Michael 0:01
Welcome to the New to Crypto Podcast designed to guide you through the crypto landscape with pinpoint accuracy created for the new and intermediate crypto investor. Join your host Crypto Travels Michael as he takes you through the different facets of getting started and succeeding in your crypto journey. New to crypto podcast brings you new episodes daily Monday through Friday with surprise bonus episodes sometimes on the weekend. Let me ask you, are you new to crypto and don’t know where to start? Are you more experienced but have questions? Then you’re in the right place. This podcast is designed for you coming at you from the Trading Center and the Lifestyle Dezign Studio. Here’s your host Crypto Travels Michael.
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Today on the show I have Mason Jappa, CEO and co founder of Blockware Solutions. Blockware Solutions is an industry leader in bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining services, including hardware mining rigs, as well as professional mining and staking pools, masternode operations and more. Definitely do not miss this episode. I’d like to welcome Mason to the podcast. Mason, it’s a pleasure to have you here.
Mason 1:40
Hey, Michael, thanks a lot for having me on, really excited about today’s session. There’s a lot going on right now. And there’s certainly a lot of topics we can cover. And I’m really excited to share my story and talk about Blockware and and talk about a few different subjects outside of Blockware, like mining and staking and infrastructure.
Michael 1:56
Awesome, Mason, it’s a pleasure to have you here, as I mentioned earlier. And hey, before we dive in, can you just tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Mason 2:03
Yeah, that too. So… Thanks for having me on. So myself, I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and came from a wood manufacturing background. My grandfather started the company in the 1970s, based out of Bridgeton, Missouri, and my dad ended up taking over that company. So I grew up with this, you know, entrepreneurial drive growing up, you know. I always want to start my own company. And I viewed myself like Tommy Boy, these wooden manufacturing plants, I was always around and I wanted to learn. So with that spirit, I ended up going to Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, had a degree in Finance, almost went down the banking path, but realized, you know, that’s not what I wanted to do, I really want to start a startup. So I ended up getting a master’s in information systems. And it was also during my college years that I found Bitcoin. And you know, I was a poker player and I saw a Bitcoin which was, you know, at the time I viewed as a currency that could be utilized for services or for playing poker or for other other types of utilizations. And, I was just fascinated with Bitcoin from that point on. So in about 2015, I had started a management consulting career, I decided that I want to start mining Bitcoin. And I kind of had a unique setup with these wood manufacturing plants, we had a warehouse, some extra power that my dad said I could utilize with decent energy rates.
And I started setting up a bitcoin miner, and I started ordering the machines. And I realized then, that the market was very fragmented, when it came to ordering, you know, miners. You would pay China in cryptocurrency, which was scary at the time, you know, based on my life savings, and then I would hope that these machines would show up, you know, months later. And then lo and behold, you know, three to four months later, these machines would show up. So I started plugging them in and building this and, and I saw, you know, returns and I saw crypto becoming more adopted. And I was like, wow, this is awesome. So I started growing that farm and kind of rolling my profits. And then I realized that I could start selling off these machines for, you know, multiples of what I paid for. And that’s when I wanted to start a mining sourcing company. And that’s where the foundation of Blockware solutions came up. So I called Two of my college friends and started Blockware solutions in 2017. And our goal was just to be the trusted transparent Bitcoin mining sourcing company or alt coin mining sourcing company. And we started out, you know, putting Craigslist ads out in the top three cities of every state, and we took some hilarious phone calls and emails and… over time, we just grew and grew. And as we grew, we wanted to vertical eyes and, you know, really, that’s where, like my story, you know, came in from 2017 to now like the, the growth of Blockware you know, how we did it, you know, verticalized thing, you know, moving into staking, getting into energy, going to building our own data centers and hosting facilities. It was a fascinating time. It’s amazing as to the adoption. And part of my goal too, in 2017 was to bring mining to the United States. So you have to think back to that time point, you know, I guess the US was like point 4% global mining, right? We wanted to decentralize never China was probably like 80 to 90% of Bitcoin mining, right? So I know this is a long a long intro, but I’m really excited to talk about it for we can deep dive into this the subject but that’s that’s I think my core background and then you’re not here and I’m really excited and and while you know the USA we’re at like 40% of global mining so I think my, my original thesis came true.
Michael 5:28
Awesome, man, thanks for breaking that down so many golden nuggets and what you just shared. Wow, he took me down memory lane that 2017 is actually when I got into crypto, um, a friend of mine is a pretty successful real estate investor. And he introduced me to this thing called bitcoin and cryptocurrency and I was in Los Angeles hanging out with him and he took me down the whole story and then you mentioned poker, it’s a little known fact to the audience. But I used to be a high roller in Vegas when I was 22 years old, designing a winning system to beat the house in baccarat of all things. And it just made me remember when you brought up poker, because of course I played poker as well. But hey, let’s jump into Blockware Solutions. So before we get into some of the detailed, fun information we’re going to cover what is your company Blockware solutions? And what products and services? What do you offer? Obviously, it’s in the mining industry. But can you unpack and deliver for our listeners? You know, what about Blockware?
Mason 6:28
Yeah, great to share that poker background, I always forget to mention that I was a test player growing up, I became a state chess champion chess player in kindergarten, and then I played all the way through high school. So I think that like mathematical logic, you know, sense of myself, you know, I apply those skills today. But still for Blockware what we do we have, you know, really I think of it No, we’re multifaceted company. And we’re you know, we’re super unique, you know, I’d say we have, you know, 15 to 20 revenue streams. But one major focus is we’re a vertically integrated Bitcoin mining company. And we’re focused on institutions. So we have a data center, we have two data centers, one in Pennsylvania, and one in Kentucky that we build. So you can come to us, you can buy mining rigs, you can either buy the mining rig with hosting where we host on your behalf, and you send an energy contract with us. Or we can just sell you the mining rig and ship it to you know, wherever you’re at globally. As well, on top of that, we want to layer on products. So we built a Bitcoin mining miner management system, we have a pool that you can sign up with, we want everything in house, we can control, you know, every facet of Bitcoin mining. And now we’re building some new exciting, you know, software products as well that we haven’t rolled out around mining itself. And then we have a couple other arms of the business, we offer staking as a service. So we do institutional staking, we operate about eight different nodes, you know, across, you know, solid projects that we invest in, or, or we have investors out in. And then we also offer the ability for a company that wants somebody to manage a node for them and the rd has funds, we will do that for them, you know, at a small fee. So that’s a really exciting arm that we’re growing. And then we have a third arm I’d call our media arm. It’s called blacker intelligence. So we put out you know, leading research, we have a really nice newsletter led by Well, Clemente, but we put out every week, you know, covering a range of topics, we have, you know, large presence on Twitter, and we do interviews just like yourself every week and all the contents free, you know, dating back to 2017 was something that we wanted to become was a research leaders and thought leaders and to do so you have to put in the hard work and do the research and write your own reports. So that’s been a focus, and it’s been, you know, really taken off in all those facets are really exciting.
Michael 8:37
Awesome. Yeah, we’ll have to have maybe have you come back on the show. And we can do a maybe for video for YouTube, and we can break down some of your business intelligence in the crypto industry. And no, that’s, that’s such added value that you’re you and you and your team are providing Mason, your leader in your industry. And I can’t think of anybody better to ask, you know, our listeners, some, some of them are new, and they’re new to crypto, and they want to know more and they just thirsting for more information to get into, you know, this area. And we also have listeners who are very experienced, but they want to know about specific topics. And my question to you is for our listeners, what are mining rigs?
Mason 9:17
Yeah, that’s a great question. And you know, sometimes I challenge myself by explaining that I think of it quite simply, think of them like high powered purpose built servers, whose goal 24/7 hours a day is to mine Bitcoin. And they sort of pointed out the Bitcoin network, they’re processing transactions, they’re mining blocks, and they’re paid for their services. Think of them like the backbone of Bitcoin itself. They’re the infrastructure of Bitcoin in the proof of work network.
Michael 9:44
Okay. And that brings us to the next question, what are mining and staking pools? Because these are questions that we get from the audience. And you know, I can’t think of anyone better to answer these questions and you.
Mason 9:55
So nine pools exist because for Bitcoin it’s extremely competitive. And the same goes for other networks that are in proof of work, including a theorem, which is still proof of work. So the mining pool was created because it’s so difficult to mine Bitcoin. You join a group of individuals to increase your likelihood of mining Bitcoin. There’s two different types of mining pools, one is called PPLNS. That means you’re paid out whenever the poor minds block, right, the poor minds block your paid out, or the 6.25 Bitcoin distributed based on half an hour, plus, you know, any transaction fees that you accumulate over that timeframe. And then there’s PPS structure paper share, that means you’re paid out consistently, regardless of the pool lines of block, I like to say, PPS takes out the luck factor. And I recommend that for most miners, you’re paid out daily by the pool based on your hash rate contribution. Pools exist simply because Bitcoin is so difficult to mine. Unless you’re one of the largest miners in the world, you can’t run you know, you can’t mined so up. And so that’s why pools exist. On the staking side, I like to think of stakers as the Bank of other networks that aren’t using energy and mining rigs to be the backbone or the security of their network. So the VAT stakers are the ones that are operating a node where where people can deposit their currency into the bank, they receive interest from the projects themselves so that the projects work with the validator nodes of the staking node operators, and pay them interest for staking their coins for a period of time. And then the stakers released the yield that the participants deposit into their node on a set basis based on the project. So think of stakers, like the baking infrastructure for non proof of work projects.
Michael 11:30
Very well said Mason, awesome. You had mentioned previously that you have institutions for clients, are they all institutions? Or what type of customers? Do you have any?
Mason 11:42
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s tough to label an institution in your mind. I think blocker really, we started out retail, right? We were one of the first companies in the world that allowed Joe from Kansas who had $5,000 to Buy a Bitcoin mining rig or or buying post a Bitcoin mining rig, over the years, we’ve evolved. So for us, our minimum order quantity is five machines. And that may not be an institutional client, but five machines in my head with hosting costs about $50,000. That’s, you know, a large sum of money for, you know, for a lot of us and even for myself. So that’s why, you know, we label institutional grades. And the same goes for staking, you know, typically, on the staking side, we’re working with participants and individuals that have a large lump sum to start the node. But think of staking, you know, it’s decentralized. Once I launch my node, anyone can deposit staking coins in my note, if people depositing you know, one moon in my Lunar node validator, right. Once I launched the node, it’s really not institutional, any retail participant can stake with our founder note and network. But for me, like I view an institution as someone at a $50,000 investment, and you know, that’s someone we want to target. As it grows, the company realized, you know, if someone buys one machine from you with hosting, it’s really hard to manage, you know, I’d rather have 200 clients with five machines than 1000 clients with one machine. It’s just, you know, as you scale, and as you grow, I really love retail, but it just makes it you know, easier for my customer service and easier for me to scale when I put a minimum order quantity on there.
Michael 13:12
Yeah, I can definitely appreciate that. Let’s talk about your minimum order of five machines for a moment. How much Bitcoin or a theorem can be mined per year from, say, those five machines?
Mason 13:23
That’s a great question. So the rest of your net super focus on Ethereum on but let me pull up my mining calculator.
Michael 13:30
Another another all coin? Yeah. So
Mason 13:33
It could be ZCa$h, for example. You know, we think the backlash algo is fairly stable. And, I’m really careful with which coins that we participate in, because, you know, the networks are very competitive. And if fun, an old coin miner, if someone rolls out a new machine, and you already purchased it, you may have purchased a brand new machine. But if another competitive manufacturer released a new machine, well, that machine that you just bought could be worth nothing, because these machines, you know, are more powerful and more efficient. So back to the use case of five machines. So if you buy 500 Terra hash machines, that’s 500 Tera. Hash, those that user is going to mine about point 06 Bitcoin a month, and that that translates to about point seven to Bitcoin a year. And for us, we make it easy, you have a CapEx investment on the machines, you have a deposit in the hosting contract. And then every month we just build you an electricity rate right multiplied by your consumption. So each month you’ll get an easy electricity bill, you keep all the Bitcoin, we don’t touch Bitcoin, you input your wallet address, if you don’t have that wallet address for you, you know, we want to make sure this is very secure. And you can do so with Bitcoin as you please. And then you can pay us a monthly, you know, however you please we take credit card, we take ACH or bank payments. We’re very flexible on the payment landscape. I like to and I think you know, when people talk about ROI, which we’ll get into, I think it really is dictated by your strategy right? If you’re bullish on Bitcoin, you should be accumulating, you know, your mining rewards as much as you can, because let’s say if bitcoin hits $70,000 At the end of the year The Bitcoin that you might now have in January at 35,000. Well, in December that bitcoins were 70,000. So when people ask me a lot, it’s a really hard question to answer, because there’s a lot of factors that play into your words and your strategy.
Michael 15:13
Okay, so your company sells the hardware, and basically what’s required to get set up? Does your team install, like the equipment and say, let’s say I want to purchase five machines in my building? And my other question is, is how can someone actually get into having, you know, purchasing and actually ultimately getting this operational, I have a friend who’s a non crypto like, really large investor, and he actually filled up three warehouses with 1000s, of mining rigs, just to hold everything for many years. But in that situation, he had a friend who was able to, you know, help get and purchase equipment and get everything started.
Mason 15:52
But yeah, so for us, so we do. We make this like a white glove service, right, we operate a pool, we have the minor management software, and we have a team. And in a site that we own with energy contracts, we’re redeploying machines, you know, we build the racks we source and transformers and all the electrical gear, and we have an energy contract. So we’ll if you buy five machines from us, we’ll install it for you, manage and maintain it for you, and then you’ll receive your big rewards daily. And then we have a Zendesk support system, if you have to say, hey, Mason, you know, one of my machines is down, we’ll look into it and see, you know, if we can fix it on site, or we can coordinate with the repair facilities and repair the machines, as well, typically, new machines have one year warranties, were very seasoned, that working with the manufacturers, and we’ll get those sent off for warranty repair. We try to make this as seamless as possible, so that someone with no experience can come to us. And we’ll have a way of making this easy for them. And I think that’s really important. And you’d be surprised, you know, if on seven figure transactions, I have people that are buying five machines that are far more educated. So we try to make it easy, we don’t judge anyone that comes our way, you know, we’re really willing to work with anyone. And my goal is to make this as seamless as possible.
Michael 16:59
Okay. And what you mentioned, it does understand that right, the install can be in my facility, or can also be in yours, and managed is or?
Mason 17:10
Either, good question. So you can come to us and just buy machines, and we can ship them to you, we actually have an advisory service where if you want, if you need assistance with surfing electrical infrastructure, or knowing how to set up your online, you could pass on an advisory monthly contract to help you and teach you how to all the bells and whistles. And then you can end the contract when you figure it out. And then you can come back to us with questions. So we have a booming advisory practice, and it’s very practical in space. A lot of people you know, or want to start out maybe haven’t good energy arbitrage and think they can leverage. The second option is it’s installed in our facility, we only manage machines that are starting off in our facility, right? You need physical touch of those machines. The cool part is Mike, we didn’t talk about this, you’re in Mexico City, you could do business with Boqueria, you could recommend your machines and virtually right you can see that how they’re doing you receive your rewards virtually. And you can have a minor metric system where you can remote boot them and see your you know, see electricity consumption, you have all these statistics at your arms. And that’s what software, so it’s important that you have that virtual aspect. And then we have that physical management aspect. We’re watching on these machines, installing them on our physical sites.
Michael 18:19
Okay, excellent. You know, we’ll have to talk more in the future. I’m interested in every question: what is the amount of time on average? Because I’ve had people ask me this as well, well, what is the amount of time on average in order to recoup your upfront cost of purchasing equipment, etc? And obviously, it probably depends on what you’re mining? Yes.
Mason 18:41
Yes. Um, so, you know, Bitcoin is usually what I push people to mine, it’s the most stable long term, it’s, it’s paid off. And I don’t think there’s, like from, from a hardware standpoint, there’s going to be, you know, vast improvements in technology. So, like, the newest machine that you buy now is going to be profitable for the next, you know, four, four or five years right, that’s a long time horizon the ROI question very loaded question because there’s so many different things that can dictate you know, when you’re going to truly ROI right now, there’s obviously a lot of interesting macro things going on that may impact bitcoin price because you know, front and center what affects how much money you make on a daily basis while the price of Bitcoin right and and how its measured. And then you have Bitcoin maximalists who say one bitcoin is one Bitcoin, right? So I’m just adding to the Bitcoin. But you know, my short answer is I think, you know, if you went if you if you partner with right now, I’m confident that you do ROI in about a year and a half. So let’s say you know, roughly 18 months, that could be sooner if bitcoin outperforms, right and your in your strategy is accumulation, the value of that goes up.
And something when you ask them to rely, you know, there’s something I think that a lot of people miss in our models and like, you know, just like Michael Cera might say, like, all of your models are broken, all your models are flawed. One thing I see even at public companies, I talk to smaller miners in the world, they always forget that their miners have a residual value. And I like to say that mining rig prices are perfectly positively correlated to the price of Bitcoin. So if bitcoin goes up in price, your machine prices will go up because down, machine prices go down. But there’s a net residual ending value of those machines. So when you ask me about 18 months, well, tomorrow, if bitcoin goes up in price, you bought a machine for me, well, then you’ve already made your money back, and maybe your machines have already gone up in value. So in three days, you could have a net positive return, but you know, you need to have liquidity of that machine. And that’s why we have a whole brokerage firm, we help people buy and sell machines. So in that aspect, I’ve had clients over the years who have bought machines for me, not only did the machines go up in value over their term length, but also they accumulated all their Bitcoin that they mined. So they’re, they hit home runs, and I’m super happy for them. When my clients succeed, I’m happy, because they’ll come back and do our business. So we’re 50 far away. And I want people to win. And that’s something that I really strive for. So anyone that partners with us if they win, you know, ends up getting a good name for ourselves and not losing our business.
Michael 21:03
Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for breaking that down. I know the listeners are really thanking you because that’s a that’s a major question people have, if bitcoin is, say the major one that most of your miners are mining, what would be the second the second most popular or the, you know, the second most lucrative in terms of return on investment right now?
Mason 21:22
Yeah, so I mean, right now, it’s Ethereum. So Ethereum mining is certainly very profitable. And if you look at the Ethereum network, you see gas, these are good gaps. These are transaction costs. And for all of you Ethereum users, and I know I started investing in Ethereum fairly early, And I understand the network well, those transaction costs are paid to miners, right? The miners are paid to be transactors and validators of that network. So when you’re on open C, buying an NFT, and you’re kicking your head saying, Why am I paying $200 in fees, just gas fees to buy the NFT? Well, that’s because the network is congested, and there’s too much transactions going on. So in order for you to catch a miner’s attention, you need to pay a high fee, so that they will mind your transaction. So Ethereum is very profitable right now. However, you know, with profitability comes risk. So with the Ethereum network, they’re in the middle of a migration from proof of work, where you’re using energy and mining rigs and ASICs to proof of stake. So do I tell people to invest into Ethereum mining right now? No, because I think it’s risky. And for all reasons, I think Ethereum, you know, finally is supposed to migrate proof of stake potentially this year, they’ve been saying it, you know, this year for the past several years. So I’d say theory was number two, and then you know, you have to be careful, because then a lot of the other profitable coins that you can mine are based on the Ethereum algorithm. So if a theory of moves from proof of work to proof of stake, that we’re all those Ethereum miners going to go? Well, they’re going to go to all the other alt coins that are profitable. So it’s going to create difficulty in those networks. Then you get into, you know, some other algorithms. I like Aqua hash, which is, you know, Z ca$h is based on Zell cash, Zen cash, I think that cache is fairly stable. I don’t see, you know, new rigs coming out, you know, on that network, they’re vastly better than the current. So, we’ve been selling some Zca$h miners. And that’s, you know, Dapps historically has been a good friend of mine to decorate as well, but no bright No, those landscapes are tough. You know, I’m very careful when, when I’m pushing a rig for my client, that’s an alt coin. That means I’m extremely confident. And I’m also mining that coin too, because I don’t want a situation where your mining rig is not going to be worthless in the short period of time. I have to have conviction.
Michael 23:39
Okay, man, thanks for sharing that. You mentioned earlier that, you know, it’s currently for BTC, mining and sweat 6.25 per block. And how much more time do we have before that is reduced and split?
Mason 23:53
It? Great question. So every four years, there’s a halving event. And think of it like the supply of Bitcoin that’s released daily is cut in half, and that that’s directly tied to blocks. So right now we’re at 6.25 Bitcoins per block. Right now, a block is mined every 10 minutes. And there’s a whole conversation with how block mining works, right? There’s something called difficulty typically adjusted every two weeks. And that’s based on the network hash rate, right? Its hash rate goes up, that means we’re mining blocks faster, and difficulty resets. This algorithm is mathematically perfect. And the system that was created is amazing. And I know I’m answering this and it’s been a long way. But there’s a halving that takes place every four years, the last having to place in May of 2020. So the next halving is going to be roughly around May of 2024. The exact date actually will isn’t perfectly forecasted because it changes based on the network, right? If we’re moving at a faster pace, it could be a little bit faster than last year, but every four years the net supplies are cut in half. So that means in May of 2024, the amount that you mined for blocks will move down 3.125 And think of it this way, you know, the net Bitcoin that you earn from mining is going to be cut in half. There’s something else that factors in though that miners are paid for, which is called transaction fees. So miners receive within block groups of transactions. And I think of them like a bonus. So when Mason sends Michael one Bitcoin, there’s a transaction fee that you see on top of that. So if you’re buying Bitcoin on an exchange, you see that there’s a there’s a, there’s a line for the fee. That’s the fee that you pay a miner to, to make your transaction and move it to the ledger and secure it in blockchain inevitably, right that Mason, Michael transaction will forever be on that ledger. It’s a giant accounting ledger, and miners are paid to validate that transaction, right. So what’s interesting, you know, over time, as there’s more that takes place, we’re going to be living with more and more transaction fees, and Bitcoin network utilization is going up. So transaction fees are going to be more a part of the fixture. But something that’s really interesting, Michael, is if you look at the supply schedule, right now, 90% of Bitcoin has been mined, right? Meaning that we’re at 90% of all the 21 million and a lot of this, 90 percent being nine, there’s 10% left to mine, I estimate that that 10% remaining will be mined by the year 2140. That’s the number that all of us use all the expertise. But what’s fascinating actually, is in the next 10 years, 7% of that next 10% will be released on the network. So after 10 years, all the miners in the world are going to be chasing the remaining 3% of this pie. So if I’m a game theorist, and I’m thinking about what am I going to deploy capital? Well, you deploy right now, because you’re chasing a massive amount of supply that’s released over the next 10 years on one of the world’s most scarce assets.
Michael 26:46
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Mason 28:06
Yes. And I think what’s happening in the energy infrastructure market is fascinating. So you’re seeing repurposing of assets and perfect stabilization of grids by adding Bitcoin miners to the network. So what you saw, and what you’re seeing is you had all these large, for example, coal plants, right. And many of them aren’t running anymore. At that coal plant, there are transformers, there’s a building, there was an energy contract. So miners who come into that building, when new energy contracts could be in rural Kentucky, it could be in rural Texas, they could take the transformer, the infrastructure that’s already there that was offline, they could set up racks by their networking gear and start mining there. Right all the like you’re seeing repurposing of otherwise obsolete infrastructure. And that’s also happening on the natural gas from then. And that’s happening in the hydro front. You see there’s something called non rival energy, and that simply is otherwise wasted energy. Miners are coming in and taking this otherwise wasted energy and converting it and miners are also taking this as obsolete energy, right? This energy wasn’t being utilized. And maybe it was a coal plant, and they’re turning to utilize energy. And that what they’re doing is they’re stabilizing the grid. They’re making it so that your residential rates are stable. If you have higher energy utilization, and you don’t have a grid network that’s built out and stabilized, then you’re going to be paying higher energy costs. And especially if you have outages, what you’re seeing is miners are willing to redirect their power. And you saw that recently in Texas, you know, companies like Winstone when that big storm came in, and a lot of people have power, the energy companies in the grid and the governor and people called on the miners saying, Hey, can you redirect your power so that we can have power? You know, and all set and the miners like yes, of course. And of course that’s called curtailment. They’re actually paid an energy premium for redirection. I think natural gas is a fascinating use case. And I think the United States has bad regulatory policy when it comes to that. We’re gonna talk about this, you know, there’s an ESG narrative, right? We’re talking about carbon emissions. Well, the United States, it’s legal and the way that the Natural Gas Producers are told to dispose of their excess natural gas is just to light it on fire? Well, when you want natural gas and fire, it reduces a ridiculous amount of carbon emissions into our atmosphere. Well, what miners are doing is they’re going to those natural gas wells, they’re building up, you know, the excess supply so that you don’t have to light that natural gas on fire with bitcoin miner consumption, and they’re stabilizing the wealth, and they’re actually reducing emissions. So there’s a lot of, you know, when you think about, you know, what can you pick on Bitcoin about environmentally, people pick on A, its energy utilization, and B the carbon footprint that’s generated from Bitcoin? And there’s way more counter arguments, in my opinion and positivity coming out of Bitcoin mining, then you make your, you know, on a daily basis about from other people and other narratives that are pushed by different participants who never?
Michael 30:57
Absolutely, yeah, thanks for sharing the natural gas when, you know, I didn’t, I actually didn’t know all those details, I have a friend who has a small mining operation. And he actually powers it with solar, and there was a larger upfront cost to do so. But it was much better for the environment long term.
Mason 31:14
Yeah, I think solar is interesting, you know, solar requires a lot of it’s very dense and acquires a lot of land. And it’s not a perfect energy contributor, because you can only, you know, the sun’s only out for, you know, 1012 hours a day. So what’s happening the other 12 hours, well, you’re going to need batteries to store the excess solar generated power. And the battery technology, you know, is there, you know, to test the battery, but a lot of these solar farms don’t have that. So you, you just have a lot of waste, and solar farms take up a massive amount of land most populous grow, knowing when usage is going to come front and center. You know, I think nuclear power is extremely efficient. Obviously, wind power makes sense. But same thing with wind, if it’s not windy, then you’re not generating. So you need to like the grid and need to have a balance of a lot of different electricity use cases. And a lot of people pick on the grid, you know, there could be still coal power coming from that. But you know, you asked us if people do have power at home or are not, unfortunately, in the way that in the world that we live in right now. You know, I’m all about, I think clean energy is great. But our grid and infrastructure isn’t there yet. So you need to have some fossil fuel energy generators in existence, so that Mason guitar at home is gonna get powerful like otherwise, you know, you can’t rely on some of the infrastructure, it’s just not there yet. We’re years out from having that. And I think it’s gonna be great, you know, hydro and nuclear, natural gas, you know, that clean energy is a great narrative to push and become aware of that we have to there has to be some a balance, there has to be other fossil fuel energy generation in order to support the energy grid and make sure that we all have power, and you know, our economy and products can be made, etc.
Michael 32:53
Absolutely, man, thanks for sharing that, Mason. I’ll tell you we’ve covered so much in the short time together, what else would you like to share with our listeners?
Mason 33:02
Yeah, I think, you know, it’s been really interesting. I think you’re seeing, you know, if you look, in the last two years, you’re seeing a lot of public mining, or a lot of mining companies become public, the front and center, I think, you know, Ryan Inc. with the path. And it’s been fascinating to see, you know, the markets and pricing. And there’s a lot of, you know, large institutions that No, they can’t have exposure to Bitcoin. So they get exposure by buying Bitcoin mining stocks. So you’re seeing a lot of saturation. And there’s a lot of people chasing, you know, what I said before, they’re chasing this 10%, the 7% of the 10% over the next 10 years. So we’re seeing a lot of saturation in the public markets, you’re seeing policy come out, and you’re seeing, you know, state by state policy, they’re states that have they’re incentivizing miners to come on, they’re like Kentucky, and Texas and Wyoming, on that’s very positive for networking and tax benefits, other things, and we’re creating jobs, we’re very energy conscious. I think there’s a lot of positivity that comes out, you know, from the coin miners, which are hard workers, you know, we’re working 24 hours a day trying to, you know, support a new financial and revolutionary system. And so, I think it’s also good, like, you know, you see, the DOJ is rolling out, you know, you know, supportive an FBI group that’s going to chase bad actors. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. There’s a lot of scammers and a lot of vulnerabilities that, you know, people aren’t storing or transacting. Well, you know, Biden was supposed to release some type of cryptocurrency policy this week. Well, I don’t think that’s happening anymore, because we have a lot of other stuff. You know, policy and regulatory regulation aren’t necessarily bad things. I think there needs to be open dialogue between miners and Bitcoin participants and ultimately, participants and governments to ensure that, you know, we’re rolling out the proper policy. So, you know, anytime you see headlines like that, you know, it’s usually I usually view it as kind of bullish for the network, as long as the policies you know, aren’t necessarily bad. And I think miners and stakeholders are going to get a lot of clarity and they’re going to be treated properly based on what I’ve read, and people are spoken to. So you know, it’s really interesting to see how fast this is all moving. Now keep in mind Bitcoin was not barely 10 years old, right Ethereum you know, like five years, six years old, like this is all new technology and it’s amazing. I feel like we’re in the 1980s of the internet boom that happened in the 90s and 2000s. But I think it’ll be here to stay. I don’t think we’ll see a crash.
Michael 35:23
Absolutely. No, it’s an exciting time. You’re actually talking about the 1980s just reminded me of a conversation I had with my son the other night, I was telling him that I had the very first cell phone, the first car phone. Yeah. And that seemed ancient to him, you know?
Mason 35:40
How big was this thing like a brick?
Michael 35:43
The first cell phone was a brick, the first flip phone was the Motorola with the little antenna you had to pull up. Yeah. And the flip part was just the mouse part, which isn’t like the technology that we have now, the car phone was like a break and went into the center console of the vehicle that I had at the time, and it was three wide, and the cell phones were analog, and they were only half a wide. And you would be you’d literally have to be holding your head in the right spot to get the right signal with the first flip phones, you know, and of course, they’re charging you for $1 dollar at a minute back then, you know, in my son who was like eight years old, he was like, his eyes were popping out of his head. He couldn’t believe it, you know, for just a minute. And I reminded him I said, Hey, you know, if you talk back in those days, for one minute, in one second, they billed you for two minutes, you know, but it was just so funny to see the beginning. And I explained to him about, you know, my belief. I remember before the internet was created and saw the whole thing unpack. And, you know, so, of course, I seem like a dinosaur to someone who has always had all of those technologies in front of them, you know, so,
Mason 36:48
But yeah, like your kids are like, my future kids, like they’ll have that I was, you know, I was born in 1991 I feel like we I was a millennial, so I feel like our generation had, like, part of not having too much technology. And you know, we played outside and, and all that stuff, but then like, grew up, you know, emerging into this technology. And now we’re all here and we can live, you know, in a technology world. You know, I was called COVID. Like, the great accelerator right now, with the virtual realm of zoom and all these you know, like work from home and being able to live off technology, we all realize that and then tons of companies formatted as a result of that. So it’s a really interesting time to live in. Our kids are going to have a more advanced, you know, upbringing than you or myself even?
Michael 37:33
Absolutely, absolutely. No, it’s exciting to see just how quickly everything has grown. And I agree with you about the situation with the world in the last few years. Accelerated cryptocurrency blockchain and everything else, like you said, you know, I’m sure Zoom is thanking everyone for being a client, you know. So, Mason, it was a pleasure to have you on here today. And you’re welcome back anytime. And we’ll have all the links to reach out to you for our listeners on the episode Blog Post page. And man, it was a pleasure to have you here.
Mason 38:06
Hey, thanks for having me on. Like there’s a great session and we’ll definitely be back.
Michael 38:10
Awesome. Want to do a video in the future and unpack some more content? If you like today’s episode, definitely like and subscribe to the podcast. Show your support and chime in here tomorrow for another special episode. Until then, make it a great day.
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