only blockchains but also to other uses of the energy. And so what we've seen a lot this year, especially with the development in North America is the idea of demand response. So you're gonna be turning off your machines during points in time that the grid is paying more for electricity than you would be making money from mining Bitcoin or another blockchain. And so you can conceptualize your mining operation is basically, you can do a lot of things with that energy. You can use it for mining Bitcoin, you can mind different blockchain you can turn it off, you can use it for another form of compute. And so I think that's how a lot of minors and data centers will work in the future is smart switching across different use cases for that electricity and excited to see how that space develops.

Logan Chipkin (00:10:29):

Yeah, that's definitely a very interesting higher level technology. So do you find that, and maybe you don't interact with customers in this way, but with the technology constantly improving and making mining even more efficient, it sounds like on the surface that one would have to be even more knowledgeable about how the technology works in order to get into the game, whereas I imagine business now you can outsource a lot of that complexity. So do you find that as the technology continues to mature, people are more or less intimidated to get into let's say crypto or bitcoin mining in the first place?

Ethan Vera (00:11:10):

Yeah, well I think we'll probably have some good takes here, so I'd love to hear his thoughts. I think overall this cycle of 2021 brought in a lot of new participants into the industry, many of which are come from pretty impressive backgrounds working at data centers in the energy field in finance. And so the level of talent we brought into the industry, the last boom cycle was really encouraging to see a lot of smart folks. So I think over time as the industry matures economics improve we'll start to see more and more top talent come in. And so the type of technology, the level of infrastructure build out I think will continue to get better alongside the human capital coming in as well as just learning mistakes. If you look back three, four years ago at all the immersion builds going on, a lot of them went very poorly. Whereas now we have the benefit of having learned from some of the mistakes as others that others have made. Don't hydro cool with contaminated water, don't set up water walls in certain areas there. There's good learnings from others' mistakes. And so I think technology and infrastructure is consistently improving on the space and today we're sitting at a spot that's much better than any other pastime in Bitcoin history.

Logan Chipkin (00:12:32):

Yeah, I was looking at a chart recently I forget it was some Bitcoin Q3 report and it was basically about the efficiency gains in, I think it was mining hardware and it was very impressive. I mean something that's exciting about Bitcoin is I think unlike some other industries is that the people in it the entrepreneurs, the developers, everyone, they're very passionate about why they're there. And so they're very driven to improve the product and not just sit on their laurels. I don't know if you see that in the mining pool side of things, but I know we certainly see it at SA mining and bringing more retail customers into Bitcoin proper.

Ethan Vera (00:13:13):

Yeah, I think while the pools have been innovating, obviously the key metric to look at is just innovation on the ASIC front. And so it's been encouraging to see Bitmain BTE consistently improving on their past generations and we'll see, maybe they'll have the S 21 next year that's maybe sub 20 jewels per te hash and is using five nanometer below chips in 20 years. The goal is to have a machine that takes a hundred watts of power and generates 50 pet aha and maybe in 20 years that type of innovation is possible. So I think it's good for the network to keep improving this. I mean the more security on the network the better. And so although minors obviously don't love when network difficulty jumps up as it will on Monday coming up here, but from a network perspective it's really great to see more and more security for the network and harder and harder to attack.

Logan Chipkin (00:14:14):

Yeah, completely agree of course. So speaking of hardware, I wonder if we can do a Bitcoin mining 1 0 1 with you, Ethan while we have you here. So could you explain the difference between hardware and firmware as it relates to Bitcoin mining in particular?

Ethan Vera (00:14:33):

Yes. So the difference between hardware and firmware. So hardware to me, I guess minors, everyone throws a lot around a lot of terms in this industry. So it's hard to keep track of what's what, for example, people label companies or individuals as minors, but they also label machines as minors, which gets quite confusing. Yes. So hard hardware to me refers to the entire mining machine, including the asics that are on the machine, but also including all the other components that are built in to let it run. So the chips are coming from different foundries around the world, tsmc, Samsung, sm but then they're being assembled by these manufacturers, Bitmain Micro, BT Canon, and some others. And so to me, the hardware is kind of created by these manufacturers using components, the asics from tsmc. And so the hardware providers are the Bitmain micro BD canons of the world ware.

(00:15:32):

Really from a nonengineering perspective, the simplest way to think about it is like software installed onto hardware. And so each of these machines come with firmware on the machine already that allow it to perform certain functions. And so you kind of need that firmware component as a manufacturer to start selling a machine that operates. Now there's been attempts and products out there at third party firmware where companies that are not the manufacturers are creating firmware for these devices, companies like Brains and Ish and ASIC Ear and Hive on. So there's kind of these third party companies that are creating firmware that can do certain things, overclock the machines beyond their spec they can do things like undervolt or auto tuning of the chips a number of other more custom features that currently the machines can't do specifically for Bitmain units. The S nine series of 17 series and now 19 are the big areas that there's a lot of custom third party firmware.

Logan Chipkin (00:16:40):

And do you see eventually in the future to be competitive in Bitcoin mining at all, you'll kind of have to join a pool or do you think that's kind of already evolving towards that being the case fairly soon? Or if so, if you think it'll eventually become almost necessary to join a pool, it'll become, So this goes back to what we were talking about with respect to ease of access. It'll become so easy to join a pool that it won't be such a big deal and that Bitcoin mining could become just synonymous with, Well yeah, of course I'm in a pool that's a given.

Ethan Vera (00:17:14):

I think it's already there. So if you look at a Bitcoin block explorer, every single block that's being hit in the past, I don't know how many blocks is by a pool there may be select cases where a company like Marathon is running their own pool where there's no nobody else contributing. And so you could kind of classify that as self mining. They've still built some of the mining pool components that a normal mining pool runs, but they are kind of self mining in certain senses outside of Marathon. There's really no nobody else really hitting blocks. Occasionally you'll see a headline where a solo minor hit a Bitcoin block, but maybe that's like once or twice a year. And so 99.9% of the hash rate rate now is being dedicated to one out of 20 mining pools or so that are hashing onto the network today.

Logan Chipkin (00:18:11):

Oh, sorry.

Kent Halliburton (00:18:12):

Yeah, I just wanted to jump in with a quick question that I've seen come up quite a bit and you're the right expert to ask Ethan, but during this whole transition the Ethereum went through to proof of stake, it often came up that hey, Bitcoin centralized because the mining pools and in the same way that that Bitcoiners have talked about proof of stake being centralized by the centralization of the stake, Maybe you could speak to why it's different in proof of work, Ethan?

Ethan Vera (00:18:45):

Sure. Yeah. So I mean it's hard to compare fully proof of work versus proof of stake on this because there's a lot of differences on some proof of stake chains and there's differences in proof of work chains as well. But specifically talking about Bitcoin proof of work versus theory and proof of stake I think largely the difference with mining pools in Bitcoin is that they're inherently permissionless. So mining pools are made up of a collection of asics point A at the stratum that are contributing hash rate to that pool. At any point in time, somebody who owns the machine being a minor that contributes to the pool can go and reconfigure their stratum address in their machine to point to a different pool if they disagree with that pool for whatever reason, maybe that pool is doing something like pullin where they're not paying out to their minors and so it's harming them economically or maybe they are doing something that they philosophically disagree with, maybe they're not signaling for taproot or something in that nature.

(00:19:51):

And so really the key with minors is that if you own your asic, you own the hash and the governance and autonomy that comes with that. That's not really true for staking, although there are some attempts at more decentralized staking pools, but by every mean right now the major pools are all permission systems where if you're lending out your E to that pool you cannot kind of go in and immediately withdraw it within a millisecond without the permission of that staking pool provider. And so that inherently creates centralization risk where now you're giving up control to the central entity in the staking system. Whereas in the mining system, even though pools, the top 15 pools represent 95% plus of the hash rate, realistically they can't keep their customers there. Maybe they have legal contracts to keep them on for extended period of time, but they can't physically keep them there because whoever controls their ASIC controls where the hash points.

Kent Halliburton (00:20:56):

That makes a lot of sense. I guess I'm wondering though, is there still a potential centralization risk if we see all the hash aggregated just to a couple pools or what do you think about how the distribution of hash rates should exist between the mining pools? Cuz certainly if it gets down to a single mining pool, there's no place to switch to.

Ethan Vera (00:21:20):

Yeah, I think it's for sure something we should be tracking and usually the perception of it is actually more damaging than the reality of it. But there, there's been a few examples of this in history. So at one point GHA shot io, which was one of the major mining pools a half decade ago closed in on 40% hash rate of the entire network, which is getting close to what you'd consider like 51% being attack level. And so they actually scaled back pool hash rate themselves so that they wouldn't reach that they're incentivized to protect the network from risk of at least perceived centralization. So it was kind of in their best interest to play ball. The other two examples that were kind of top of mind was Bitmain is the owner of MP Pool. They used to be the owner of bdc.com and they had a significant investment in via BTC and amongst three pools, they had over 50% of the network at a time.

(00:22:20):

Of course, they kind of hid that through three different entities, so it didn't really appear that way, but they did used to be quite large and way too large actually, thankfully now btc.com has spun off, it's now one by a company called Bit Mining via BTC also is out of control of Bitmain. So their entities are broken up and they don't aggregate to 50% anymore today. But that was a risk. And then also just how many pools were in China was also a risk at one point it was like 75, 80% of the hash rate was like by companies that have headquarters in Beijing. And so in the case that the government there wanted to crack down on Bitcoin, they could have rounded up some of the pool operators, maybe staged something quickly. I don't know how successful that would've been, but it could have been attempted. And so the Chinese mining band was I think a net positive for mining. Not only was hatch rate distributed at the infrastructure level, but also at the pool level too. North American pools have definitely risen in market share. A lot of those Chinese pools have moved offshore and now their management team and engineering teams reside in Singapore and other places. So I think that was a net positive event.

Logan Chipkin (00:23:38):

Thank you for that, Ethan. Yeah, I agree with your assessment of the Chinese band, although that was interesting for a whole host of reasons but I digress. By the way, we only have Ethan for another seven, eight minutes or so. If anyone has questions for Ethan, anything related to mining pools or luxer anything else feel free to raise your hand and I'll bring you up to the stage. And if not, I certainly have a question but let's see if anyone has a question

Will Szamosszegi (00:24:06):

For I'll ask a Oh, go ahead. I'm not sure how quick it'll be but one of the most common questions that a lot of people who are in mining get asked is how resilient is the network? There's a discussion a lot of the time saying, Hey, if you have a handful of tools that all decide to go and collude, is there anything aside from the game theory perspective that you think A, as someone who understands mining pools at a deep level that you can share with everyone else who might just be referencing the game theory perspective, why people wouldn't want to collude and corrupt the network?

Ethan Vera (00:24:46):

Yeah, it's interesting. I think proof of work was designed so that if people are rational economic actors there's not a threat on the network. Of course, we know in reality that can get distorted quite often and new situations arise. And so I wouldn't rely on this as a way to defend a decentralized network, but definitely the philosophical nature of the people that are participating does add an extra level of protection against this. And so for example, if another mining pool came to us and said, Okay, let's all collude to push past bit one nine the new Bitcoin proposal we would immediately exit that discussion and basically not even entertain it because I don't really care what the other mining pools are doing. I'm trying to represent the minors that are contributing to my mud pool and in no way do I even want to know what the other mining pools are thinking that that's a philosophical answer to it, which isn't how you wanna build a system, but it does add extra layers of protection that I think the operators that are running mining pools for the most part are in Bitcoin because they believe in it and they want to protect it.

(00:25:59):

And so there, there's an element of being a responsible guardian of this network, both as a minor and as a pool operator too. But there there's certainly are potential attack vectors that you could think of. One of the interesting attack vectors I was thinking of the other day is when a mining pool goes to negative fees it's really easy for them to attract hash rate on a short-term basis. SBI used to do these specials, they'd be like negative 20, 30 basis point fees. It's even easy for them to convince other pools to then point their house rate at their pool because now they're, instead of earning X amount of dollars from the network, they're earning X plus Y given the negative fee and they're not taking luck risk. And so I think those negative fee specials are an interesting way to quickly aggregate hash rate from potentially other mining pools too which could lead to short term centralization. But ultimately I think the nature of the network as exists today and the close monitoring of pools by miners protects it from any kind of bad behavior towards the overall network.

Kent Halliburton (00:27:17):

Well, it doesn't look like we were getting too many questions from the audience here. So I'll tee off another one to you, Ethan, but one of the things that I have seen a lot of discussion on is that there's sort of a race to the bottom on fees for a Bitcoin mining pool and it does seem like or on operating a Bitcoin mining pool, and it does seem like there's yourself at Lux or I know Brains is also doing something similar, but it seems like there's an effort underway to offer ancillary services to try to bring people to the mining pools, almost like the mining pool is the loss leader for the business model and then the ancillary services are how you can really keep your business afloat. Can you speak to that trend at all if what I'm saying is accurate and what that might look like in the future?

Ethan Vera (00:28:09):

Yeah, so we first saw that come about two and a half years ago with the launch of Binance and OK Mining Pool. It was kind of the first time that large financial services firms were looking at getting into the pool space as a way to drive volume to some of their other products including exchange products. And since then we've seen some other kind of financial services companies come into the pool space. So those mind pools have driven fees lower just given that they can make revenue in other capacities. I'm curious to see how that lasts given the market today. But that certainly has been the trend for the past two years. Mining pools do act as a really nice kind of central hub for minors to access different services, whether financial or operational. And so it makes sense that people are launching mining pools to offer all these other value add services that they can monetize on and create a sticker ecosystem.

(00:29:10):

I just think in depressed economics like we're seeing today, hash price is about to drop past below $80 a pash a day. Again coming up on Monday service providers likely are not making a lot of money across all the products they offer. So where historically they probably made a lot of money on financing, custody exchange, that sort of thing falling quite a bit. And so it may go back to a place where kind of that negative fee trend reverts and we start to see fees kind of come up again in this market just given the other lines of business aren't that profitable and can't justify the pool on that much luck risk. So it's just hypothesis, I guess we'll see how it actually plays out.

Kent Halliburton (00:29:58):

Well yeah, I know you're coming up against the clock here Ethan, and I think it's a good time to speak to what you're doing specifically at Lux or, I mean I see you guys at least on the brain's Insight a list. You guys are the number nine mining pool at the moment. What are you guys doing to differentiate yourselves and add value beyond just being a mindful provider?

Ethan Vera (00:30:23):

So we kind of found the company based on retail clients. That was like 2017 and up until now too, we think it's a really important part of the ecosystem is servicing. I say retail very broadly, let me say servicing not only the kind of large institutional 5,000 megawatt on grid mins, we think it's really important there's gonna be smaller mins out there. And so we've always kind of taken that approach when we're building product. Everything from kind of user interface to API to relationship with our minors is kind of geared towards that more personal hands on relationship with them and really trying to help these types of clients grow. And that's where we've seen a lot of success. We have a lot of great partners across North America and globally, guys that have two to 30 petta hash and we're trying to help them scale procure asics at a good price, find hosting all of these other kind of areas that they can grow their business.

(00:31:22):

So yeah, we've really focused on that. At the same time we do need to also think about the large scale institutional, often publicly listed mining companies. So we've really made a big push into auditability of the platform, the payments, how do we get to a point where we can work with a big four accounting firm auditing and really make them feel comfortable about it which we do today. And then increase our things additional safeguards like we're doing external pen tests KYC ML policy. We're very close to getting our SOC two type two, which will come in probably end of November this year. So continuing to push on both fronts there. Ultimately this mining pool industry is very cutthroat. People, A across all business development teams on the pools are constantly reaching out to everyone to try and get them to the pool. I think that type of nature is good. It keeps all of us honest and innovating and need to add additional value. So although it's a competitive industry and sometimes we lose clients, sometimes we lose pitches. I think it's just a good means for us to continue to innovate and build and ship new product.

Kent Halliburton (00:32:34):

Yeah. Well I know that your innovation and the trajectory you've been on that's caused us to choose you as our primary mining pool as we launch our facility here in the next couple months. So thank you for doing what you're doing. I do know you need to go, but I will turn it over to or will if either of you would like to say something.

Logan Chipkin (00:32:56):

No, I mean you sound it up, Kent. Ethan, we really appreciate your time. It's very exciting. It's very fun to learn about the evolution of mining pools, their history, and also in particular what you and Luxer have been doing both in collaboration with us and more generally for the Bitcoin community. So I know we all very much appreciate your work

Ethan Vera (00:33:13):

And we appreciate you guys too. Thanks for hosting this space and we're excited to follow along the SA mining journey. You guys are building some cool products, so excited to be a part of it.

Logan Chipkin (00:33:24):

Thanks, Ethan. Thanks for joining.

Ethan Vera (00:33:26):

Thank

Logan Chipkin (00:33:27):

You. Thanks, bye.

(00:33:31):

All right. So that was Ethan Vera Lu Technologies. I hope everyone here enjoyed that. I don't know about Kent and Will maybe they'll have time to stick around, but certainly I have some time as well. So if anyone has questions related to anything really regarding Bitcoin, Bitcoin mining Bitcoin and energy, Bitcoin and climate change the three of us are certainly around at least for a little while. So feel free to raise your hand, come up on the stage or if you've questioned our comment about Bitcoin current events, we're also happy to talk about that too. But before anyone or I guess while we're waiting for people to raise their hands I had kind of a thought that I would like to run by Will and Kent it's kind of high level, but I'm Kent will kind of know what I'm talking about. But I'm seeing a lot of clashes in the Bitcoin community over what form of energy should we favor?

(00:34:25):

Do we wanna, Well, I guess the disagreement is over what energy form should we favor? But we all agree, I think in the Bitcoin community that ESG is the wrong way to go. And it's interesting because Bitcoin mining is basically Satoshi's second revolution, the first being money, the second being energy. And so I see this kind of civilization scale battle between ESG and Bitcoin mining. And in the meantime, Bitcoiners themselves are fighting over which form of energy we should be pursuing where, whereas the solution to me is just have as much of a free market and energy as possible and let the chips fall where they may and let Bitcoin mining do its thing in revolutionizing our relationship with energy.

Will Szamosszegi (00:35:12):

Hearing you go through that Logan, there are a million ways that you can address all those different points. I would say that initially, my first thought is I think that as an industry, we have been in many ways attacked through this energy narrative. And I think that at our core as Bitcoiners Princip, our principles show that we favor free market. We don't want corruption, we want an immutable currency, and we want a society where you have sound money. And I think that that's one of the beautiful things about Bitcoin. Now, taking that a step further to the mining side, I think that mining is the revolutionary technology that you see for the energy sector. And so a lot of people I mean even look at SA mining, right? We believe that it's good to mine with economically viable forms of energy, but at the end of the day, we're focused on pursuing a lot of these renewable or carbon negative energy sources.

(00:36:13):

One is because that's where we have to adapt and we feel like that's where the puck's going. But on top of that, I mean it's also just an economically viable solution right now you're seeing if you wanna begin mining Bitcoin, you would much rather do it with energy that is cheap somewhere in the ballpark under 10 cents per kilowatt hour, then a power source that is far above that. And so it's interesting to see because let's say that you take a 1000 foot view and you look at the Bitcoin network today, and then where the Bitcoin network's going over the long run, the cheaper, more efficient operators, you're gonna see them win. And that comes down to the people who can get the cheaper energy. Now, how are you gonna find the cheapest energy? Well, you find cheap energy in areas where there are stranded power assets.

(00:37:04):

So underutilized power assets where the Bitcoin miners can bootstrap those and create value through mining. But then one of the big areas that the bitcoin mining community has been talking about here is methane capture. So if you go and you take this current pollutive product that is being released into the atmosphere and there's no economic incentive to capture it, all of a sudden you introduce mining, that is the cheapest form of energy that you have available because it's currently waste. And so when you take, going back to the initial point, when you take a long time horizon, this industry of Bitcoin mining is going to incentivize people to go carbon negative. And one of my current hot takes, which I would say a very few people out there currently how we're talking about is that eventually proof of work and the Bitcoin network becomes carbon negative industry based on where the incentives are going. That's just a prediction. But I do think that as you see the incentives begin to play out, and as you see more havings and the Bitcoin network becoming more and more competitive, that the cheaper forms of energy win and the cheapest forms of energy today are the ones that are currently not being used. So I, I'll pause there and pass it over to you.

Logan Chipkin (00:38:34):

Yeah, that was great. Oh, sorry, Kent, did you have something to say?

Kent Halliburton (00:38:38):

Well, I think actually yeah, I do. I think for me, you, you're touching, and we talked about this offline Logan, but for me this is actually a real core hot button topic coming from solar. And I started my solar career before even the label ESG existed. And to see it co-opted by the top down ESG movement has definitely been disappointing because I think that there is a lot of valuable insights that come from the renewables industry. But I think that I like to separate the difference between esg top down ESG and esg. And I know that's a kind of split in a fine fine hair on that, but I see a lot of division within the community on different forms of energy. And I think a lot of it is just simply a reaction to the top down ESG policies as to why a lot of bitcoiners don't embrace renewables.

(00:39:42):

And there's an excellent quote, I just retweeted from Troy, who's an advisor that I feel very similar about, which is every energy source in the right application can be not every energy source, but every energy source has its particular application. And when used appropriately can benefit all of us through the grid. And from where I sit, the real enemy in the room that should unite all Bitcoiners is the incentives that go towards all the various energy sectors, whether that's nuclear, fossil fuel, coal renewables, all of those distort the market prices. So at the end of the day, none of us actually know what is the most competitive or what's emerging out of the market as a result of this distortion. And so for me, I get a little disappointed when I see the community getting divided because I feel like we're sort of missing the forest for the trees and the forest is these incentives and we should all be pushing back and adamantly saying like, Hey, let's not allow any of these to come into the space so we can actually see what's competitive. Then we can see what truly the cheapest power is. And that cheapest power is what's ultimately going to drive Bitcoin finding, as will was talking about.

Logan Chipkin (00:41:05):

Yes agreed with that. By the way, Kent, at the very end you went, your voice went a little robot. I don't know if you went to a different room or if it's raining where you are or whatever, but just fyi speaking of Troy. So he said something very interesting on Dennis Porter's round table on, I guess it's his podcast, but I saw it on YouTube. I recommend it, by the way, to everyone who's interested in Bitcoin and energy, I really recommend that YouTube brown table. It was Dennis Porter, Troy Cross, Daniel Batten, and Nathaniel his last name, I forget. But he's working with basically using bitcoin mining to unlock oceanic energy and I guess using oceanic energy to unlock Bitcoin too. But that's part of the point anyway, so Troy was basically saying part of the beauty of Bitcoin mining is we can bypass the entire political debate.

(00:41:54):

He called it a shit storm, pardon me, for cursing. And he said, We can just bypass it and just do it ourselves, basically. And Daniel Baton was saying the same thing Daniel was saying. He used to go to these kind of climate protests, they would protest something or other happening, and it was purposeful, but ultimately he felt very despondent about the whole thing because what did they really get done? You know, can try to change a political apparatus, but it's very difficult. On the other hand, Bitcoin mining, we can just go out and do it like we're doing with SAS mining, we're using a hydro power and second facility maybe will be methane capture. So that's something I think is very important. So in a way, although the debate matters because ideas always matter and who thinks what always matters in a way, to your point Kent, the true that debate is way less important than the true fight against the top down esg because then they really do distort markets and that actually matters. So that the narrative, in other words, the narrative battle between which energy source is best we can bypass because it, they're not, no one's stopping us from doing what we want, if you like, but the people who are stopping us and distorting the markets, to your point, Kent, are the governments, the ESG folks, and those are the people we need to defeat in the narrative war. And that we're hopefully we're gonna do that in large part thanks to the efforts of the research of Daniel Baton and Troy Cross and Dennis Porter and so on.

Will Szamosszegi (00:43:17):

Yeah I would say going off of that, I think that we all play our own role in this. And this is one of the things that not to she mining or talk too much about that the company, but I think is our role in which we're playing in the ecosystem, which is today you see a lot of minors and if you wanted to get into mining today, you're looking at, it's a much different proposition than if you were looking to begin mining four years ago or five years ago. It's just a lot more professional, There's a lot more institutional players, and as bad as it sounds, a lot of it's driven on relationships. So if you're one of the newcomers or you don't have a big pocket book, then you're just not gonna get access to be able to buy rigs at the prices that a marathon or one of these larger miners is gonna get simultaneously.

(00:44:11):

It's just very few people out there have millions of dollars laying around to be able to get started in mining. And so that's one of the areas where in the long term, I think that what builds resilience and builds the social fabric of Bitcoin is by finding an OnRamp to be able to get more people into Bitcoin and into bitcoin mining. And yeah, as you mentioned, at the end of the day every minor is part of the network. We can talk about the exact energy source that each minor uses, but so long as the minor's economically viable, they can go in mine however they want so long as they're not going and getting their machines turned off by force. But just how it's very difficult for I mean, you can even look at China, one of the most authoritarian regimes in the entire world. They tried banning Bitcoin mining in China, and then not too long after you saw a blossoming black market for Bitcoin mining there.

(00:45:13):

So I just think it's one of those things that when it's decentralized and you have a system set up in the way that Bitcoin mining is set up, it makes it very, very resilient. And that's one of the things that gives me hope and I think gives a lot, you see, giving a lot of people hope in Bitcoin is because of that resilience. It's something you can trust which you definitely can't say for many fiat currencies out there. So it's truly incredible to be living in a time where you can participate in this network, find your own niche within it, and then see how the world changes around you and shoots you forward.

Logan Chipkin (00:45:54):

Yeah, and it's in 2022 in particular, I think is a really Well, I guess every year since Satoshi's white paper is a good year to get into Bitcoin, but in particular this year to my mind is really the year in which the Bitcoin mining is good for our relationship with energy and the environment that it's the year that narrative has really taken a crystalline form, and I think it's in a very important year because we're seeing inflation is rampant across the world largely due to covid policies from the couple of years before. And also we're seeing chaos in energy markets and Bitcoin fixes the inflation side and Bitcoin mining fixes the energy side again, provided basically that the ESG control freaks don't stop us. And I say that because I basically think it's too late for governments to stop Bitcoin. I mean, they can implement their CBD cs but I was telling someone this yesterday, Oh, I think it was mic, but I don't know, call me naive, but I don't think, at least in the western world that I'm familiar with, I don't think that's gonna be popular enough to catch on.

(00:47:05):

Like, Oh yeah, sign me up for a currency that you can just shut down if you don't like my opinion I'm in, who's gonna be for that? I think the energy is gonna be a slightly trickier sell. But again, I think we can win that narrative war and even look in the White House report recently even, and they, frankly it, the way it was written, it sounded like whoever wrote it didn't really know too much of what they were talking about, but even they mentioned Bitcoin, mining's ability to mitigate methane emissions, which is an extremely good sign. I mean, just imagine if a Cynthia Loomis becomes president, let you know right now the administration I would say all else being equal, they're probably anti Bitcoin, although I don't hear them talking about it that much. But if even they are admitting to some of the benefits, just imagine if as we get more Bitcoin politicians in the West, or at least in the United States, how much easier of a time we'll have.

Kent Halliburton (00:48:03):

Absolutely. Logan, I'm curious to hear from audience on this what are your thoughts and views on the state of things and this narrative war that we're going through at the moment and how Bitcoin mining fits into it? Because I personally feel like it's Bitcoin mining is at the epicenter of almost everything right now and this fight for freedom that we're all participating in, whether we're choosing to or not,

Will Szamosszegi (00:48:34):

And as people are raising their hands to come up. One point that I thought was really interesting that Ethan had touched on is the business model around mining pools. I mean, our business that says mining, we're not focused on the mining pool side of things. So I'm relaying things that I've heard by speaking with Ethan and other people involved in that realm. But it seems like you have this incentive where all these minor mining pools are competing over the hash rate and competing over those big minors who have these facilities. And I actually think that that's really healthy cuz it incentivizes them to not try and take advantage of the minors who are actually going and building up the facilities and incentivizes them to go and build strong add-on services. So I know Luxer is involved with a lot of things outside of just the aggregation of hash rate.

(00:49:32):

I think that one of the things that was really interesting was some of the things that bins pool some of those incentives that they can offer people who go and focus on putting their hash rate and liquidity onto Binance. I'd be curious though if anyone else out there has any other insights into how pools are looking at this or if Kent, if you are, or Logan, if you have looked into this because I think that this plays an important role in the incentives within the mining industry because the mining pools, at the end of the day when we talk about why Bitcoin is sound money, why do you see all these amazing properties in Bitcoin? Mining pools are one of the biggest advocates in the sense of making sure that everything's working properly, but also one of the biggest that you have for the entire network. And yeah, that's one of the things that Ethan also touched on right before you had to leave.

Kent Halliburton (00:50:44):

Well, I would comment on it, but I had some audio issues, so I didn't actually hear your full question there. Maybe Logan's got some thoughts.

Logan Chipkin (00:50:54):

No, I don't Not in particular with respect to what other mining pools are doing in particular although I loved Will's point in particular about just the competition. Actually, Will and I were kind of talking about something sort of related if I can make a general point, people really underestimate the regulating force that is competition alone. So contrary to what the ESG folks say, they'll say something like basically without top down government control will never hit our carbon targets and so on and so forth. But the truth is, to the extent that consumers, which are just people after all value going carbon negative, then companies do adapt. And you already see this in a lot of other industries. People will brag that they're environmentally friendly and so on and so forth. So that's just kind of my let's say free markets here come out. But I see that Neo is up. Neo, are you on stage?

Speaker 5 (00:51:55):

Yes, I am. Can you hear me okay?

Logan Chipkin (00:51:58):

I can hear you perfectly. How you doing?

Speaker 5 (00:52:00):

Great. Great. Thanks for putting together this face. Great topic. I have a question. I see the SA mining, it says in your Twitter description bio, it says big mining should be as easy as signing up for streaming subscription. Could you share with me what's your vision for that? Because obviously I'm interested in also in homem mining I understand the economies of scale for big minors like R and all those, but I'm also interesting to see how do you see the evolution of home mining and how do you think it will add to the decentralized piece on the big mining network?

Kent Halliburton (00:53:04):

Yeah, I can try to take that one, Neil. So I think hope mining is always gonna play a really important role. And I think that if you're a home minor right now, my hat's off to you, there's a lot that can be done to offset some of the electricity costs with utilizing the heat. That's what I see the most effective home miners are doing at the moment. But we built our platform actually to be the space that is the person that wants the benefits of passive income and the bitcoin mining opportunity, but lacks the desire to go learn all the technical side. So our approach is to aggregate customer demand and funnel that towards a facility to be able to get the power prices and the mining rig prices at the same rates that the riots of the world are able to do. So it's a unique model out there.

(00:54:05):

And this is gonna sound like a shield, but because you asked the question, I'll tell you what makes us particularly unique is that we're not asking for all the capital upfront for the mining rigs we're doing more of a Tesla cyber truck model. So for a bit less than a hundred dollars, you can reserve a mining rig, and then when it's ready to go, you pay the price of the mining rig, which currently is 4,000 per one 10 s, 19, 1 10, and then we actually don't mark up the mining rigs or the power price. Instead what we do is we share the mining rewards with you. So that alignment of incentives means that we do not actually get any rewards for ourselves unless you are. So I senses us to keep high uptime for your mining rig. So we're trying to be a bit easier than a home minor in the technical side but also try to get access to some of the low prices that are available to the big players. Hope that answers your question.

Speaker 5 (00:55:14):

Yeah. And is it non kyc?

Kent Halliburton (00:55:18):

It is at this moment. If regulations change and we're forced to change, we will, but right now it is non kyc.

Speaker 5 (00:55:30):

Great. Okay. Thanks for sharing one. I have one more comment regarding I know you were saying that there's a lot of conversation especially in Twitter on Twitter, about what type of energy is good for this and for big mining and you know, mentioned some of the round tables which by the way, I have it in my to-do list to listen that one you mentioned now, I think one of the benefits I think in you seeing more renewable sources would be that you put to bed, you know, kill all that NA narrative from certain governments. International organizations are frankly shotguns than CEOs that they keep hammering this narrative that Bitcoin is killing the planet and boiling the ocean. So I think in priority you're helping the environment because that should be number one priority, but kind of like side effects. Are you killing that narrative with the AL points? Let's put it more friendly, more friendly terms, and I think it's a two punch benefit. What do you think?

Kent Halliburton (00:56:59):

I couldn't agree with you more. We, so Will and I spoke about this when we decided to pivot to building this platform, and we made the strategic decision to escape to where we saw the P going, which was towards renewables for very PR pragmatic reasons. One was regulatory, and two I come from a solar background and watching the cost curves there, it seems pretty inevitable that at some point Bitcoin mining is gonna collide pretty heavily with solar specifically. So it was a very pragmatic decision for us but by embracing that decision, we can't avoid a lot of the top down regulations that are potentially coming to our industry.

Speaker 5 (00:57:48):

So do you see that as a risk if it doesn't get decentralized? In other words, if we keep having those big minors you feel like we're more at risk if in the future there's certain regulations that limit what they can do. And so even if they have to shut down,

Kent Halliburton (00:58:14):

I think that being a publicly traded minor right now is a position that has a target on it. And I think that strategically we are identifying behind the meter options. For that reason, we're looking for hosting plays that are not connected to grid energy directly, but were co-located and pulling directly from power producers. And part of that is to try to avoid what potentially could come down the pike. We really just don't know what the US is gonna do for regulation, but looking at what came out of the Office of Science and Technologies letter to the White House, was that the safest place to be is mitigating methane and being carbon neutral and not being on the grid. So as much as we're able to, I think that that's what we're going to target for our customers until there's better clarity as to what the US is going to do.

(00:59:25):

And we also think that there's opportunity outside the us I, I've spent a fair bit of time in Latin America and there's a lot to be said for different hydro opportunities down there. I think at this point the easiest renewable energy to tie into is hydro. and that's because the uptime with it, there's less variability. But in the long run, I think we're gonna get some better clarity on this as Bitcoin mining moves out of the political space. But I think we've probably got several more years before we get past this and have better clarity. So the best thing to do for a business standpoint is to try to just go to where the puck is going and position yourselves there.

Speaker 5 (01:00:14):

Since you mentioned Latin America is in your short list, given the natural resources when it comes to hydro last question that I'm done with this?

Kent Halliburton (01:00:28):

Yeah, it's all good. Yes. UA and UA have been, I live part-time in Peru actually, so even looking at some hydro and Peru is also on the docket for us, but we're at a point where we just need to get our first F few facilities going, validate our business model, and then we'll be off to the races and looking to get more diversified in different geographies.

Speaker 5 (01:00:58):

Thank you.

Kent Halliburton (01:00:59):

You're welcome,

Logan Chipkin (01:01:01):

Brian. Hey, good to see you again. Do you have a question?

Speaker 6 (01:01:08):

Oh, thanks for asking. I really am interested to listen in. I'm encouraged to hear that you're thinking about expanding into places like he mentioned Europe Y and Para. Why I am really encouraged by the model myself and I just wanna learn everything that I can about how you're going about it. So I don't have a specific question, but I do wanna say I'm glad to be a part of what you're doing.

Logan Chipkin (01:01:36):

Thanks, Brian. We appreciate that very much. By the way, whatever rollercoaster you're on, I hope that ride ends soon but we appreciate it.

Speaker 6 (01:01:46):

Sorry about that.

Logan Chipkin (01:01:47):

I'm only teasing. No worries. You are perfectly audible, I promise.

Kent Halliburton (01:01:54):

Yeah, good to have you on the journey with this, Brian. Thank you.

Will Szamosszegi (01:01:59):

Yeah, and I appreciate all the questions as well. One piece that I do also want to touch on from your question there was on the publicly traded mining companies and regulation, I think that, well, first off what Kent had mentioned, I think that that is a very important point, which is that when you're a publicly traded minor, you're under a lot more scrutiny than a lot of other minors. For example, when we say names like Riot or Marathon these are names that if you're a minor, who those companies are, but there are many large private operations and private minors that are operating that scale that don't necessarily see themselves as needing to go and be under the scrutiny under the public eye. I think it's gonna be interesting to see how that evolves. But on the regulation front, this is one thing that every minor has to be kind of <laugh>, like every minor has to be aware of.

(01:03:07):

Because no matter what, at the end of the day, you are to a certain extent at the whim of whatever the regulatory regime that you're under decides to do. And so for example, let's say you were a minor in China, or you were a minor in Russia or Kazakhstan or any of these places where minors ended up getting machines either shut down or seized. Well, that's a business risk. So at the end of the day, the safest thing you can do is take all the information that you have at that moment and ask yourself what's the best choice and is the additional potential profit worth the risk? And many times it really isn't worth that additional risk. And that's one of the reasons why at SA Mining, I know Ken had mentioned this, we're focused on places that we feel comfortable with the regulatory regime, or at least when you look at the United States, there is a higher level of private property rights than you would have in many other places.

(01:04:09):

So for example, let's say at the federal level in the us, they decide to try and attack the mining industry or ban mining. Then at the state level, you could have state governments that are very supportive of your mining because you're bringing jobs, you're helping the energy sector, you're supporting the local economy. And so in that case, it's not gonna be as easy as passing a ban at the federal level and shutting down your mining machines. They'll be a state for federal battle. And so these types of things are all considerations, and it's one of the reasons why at the end of the day mining has been unaccessible for the people with the smaller checkbooks. Because if you're going and you're taking all these things into account and you're an expert in the field, then you're gonna be mining with people at scale. Many times you wouldn't be going and taking in and running minors for smaller operators. And I think that at the end of the day, you gotta just can look at the landscape and make the best decision and do everything you can to make sure that your minor's up and running. And that's as Ken mentioned earlier, that's how we've approached it here at mine and with aligning incentives, trying to make sure that incentives are aligned for maximum uptime for customers and for ourselves. And I think in the long run that's gonna really help anyone begin mining Bitcoin.

Logan Chipkin (01:05:45):

Does anyone else have any questions? I know we're a couple minutes over, so I don't know if Kent and will have to go. I know I have to go a little bit soon. Brian, do you have any other questions? I see you're still on stage, if not, Kent do you have something to say? No. Okay.

Speaker 6 (01:06:04):

Actually, has there been any announcement about any of the installations that are kind of near where I might be able to see them? Kent and I have talked about it a little.

Kent Halliburton (01:06:17):

No, I don't think we're at the point yet Brian, where somebody could go out there and see them. I mean, we will be energizing December 1st and after that, the facility is actually something that I believe is available. The dam at least maybe not the Bitcoin mining side of things, but the dam itself is something that I do believe that they run public tours on. So at least you could see the mining operation from the outside if you wanted to swing by there. But we will definitely let you and other Wisconsin, Minnesota customers know when that's available. But if you've not seen it, we, our latest blog post on our website details a lot about the site. It's got a nice video on it and has some interesting tidbits as well about the construction of the site. I mean, it's, the one thing I'll say is that definitely built better equipment under the gold standard, which is continuing, which is the equipment that's continuing to operate that dam and create power. Pretty fascinating to see.

Speaker 6 (01:07:27):

I grew up on a lake that was built under that same standard and has a hydro plant that it's still operating today.

Kent Halliburton (01:07:37):

Yeah, this particular hydro facility is one of four, and they're all interconnected behind the meter on a single electrical line. And out of all four, each of which has at least two turbines on it, only one has had to have the drive shaft of the turbine replaced. And the age of that one that they had to replace was 102 years old. So when people say that equipment was built better under a gold standard, they're not kidding.

Speaker 5 (01:08:19):

I wish you one more question if nobody has any

Logan Chipkin (01:08:26):

Sure, go ahead. Go

Kent Halliburton (01:08:27):

For it.

Speaker 5 (01:08:29):

Yeah, I think I was I don't know if you follow this Twitter handle dirty coin, and they were saying that projection Bitcoin mining could go carbon neutral by fourth quarter of 2024 and then becoming even negative carbon in 2025. Do you see that as a feasible timeline?

Logan Chipkin (01:09:07):

Okay. You wanna take this one? I was gonna offer some thoughts.

Kent Halliburton (01:09:10):

Go for it. Go for it, Logan.

Logan Chipkin (01:09:12):

Sure. So I view it as aspirational but possible to Kent, what Kent was saying earlier about, funnily enough, perhaps if government regulations are such that Bitcoin miners are kind of pressured from the top down into mitigating using methane as an energy source I guess we could get there maybe not through the best means but the second thing I'll say is I don't really think it's a big deal even if we don't get there by 2024, I mean, that's only a year and a half away. But the point is certainly we can trend that way, especially if Bitcoin continues to harness both waste energy and energy that would've otherwise been unprofitable to begin with. Also an unknown that I don't see Daniel Baton emphasizing that I think he should, is that frankly, look, it's possible that Bitcoin never goes carbon negative because Bitcoin mins continue to employ carbon positive energy sources. Now, for sure, SaaS mining is, that's basically up to us. We choose which energy sources to employ, but of course, we don't have control over all of the Bitcoin miners in the world, nor should we. So it very much depends on those choices. And that in turn depends on the profitability that Will was talking about with respect to the revenue from the Bitcoin mining, minus the costs of the energy. And those things also are going to change over time in ways that are unpredictable.

(01:10:45):

I love a good, love a peace sign. Thank you. Ken. I don't know if you had anything else to add to that but if not, we can. Yeah, go ahead.

Kent Halliburton (01:10:56):

I don't have a lot to add to it. I will say that I agree with your characterization there and the right person to follow that has been doing most of the modeling on the Bitcoin network going carbon negative is Daniel Baton. And that panel that occurred in the last couple days, I know we've put it on the timelines of SA mining you can find it. There is a pretty good panel to do a deep dive on that. But it's all based on the idea that methane is a much more powerful and potent gas than carbon to the tune of about 84 times is powerful. So our offsetting of methane even if just a small portion of the network is offsetting, is powered by energy from methane, means that the entire network goes carbon negative. So I just wanted to make sure that there was some clarity for everybody on how you get an equivalent carbon negative network from Bitcoin mining. So yeah, I think it's a pretty interesting argument. I don't know if I'd, I'd buy into the timeline. It seems a bit rapid to me, but if it's accomplished, I think that's a huge victory for the network because then at that point, Bitcoin mining will have totally eliminated any potential to attack its energy use because it will be a carbon sink and equivalent carbon sink.

Logan Chipkin (01:12:24):

Yeah, Kent, that's a great point that we should always remember to emphasize, is that methane is literally in order of magnitude, at least more warming than co2. And so to the extent that you can mitigate methane in terms of carbon equivalence, you're mitigating an order of magnitude more than if you were just neutralizing actual carbon. So that's a good point. Are there any other questions? I unfortunately have to go a bit soon so there Yeah, go ahead, Ken.

Kent Halliburton (01:12:57):

Well, I was just gonna say real quickly, Logan, maybe you could give us a teaser for what next? Yeah, a guess is gonna be in topics. So for anybody on the space right now, if they, they're considering next week, they'll know what to expect.

Logan Chipkin (01:13:12):

Yes, yes. Good idea, Ken. Good call. Next week we're having the one and only Dennis Porter, so hopefully a lot of you already follow him on Twitter. If you don't, I highly recommend it. He might be one of the most bullish sounding bitcoiners on Twitter, and that's saying something we're going to be talking about. So is he's basically a political activist with respect to Bitcoin and bitcoin mining. And he fairly recently, actually maybe over the last year or so, has really swallowed the Bitcoin is good for the environment pill if you like. And so we're gonna talk about all things some of what we talked about today with basically the narrative war with respect to Bitcoin's relationship with the environment, but also I really wanna do a deep dive into his political work and how he sees the political wins shifting for Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining. So definitely come for that. It's gonna be fairly different than our conversation conversation with Ethan Vera today but it'll definitely be a lot of fun.

Kent Halliburton (01:14:08):

Yeah, he's definitely a spicy character, Logan, and he heads up the Satoshi Action Fund, which is the Bitcoin mining policy advocacy group. And so he's going all over the nation. He's developing relationships with leg, the state legislatures and grid operators, the local utility conventions at each state and working to just try to educate the regulators so that they understand how Bitcoin mining can help them rather than just reading the mainstream media and the negative things that are said there.

Logan Chipkin (01:14:45):

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. Okay, thank you everyone for joining our second SA mining second Twitter spaces. Thank you Will. Thank you, Kent. Thanks Ethan for joining. And thanks to you, the audience for joining. Hope you learned something and we'll talk to you next week. Take care everyone. Have a great rest of your Thursday.

Kent Halliburton (01:15:06):

Thank you, Logan. Thank you.

Logan Chipkin (01:15:09):

Thanks, bye.