{ "episodeId": "SLP299", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "adam_o": { "name": "Adam O", "role": "guest", "tag": "ADAM" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:09", "start": 8.93, "text": "Hi and welcome to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin. So before we get started, just a quick announcement from me. I have accepted a role at Swan Bitcoin, so I am now managing director of Swan International. So as many of you know, Swan has been the lead sponsor of my show for some time now, and I have been an advisor for them also. So I thought this was a good opportunity and a natural fit for me to actually join the team. So I'll be helping out in terms of, assisting, in various capacities, whether that's helping high net worth individuals or companies and others and businesses onboard into Bitcoin and purchase Bitcoin with Swan. So that's some of what I'll be getting involved with as the managing director for Swan International. And to be clear, SLP carries on as normal, there will be no changes there. Stephan Livera podcast is a Swan sponsored show, but it is not a Swan show, if you will, and definitely it will remain a big focus in terms of my time time and my effort. So just clarifying that there will be no changes from your perspective as a listener of SLP. So my guest today for episode two hundred and ninety-nine is Adam O of Upstream Data. He joins me to talk about the opportunity for oil and gas with Bitcoin, optionality, the necessity of fossil fuels, ESG, Bitcoin mining council, and Bitcoin lobbying. So this show is brought to you by Swan Bitcoin, the best way to accumulate Bitcoin with automatic recurring buys and instant buys. Swan Bitcoin takes a specific focus on education and content and community. So the more you know, the more you buy. And Swan is Bitcoin only, so there's no confusion with altcoins, and there's not even a sell button on the platform. It's a great place to send your pre-coiner and new coiner friends. Also, for those of you who are high net worth or business or corporate or other entities, there's Swan Private, where you can buy Bitcoin and have direct access to a Bitcoin expert, and I'm actually part of that team also, so I might be the one helping you in terms of purchasing your Bitcoin or helping present to your business on why Bitcoin. So to sign up, go to swanbitcoin dot com slash livera. Lend at Hodlahodl is a peer-to-peer Bitcoin-backed lending platform where you can lend out stablecoins or borrow against your Bitcoin as collateral, and this is available globally anonymously, so you can earn extra income on those stablecoins, and on the other hand, if you need some fiat liquidity, you can put up Bitcoin, and you still hold one key in a two of three multi-signature, and HodlHodl doesn't hold your funds. There's no rehypothecation here. Lend at HodlHodl allows peer-to-peer lending and borrowing directly between users. You go to the platform, you set your own terms, and you put up the offers depending on how long you wanna borrow or lend, and the interest rate. Go to" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:41", "start": 161.36, "text": "Changing this. So if you go to compassmining.io, you can select an ASIC and also a hosting facility to have that ASIC installed and operated. And there are mining facilities all around the world that Compass Mining have vetted. And then once you've done this, you can join a mining pool and receive Bitcoin, and of course, you still have to pay the electricity and operating costs. But this is a great way to get started without needing advanced technical knowledge to get started in mining Bitcoin. So go to compassmining.io and start mining Bitcoin today. On to the show with Adam." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "03:10", "start": 190.06, "text": "Adam," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:10", "start": 190.34, "text": "welcome to the show." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "03:12", "start": 191.6, "text": "So awesome to be here, Stefan. Great, great, to take the time. Glad to, glad to talk with you. Thanks so much for, for having me. I'm a crazy twenty twenty-one, and this is a perfect time, I think, to, to talk with someone like yourself and kind of catch up and, you know, I guess reflect." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:25", "start": 204.87, "text": "Yeah, for sure. And so when I first came across, you were Denver Bitcoin, and now, you're now Adam O. So, do you wanna tell us a little bit Of your story there too." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "03:41", "start": 221.3, "text": "Yeah, Denver Bitcoin was not like something I intended to be, you know, like a, a pseudonym of mine, right? Like I didn't-- The reason I made my handle Denver Bitcoin is 'cause I figured I would be talking about Denver and I'd be talking about Bitcoin. Like that was literally my, my thesis behind the name. and, you know, because with Twitter, it's, it's good to talk about things that, you know, you're really passionate about, and there's an aspect of Twitter that's cool with like And you can catch live things happening, you know, in downtown where you didn't necessarily need to know it was happening, but then you see on Twitter, there's a music festival and it's like five miles away, you know? so that's, I guess that was my reasoning behind it. The reason I came to Twitter was I, I'd, I'd found Twitter after I'd kind of already gone down the Bitcoin rabbit hole a little bit, or at least I'd gone down it enough that I was really excited. And that, that happened when I was in the oil and gas" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "04:40", "start": 279.84, "text": "There were articles about how, you know, the, the bubble had popped 'cause Bitcoin was crashing, right, from twenty thousand, it was, I think it had just passed, you know, ten or nine thousand. And so, you know, I was, I was reading these stories, and I had a good friend that had told me about Bitcoin years earlier, and so, you know, I, I actually kind of invest-- went to investigate Bitcoin to, you know, just to figure out how the scam worked, right? And in my, in my mind, I assumed it was a scam" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "05:10", "start": 309.86, "text": "A whole bunch of people with this Bitcoin thing. And so I figured, like, my assumption there was that the crux of the scam would probably be where, wherever this thing is produced, right? Whoever's making these bitcoins is probably the one that's, like, making out, well, scam, right? Like, that's just kind of like my, you know, just my inherent assumption. And so, that's-- I went to go learn how Bitcoin was mined, like, what the hell is Bitcoin mining? What's the production of Bitcoin? And in that process, I learned are coupled with computer science and, and how, you know, no matter how efficient you make a computer or you, you make a, a circuit, I guess would be the way to say it, there's still Some nominal amount of electricity that is required to execute the most basic function of a computer, which is a hash, right? and you, we-- in Bitcoin, we talk about hashes a lot. And so, when I, when I understood that, like just-- I mean, by the way, that wasn't a really hard concept for me to understand. It's not that, that complicated of a concept, right? It's like, hey, if you want a computer to do any kind of computation, you need at least a little bit of electricity. Like, it might be, And so, like, once I understood that, and once I really thought about that, I went, \"Holy crap, like, this isn't a scam. This is, this is an open and competitive energy market, is what this is.\" Like, I mean, I saw it right there. Now, I was working in oil and gas, I was working with upstream oil and gas operators doing, production management and production accounting. so I was dealing with like daily data capture numbers and dealing with all the, all the different, you know, really, there's, there's three day-to-day productions of the oil field and how to account for these volumes and, and submit monthly reports. And so I was just getting really well versed in the energy industry just by happen chance that I was in this job, and then I learned about this Bitcoin mining thing and I went, \"Holy cow, like, I know where there's a ton of energy guys are just wasting because, like, they have, they have no home for it, right? They have, they have no means by which to, to bring it to market for a profit.\" And so- Like all, from there, all I needed to do was run the numbers of, hey, what, what does it look like to convert, you know, natural gas to electricity to this vit-- you know, magic internet money stuff to dollars? Like, like, is that investment gonna look at all attractive for oil and gas producers? So I set out to, to figure that out because I'm, I'm not a mechanical engineer, I'm not a petroleum engineer. I didn't, I didn't know these things, right? So I, the good news was that I had a ton of resources. I was in the oil and gas industry, and so I was tapping everybody I was speaking with, and inevitably once I ran the numbers, I realized, holy cow, this is Like, and, you know, compared to a pipeline, right, investment, like this is very competitive. maybe, you know, if, if you're, if you believe that Bitcoin has a value proposition, if you, if you see Bitcoin for what it is, in my opinion, then it's almost hard to compare a pipeline. like, like mining Bitcoin almost looks more attractive." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:05", "start": 485.35, "text": "But actually, let's, let's, let's jump onto that. I just want to understand a little bit there. So can you tell us what, what are the typical things people think about when they" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:16", "start": 495.73, "text": "Fair with a Bitcoin, you know, investment." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "08:21", "start": 501.0, "text": "well, it hardly-- Okay, so I'll, I'll say this. The-- I mean, I'm, I'm bullish on Bitcoin. There, there's the thing about a pipeline that's really nice is you can-- There's a massive amount of volume that you can push through a pipeline, right? And so like a lot of the oil and gas wells, you know, we're talking about, and o-- not just oil and gas wells, but like gas fields, right? Like pads of wells." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "08:44", "start": 523.59, "text": "like the, You need, like, that's the amount of gas needs to get to a, a dense populace. It needs to go to like Atlanta and, you know, Dallas and like be, be consumed, because to generate power on site would be insane amounts of power. So there's that aspect of a pipeline. But when it comes to a Bitcoin mine, there's a lot of other benefits, like, one, it can be any scale, right? So like, you can build a Bitcoin mine for just a little bit of gas, or you can build it for a lot of gas, right? When" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "09:15", "start": 554.69, "text": "you're And in order to bring that gas to market, I have to build a, you know, a hundred mile pipeline to connect to whatever the, the nearest, you know, main pipeline infrastructure is around me. All you do is run the numbers on that, you look at the cost, and it's like, you know- Ten million dollars, and then you look at the amount of gas you have, and you'd say, \"Oh, well, like in order for us to do that, it's gonna be, you know, five hundred years before we make our money back. We're not building a pipeline, like so we're just gonna burn the gas and keep producing oil.\" And so- Pipelines are really expensive. The reg-- it's regulatory hell to invest in, in pipelines, and really producers, I mean, that's like the last thing that they wanna do, unless they're intentionally drilling gas wells and they already know that they're gonna have to build that midstream, like it's, it's not Fun. And then if you have a leak, and somewhere in the pipeline, it, it could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars just to find the leak, let alone repair it, right? Like just to figure out exactly where the leak is in these twenty miles of pipe that are under the ground, you know? It's like, it's a nightmare. And so a Bitcoin mine is a really flexible way to sell gas. It's this way where, and then here's the thing, your well can stop producing. I mean, you can't just pick your pipeline up out of the ground and go put" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "10:30", "start": 630.26, "text": "This flexibility, this lack of counterparty risk that makes a Bitcoin mine potentially, you know, way more attractive than a pipeline. but that being said, people still need energy, and so these massive volume wells like Bitcoin isn't there yet, right? Bitcoin isn't valuable enough to take all of the energy in the world and start mining it, right? I mean, it's just we're not there yet. It's, it's, it's not even there to where we should take-- we can take all of this waste energy, all of this excess energy. because it'll get to a point where the next marginal investment isn't attractive enough. We're like, \"Yeah, they might be profitable, but it's not profitable enough. I'm, I'm probably better off spending money over here. I'll get a better return than I will, you know, mining Bitcoin with some, you know, out, out, on my gas.\" And so It's really, it's really exciting things. Like, when that's-- when, when all this kind of came to light, that's, that's when I, stumbled upon Upstream Data and became a customer there and quit my job and like went full force into this. And so that's when DeFi Bitcoin really got- Got born was later on that year, I think it was like August or September of twenty eighteen when I got on Twitter, 'cause eve- every news article about Bitcoin brought me to Twitter anyway. it was like, or it had a tweet embedded in the article, and so I was like, \"I guess apparently this Bitcoin culture lives on Twitter. Like, I, I guess I have to make a Twitter account and, in order to participate and, like, you know, get up to date news on this. \" And so I made a Twitter account, which wasn't something like I, I wanted but Twitter's ended up being amazing, right? Like the, the way in which to connect with people, I mean, it's a-fa- essentially how I was able to start a consultancy, with, with oil and gas companies, which inevitably led me to, to the position I am, you know, in today with, with Upstream Data, working with oil and gas producers, building out Bitcoin mining projects for, for these guys. I mean, it's- It's a crazy world, Stephan. I mean, I were-- you know, just the last thousand days of my life have, has been just a whirlwind, right? It's just been crazy. let alone the Bitcoin price and, you know, in between there, right? And let alone my own like personal finances and everything else all in between there, it's just, it's a wild ride." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:31", "start": 750.53, "text": "Yeah, for sure. And it changes a lot of things about how you think in many different ways. And, I suppose, I mean, for you, you've come down the What was it like when you started your own, first, you know, mining? Like, I presume you would have started your own little operations before then actually expanding it out and selling it for other people?" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "12:52", "start": 772.37, "text": "Yeah, yeah! Exactly. Well, and I, I initially started just with the home stuff, right? Like, I think much like a lot of people maybe do, where they start in their garage, right? and I started-- I was actually using this, this Antminer V9 that's on my wall here. It's a horribly, unprofitable machine right now. It-- I think it only does like four terahashes per second, and it pulls like nine hundred watts or something. It's, it's not, not a great machine. but I needed to get my hands on For it, it came with the PSU, which I think the PSU alone, like it, that thing has to cost about forty-five or fifty bucks to manufacture, like just the materials alone are like fifty bucks. So, you know, I got it for free almost in a way. And so, you know, I started just with that, and when I, 'cause I, I had to get my hands on this, I had to kinda understand like what, what this actually is. And for me, I had to tinker with something, like I have to feel it. And so, you" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "13:54", "start": 833.97, "text": "To some mining pool which I don't even think is around anymore, I don't, I can't even remember the name, like they, they went defunct 'cause they were, they were paying out, you know, they ended up paying out more than they were winning in blocks and so it's just, you know, one of those things. But I, I remember configuring it and like, I remember getting to the point where I, I can, I typed in like my Stratum code and I reset the miner and then I saw my hash rate come live on the, on like the interface and like" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "14:23", "start": 863.45, "text": "House and just getting that kind of intimate experience with what it's like to just mine Bitcoin, I realized really quickly like, holy crap, this is so applicable to the oil field. Like, this is This is, almost looks like it was made to be in the oil field, you know what I mean? Like it's, it seems almost designed for it, because it's just a bare bones piece of, you know, circuitry hardware, right? It's, it's nothing fancy. They're not, not trying to be, you know, necessarily. I mean, I guess with some of the newer stuff, you could say they are now with like the, you know, the S19 pros and stuff, which are incredible pieces of technology, seven nanometers. But some of that old I have to get involved yesterday, otherwise I'm gonna get cut out, right? 'Cause in this current moment, right back in twenty eighteen, I was like, \"These, these oil and gas producers, they're not gonna take any magic internet money risk. They're not gonna spend a dollar on this machine. They don't, they don't care the circumstances.\" but that's not gonna last. I was like, \"That's-- They're gonna change their mind inevitably.\" So for the moment, I can come in and provide value. I can say, \"Hey, I'll, I" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "15:35", "start": 934.84, "text": "That you couldn't sell yesterday, now you can sell it to me for maybe not what you would get, you know, at the market, but still way better than just burning it. And so when I-- when you can come with to, to them with that proposal, then they were like, okay, like there's no downside for them, right? There's absolutely no risk for them, no money up front. Literally, it's just like, let me put this thing on your oil site, at the end of the month you'll get a check. And so that's exactly what," }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "16:05", "start": 964.6, "text": "That I'm still using today, in the oil field and mining. my dad was my business partner, and he's a boomer. He's a, he's a seventy-year-old boomer, so investing with him was like, I mean, has been a total ride, you know, it could-- Going from, I mean, he thought he was gonna lose every dollar of this investment, like truly, he invested the money like willing to have lit it on fire, essentially, and now he sees like this great utility, and he's totally a Bitcoin bull," }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "16:33", "start": 992.56, "text": "and so, And so, but one thing I do know is that Bitcoin mining as a, as an energy technology, as a means by which to, to deliver energy to market, low friction, is probably the most disruptive technology since the internet, I'd say, arguably, like it's, it's a, as disruptive as like electricity itself in many ways, because it changes the entire kind of power generation and, and energy production game." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:01", "start": 1020.68, "text": "Yeah, let's, let's dive into that a little bit more. So why exactly is it? Are we gonna change the broader energy market, in that way? Optionality," }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "17:10", "start": 1029.93, "text": "right? It's sheer optionality. So up until now, there's really only been one place to sell electricity, and that's to human beings in populous centers. Right. To the grid, right? To the grid, right? I mean, there have been historical examples, not very many, but there have been some examples of companies like Microsoft and Amazon, I think maybe even Apple, like- They have done deals with oil and gas companies who had stranded gas wells, to, to put data centers out in the oil field, like out on a stranded gas well. But those are circumstances where they're very specific. It's like, if you think about it, right? Microsoft, if Microsoft puts a data center somewhere, like, there's a security aspect, like a physical security, you can't just have somebody walking in to the freaking building like anybody, right? and then there's like the aspect of these, these data centers can't go down, like they can't, they Because then people's phones stop working and billions of dollars gets lost. Like so it's any downtime is unacceptable, whereas Bitcoin is this whole new kind of technology, almost, almost different than, you know, setting a Microsoft data center out there because it's completely flexible. You can, you can turn it off, turn it right back on, like nobody's affected, the network's not even really affected. I mean, even if it is, because you're so massive, it's only in the short term. But regardless, like it's a very flexible- Autonomous market. And so the sheer optionality that now exists, where everybody in the world, whether you're producing hydroelectric energy, nuclear, solar, wind, no matter what, the fact that you now have a secondary market somewhere else to sell electricity changes your entire business plan. It'll change the way in which you, you build, right? You'll like the actual physical pieces of, of infrastructure you build as well as the footprint, but it'll, it's gonna, it's gonna change all of the economics, all the projected economics For the better, for all of them, right? Because instead of now having to project out, you know, peak and trough demand, and, and try to plan out years of, of human electrical consumption, you can say, hey, no matter what, we know we're gonna be selling, you know, this much electricity all the time, because even as the grid dips, you know, we'll, we'll sell it to Bitcoin mining, and then as the, as the peak demand on the grid goes up, right, we'll, we'll turn off some of our Bitcoin miners and And provide the grid with everything it needs at a price that it's willing to pay. and so every single energy producer is better off. But beyond that, now energy producers are incentivized to go out and find places where they have stranded assets or stranded energy sources, like Stranded geothermal, stranded hydroelectric, stranded natural gas. And as long as they can get an internet connection, they can create a downstream market for themselves. All they need to do is generate power and convert that power into computational work, which is a relatively easy thing to do today. In other words, they need to acquire ASICs, which- They're not fully commoditized by any means, but they're relatively plentiful, and they're becoming more plentiful, by the day. That being said, we, we need a lot more ASICs. So we need a lot of semiconductor production. We need some serious, some serious, money to be invested into, in, in my opinion, you know, erecting foundries and, and microelectronic fabrication facilities here in North America. But regardless, that's gonna change everything. And one way where it's really-- I mean, this is-- Bitcoin is really powerful and, The incentives of day-to-day, business activities and economic activities to a degree that's, that's really striking. And, and one way that I think it's gonna impact oil and gas that's kind of exciting, and I don't hear a lot of people talk about this, and, and maybe I'm a little bit-- maybe I'm just too bullish on Bitcoin, on this point, but I think it's truly gonna change the way guys produce oil wells, Currently, when guys are fracking or hor-- like horizontally exploring for, for oil, primarily, you know, they might drill a vertical well and then they're exploring horizontally, and if they, they discover, you know, an oil formate-- or if they're in a formation and they think they found some oil, they, they, they will sometimes inject the, the living hell out of that well, right? They'll, they'll inject a ton of pressure into that well, and what they're trying to do is blow off all the gas, right? They're trying to get all the gas Crude oil, because they don't even have a midstream, they don't even plan to sell the gas, this is an oil play. and, and in that process, oftentimes what, what they end up doing is leaving a lot of hydrocarbons on the table when you look at the overall production of the well. Where I think with Bitcoin, now they're gonna be incentivized rather than to inject the living hell out of the well and go after that oil, they're gonna slowly inject that well and they're gonna seep out every cubic foot of gas and they're gonna bring it" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "22:03", "start": 1323.18, "text": "You know, brought a, you know, a significant percentage of that gas to market, and they've taken a lot of that pressure out of the well, then they're gonna attack the oil, right? And they're, and then they're gonna maybe inject harder, but it, they're gonna be more patient in their production, right? They're gonna have a lower time preference, and what they're gonna find is that over the total production of the, like the overall production of the well, the lifespan of the well, the overall production is gonna be greatly increased," }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "22:29", "start": 1349.32, "text": "you know, by, by double digit To, to lower their time preference, be more patient, and more maybe diligent, you could call it, when, when producing, because now they have a me-a mechanism by which to bring that to market and earn a profit from that diligence, right? It's not just virtue signaling and I'm saving the environment kind of things anymore. Regulators no longer need to hold a gun to their head and say, \"Hey, you quit wasting this gas.\" The market's gonna hold a gun to their head and say, \"Hey, if you, if you keep wasting this gas, you're Able to compete and you're gonna get run out of business. and so it's just like this really natural way for, for efficiency, to get pushed forward and for innovation to get pushed forward. And so I, I don't know, it's when, when people come in and, I guess that's why, you know, I, I even engage in that, in the argument of, of Bitcoin and its environmental impact was, I w-early on I was seeing How positive Bitcoin's impact on the environment was, how, how many layers deep it went. And so when I started seeing guys, you know, even in early twenty nineteen, middle twenty nineteen, talk about Bitcoin's environmental impact, I was like, I have to participate in this discussion, I have to bring, bring my ideas to battle because I'm seeing something that maybe other people don't recognize, but it's, it's far beyond just, just finding Home for some wasted energy. It, it changes a lot more than that, and the outcome is a, is a positive environmental impact. So it's, you know, it's one of the, probably one of the technologies that should be most celebrated, by, by those who call themselves environmentalists, and yet it's ridic- ridiculed, and so a frustrating world we live in, right? Just how it goes." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:11", "start": 1450.9, "text": "Yeah, yeah. So I mean, it's really interesting you're saying there. It's, a lot of it is around the, the ability to make projects work So it's this idea that you can set up a project and you know that you can now sell this level of, capacity, because if you-- even if the grid doesn't want it, the Bitcoin miners want it. Right. Now, I, I suppose the challenge people might say, and they might be thinking this, is, \"But hang on, what about the opportunity cost then? Does that mean I would have spent all this money to buy Bitcoin mining equipment, but now it's just gonna sit idle? What, what, how would the-- how would you answer that kind of question" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "24:51", "start": 1490.62, "text": "That's how you appropriately scale your project is, I mean, if you're in a situation where you're selling to both the grid and, the Bitcoin network, right? If you're, if you're essentially bouncing back and forth, right, and constantly switching the, the percentage of your total energy that's going to one or the other, what I would say is that you would wanna properly scale it from the get-go and say, \"Hey, like, we should install this many Bitcoin miners so that it's likely for, you know, on average, eighty percent of them, ninety percent of them Eighty-five percent of them are running pretty much all the time, but then right when we get to peak demand, we're gonna have to drop it down to like twenty miners. You know what I, you know what I mean? And that, like, you would, you would get it to where the majority of the miners are on all the time. And then the other thing I would say is, well, maybe that would be-- this would be a situation where you wouldn't, you wouldn't leverage the newest mining hardware, right? This might be a great-- like, and that's often what I S19 Pro, and I'm like, \"Yes, I can, I can supply that for you, but I don't recommend it, right? Like, first of all, this is, this is your first time doing this, so buying seven thousand, eight thousand dollar machines is, it's, it's just a big risk, right? There's just some capital risk there. But beyond that, this is the oil field, like your advantage is the fact that you have the most economic energy. You don't need to be the most efficient horse in the race. You've got, you Like almost free energy. So the S9 is efficient enough and it's durable and, like, you know, so like those kinds of conversations are what I have with the, with these oil and gas producers who maybe come in after doing their preliminary, you know, kind of googling research, maybe they've, they have some kind of understanding of, of what Bitcoin mining hardware is and what they're buying, but they have the idea that like if they're, if they're not the most efficient machine, like they're, they're moments from being obsolete. And that's just, you know, like sometimes Eight cent per kilowatt hour power? Yeah, they need, they need efficient stuff because, like, they run the numbers and their price floor is higher and their, their energy ceiling is lower. when you look at guys in the oil field, like, you don't have these issues, and you, you don't have a, an energy supply issue, so efficiency isn't your problem, you have a capital supply issue. So this, really what you need is your dollar to be efficient when you spend it and invest in this. And so maybe the older stuff is actually more appropriate for you. This becomes a real technology to them when, when you have those conversations with guys, right? It becomes-- it's no longer just this magic internet, you know, it-- like, they just imagine somebody like in a dark room with all these little green lights everywhere, like, coding with a black screen and like, you know, hieroglyphs on the screen. Like, it's not that. This is oil and gas producers, petroleum engineers, some of the smartest people on earth. They, they can learn how to mine Bitcoin. The user interfaces aren't that challenging, albeit they're I mean, these guys drill seven thousand foot holes and, you know, produce hydrocarbons, right? I mean, these guys aren't, they're not idiots. So, you know, we-- our philosophy at Upstream Data is that upstream oil and gas producers Ought to be the biggest miners of the future because they're in the position to compete, right? They're in the best position to be the most competitive because The amount of wasted energy in the oil field, seemingly immeasurable, right? It's seemingly endless amounts of gas." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:19", "start": 1699.41, "text": "Yeah. So it's really an excellent opportunity that you're outlining here for people who are in the oil and gas industry and really why they should be trying to learn more about Bitcoin and about Bitcoin mining, because, and obviously there's two main angles. One is to, you know, to get involved in Bitcoin mining themselves, and, well, they wanna hold some Bitcoin, so they wanna think, well, before I'm holding a large amount of Bitcoin on my balance sheet or if" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:42", "start": 1721.6, "text": "I want to know a bit more about this thing, what is the case for Bitcoin, and so I suppose that's all part of that journey as well. So has that been your experience as well when you are, you know, teaching people about Bitcoin in the, who are from the oil and gas industry? What's, what's that been like teaching them?" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "28:56", "start": 1736.46, "text": "It's been I mean, here's the thing, like initially, for the most part, most of them are highly skeptical. some of them, there's some younger oil and gas engineers on the team that, like, are kind of maybe in-the-closet kind of, Bitcoin bulls, you know? In-the-closet" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:13", "start": 1753.23, "text": "Maxi's." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "29:14", "start": 1753.91, "text": "Yeah, in-the-closet Bitcoin bulls. and but for the most part, like, they're, they're relatively skeptical and, and they like the, the fact that they don't have to take Bitcoin risk, right? They like the Into, into good old dollars, right? Which for them, it makes sense. But that being said, this is the thing, Bitcoin will teach all of us, Savan. And I, and, and I love that you brought up this point, 'cause there's another point I really wanna make on this, but- You know, if you think about the oil and gas producers, and we-- I'm sorry, my, my dog's upset. we had, we had customers, we had customers that, you know, from, back from twenty eighteen. So our customers back from twenty eighteen. They look like geniuses at the end of 2020, right? When, when Bitcoin's price is running up, they look like absolute geniuses. When, when Bitcoin's, you know, crashing? Guys don't really think about them. So like, in the, in the mind of the oil and gas producer, you gotta think if, if any of those companies that were maybe mining Bitcoin with their flare gas in twenty twenty, if they were selling all of their proceeds throughout the year, I'm sure that they got together in the beginning of twenty twenty one and were like, \"Hey, so maybe this year we only sell seventy five percent, because look, had we held just even ten percent of what we made last year...\" When it ran up from ten thousand to fifty, sixty thousand, like it would have been like we made, you know, fifty dollars an MCF of gas, which is like twenty-five times better than the pipeline market, you know, and so Bitcoin's gonna train them. Bitcoin will teach them that You know, it's probably worth holding some of this, right? Yes, this is a great tool to go from gas that you can't find a market for to US dollars, which is what you denominate your company's success in. But that thing in between, you might wanna hold a little bit of it because, in fact, it's been appreciating the last, you know, twelve years. And so that, that's one way that they're getting top it. A lot of the conversations I have with oil and gas producers, the, the part of the conversation I think that's the most exciting and really the part of this that gets me the most excited on a, on a long time horizon is I believe Bitcoin mining is going to kind of separate, you know, separate the, the doers from, from the guys that are just on cruise control in the oil and gas industry, right? The, the- The petroleum engineers, the oil and gas producers and, and exploration companies that take this technology seriously, that take a serious look at it, and at least give it The level of seriousness that it's warranted so far, maybe you could call it what, six hundred billion dollars of seriousness, right, as a, as a market cap or something. Those oil and gas producers? Those engineers who go out and figure out how to price a Bitcoin miner, right, so that they can look at an Antminer S9 and tell you whether or not right now it's overpriced or it's underpriced? They're gonna be better oil and gas producers this decade than the guys that aren't, right? They're gonna be able to do more with the exact same amount of hydrocarbons, right? With the exact same oil and gas well, they can bring more value out of that than, than the guy who has no idea what a, what a tera hash is. they're gonna be better oil and gas producers. They're gonna-- the, the cream is gonna rise, and they're gonna be able to take this and leverage it to their advantage, use that competitive advantage to beat out their competition and that's what I'm most excited for. I'm most excited to work with the companies and build for the companies that are, that are excited about taking this, this technology and beating out their competition this decade, because those are the companies that are calling me, right? Those are the companies that are looking at how they can do more, right? They're not complacent with their current oil and gas production in their portfolio, they're always looking at, at- You know, doing better. And as that happens, then the o- then the entire industry comes because nobody wants to be left behind, right? Then, then everyone's afraid to be the people that can't compete. And then we have, we have an incredibly strong Bitcoin network and an oil and gas lobby that's on our side, right? Like, who, who needs Coin Center when you've got the oil and gas lobby on your side?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:18", "start": 1997.81, "text": "Right. So, yeah, so it's winning more and more people to the cause, if you will. And so it starts with, here's something that- That can solve a little bit of a problem for you, and then eventually it becomes, okay, this is now something you wanna hold, as you were saying, and it starts small. Obviously, they might only say, \"I'll keep a little bit of Bitcoin,\" and then slowly, okay, yeah, keep a bit more, keep a bit more, and eventually they get to a point where they just wanna hold as much as they can. And as I'm sure you're aware, a lot of the, Bitcoin miners now are able to hold more of their Bitcoin because now the in-vogue way All bitcoins, but, yeah, I guess that's a little bit of a different side of it, but yeah. So, yeah, so in terms of oil and gas, like, where do you see it? What are some of the big stumbling blocks right now for people who are already in oil and gas and haven't gone down this pathway yet? Is it just that they, maybe closed-minded, or is it just that they don't know, or what's the-- or do you think the market isn't big enough yet, as in Bitcoin's market isn't big enough yet" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "34:26", "start": 2065.82, "text": "Ted Cruz. I think Ted Cruz actually said this just yesterday, he's regula- you know, regulatory, clarity is the, is probably what I would say the biggest hurdle, right? There's a risk factor there that this is the issue, right? And, and here's a great example of it. So where- Where I'm currently mining Bitcoin, like where my current Bitcoin mine, is, the oil and gas producer that operates the well that has, vent gas that I'm, that I'm, our Bitcoin mine is consuming, they asked to, to purchase our, my Bitcoin mine at one point, right? but then they were unable to because, like, apparently their business insurance would cancel them if they got involved with holding cryptocurrency mining equipment, right? Because the business insurance has no way to calculate that risk, right? So by their means, like they, from their point of view, you know, if, if a company is holding Bitcoin miners, like they could be involved in all sorts of horrible international criminal activity, or, you know what I mean? I have no idea. Like apparently it's, it's beyond what they're able to, to calculate, right? That risk, at least currently, right? It's, it's too early, and so I think they're just- Too early, so they're hands off. They're saying like, \"Hey, we, we can't insure you if you do this.\" And so companies can't buy in Bitcoin if they can't be insured, right? 'Cause they can't do any other business if they're not insured. And so there's- That's, it's, it's a, right? So there's regulatory uncertainty, insurance is a, is a massive issue, I think. you know, if you're gonna set out, if you're gonna really scale this out throughout your production portfolio and your oil and gas wells, I mean, you're po-- you're possibly talking about ten, fifteen, twenty million dollars of computer hardware out in, in an outdoor environment, right? Now while you-- at upstream data, right, the, the hashhuts we build are all-weather and, and will bear all insane environments of the But still, you want insurance, right? Because, you know, somebody backs a truck into the dang thing on one day, just, you know, the guy that picks up oil, like, you just, you want insurance, and if you can't get insured, it's almost like a non-starter for a lot of these serious oil and gas companies. The flip side of that coin that's kind of cool, the kind of maybe silver lining to that is, and one of the ways in which Bitcoin is just so unique, or is, is unique is The, the small mom and pop operators are kind of, it makes sense for them to get involved first, right? They're more inclined to take this risk because it's a bigger benefit to them, the risk of like maybe not insuring twenty thousand dollars of some equipment, you know, it's like they can't get insurance for that They're o- they're like okay taking the risk and maybe just, you know, the stuff breaking and they're out the money and like, you know, they're fine with that. Like the small mom and pop, oil and gas producers, I think are, they have a head start because they're just, they're more inclined to, to kind of absorb some of that Risk that, you know, large corporations have way too much red tape to even talk about, and so it's likely that we'll see smaller oil and gas companies integrate this more thoroughly throughout their production, before the bigger companies really come in and get serious about it. But the thing is that once the big companies make, you know, make a move, they, they move really fast, right? And so like once they decide that they wanna build this out, that they're gonna, you know, allocate this, this much of next year's budget to it, like it'll happen really quick and they'll catch up fast. But, and, and I think we're just right before that moment. We're right at this exploratory phase, I think we're all All oil and gas companies in the world right now, in some way, shape, or form, are taking a serious look at what it's like to mine Bitcoin. What do the costs look like? What does the ROI, you know, ballpark me on ROI? Are we talking ten years, five years, two hundred days? Like, everyone's at least doing some due diligence to get that information? A lot of them are pulling the trigger and starting with like a pilot project, right, getting their feet wet. A couple of them are already like sold on this being, you know, a serious tool to, to leverage in the oil field, and they're incorporating it in all their on-site operations, right? Anywhere that they've got excess gas, they're making sure to go put a mine. and so it's that Parker Lewis, you know, it's the, what is it, the gradually then suddenly, like we're at the then part, you know, like we're just at Yeah. In this moment of suspense, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:34", "start": 2314.15, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. CoinKite dot com are the creators of my favorite Bitcoin hardware wallet, the Coldcard. So with the Coldcard, it's a specialized device used to hold your Bitcoin private keys and to sign Bitcoin transactions. You can use the Coldcard as part of a single signature setup or as part of a multi-signature setup with multiple hardware wallet devices. So the Coldcard works great with hardware wallets like Specter Desktop, Electrum, BlueWallet or Sparrow Wallet. With the Coldcard, you never actually have to directly- Plug it with a computer, you can plug it to the wall or you can get a cold power and power it with battery, and you use a micro SD card to ferry that information back and forward between the cold card and your computer or your phone wallet. So get yours at coinkite dot com and use the code livera to get a discount. 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So you might have been thinking, \"Well, one hardware wallet's enough,\" but remember, as that value rises, you need to start thinking about eliminating single points of failure. Even if you've got a hardware wallet, you're still exposed. For example, your wallet, or its backup, or even ourselves. With Unchained Capital, they have a Get set up with two hardware wallets sent to you and video calls to get you set up, even if you've never held your private keys before. So go to unchained-dashcapital dot com slash concierge and use the code livera to get fifty dollars off. Now, back to the show. Yeah, that's pretty cool. And so it just comes down to more and more people waking up to that aspect of it, and it, it also brings up that whole conversation around the energy mix of Bitcoin, right? Like, oh, how much is renewable, how much is, you know, and, and like this whole conversation about, fossil fuels. And, I think obviously some of this comes into the discussion around, you know, whether you view fossil fuels as a good thing, like a net good thing for humanity. I know you probably have some thoughts on that" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "41:08", "start": 2467.74, "text": "Could you not, I mean, sit there and say that fossil fuels aren't a net positive for humanity is to just lie, is to just be a liar, in my opinion. I mean, I, it's hardly even worth picking apart, you know? It's crazy. I, I'm looking around me right now, and I, I don't think there's anything around me that could be here if it wasn't for- You know, reliable economic electricity, and reliable and economic electricity is predominantly provided from fossil fuels, like coal and natural gas. this is the predominant for-- predominant driver of the electricity that, you know, powers the world, and none, none of this would have been manufactured without economic electricity. None of it. It sure, sure as hell wouldn't have been shipped to me. I mean, like, I mean, even dog food wouldn't be available at, at the grocery store for twenty bucks if electricity wasn't abundant and if fossil fuels weren't, prevalent in today, I mean, it's just nuts for people to, to villainize them. I get, and, and here's the thing, like, I'm no-- I, I don't think there should be like zero, you know, regulation of, of all processes of oil and gas or something. Like, no. And by the way, I think oil and gas companies are much more stewards of the environment than people give them credit for. But yeah, there's definitely places where, where waste can be cleaned up. I" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "42:28", "start": 2548.35, "text": "Waste or at least reuse or, or, recycle in some capacity waste. But gosh, the benefit of fossil fuels, I mean, it's crazy that it's just absent of the conversation. And, and there's just been this brainwashing, you know, this mainstream narrative that just the, the fossil fuel industry, the, the energy industry is just like these crooked, mean guys in suits that just, you know, they just wanna burn Mother Earth for profits, is like the, it's just not-- I mean, I work with these people every day, that isn't who they" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "42:59", "start": 2578.51, "text": "so, you know, I, I think the ESG narrative is, is damaging. I think it's, I, I think it truly causes a lot of harm, and it's, it's tough to, to measure the, the negative externalities that arise from the bastardization of, of incentives. But I mean, look at what fiat money does, right? I mean, ESG is just another kind of mechanism of that, right? Carbon credits, in my opinion, are, it's more of an accounting scam than it is anything. it's a means by which to just Offset all of these other economic losses because of these virtue gains that are measured in units of carbon. I mean, it's a very, I think it's, it's a very dangerous and damaging, incentive system, right? And I hate kowtowing to it. I hate the idea that, you know, you have to talk about how, like, like energy consumption as though it's a bad thing. I don't think consuming energy is immoral. I think energy consumption is amoral, right? I think it's, you know, if, if energy consumption is amoral, then literally Every single person on the internet is just like, we're all just sitting on the internet destroying the earth is what, is what, is going on in the mi-in the minds of these people. Like, I, it's very bizarre to me. Consumption of, of electricity isn't a bad thing, and yet we've been told that. And I'm, it's, it's hard to, it's really hard to, to reverse it, right? It's really hard to, to even get people to challenge the idea that consuming electricity is a bad thing for some reason." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:19", "start": 2658.54, "text": "Like, I don Things like, \"Oh, see, we're gonna transition away from fossil fuels to the supposed wind and solar,\" and it, it just seems very not aligned with reality because people are living in denial of what feeds them and clothes them and houses them, and people just sort of virtue signal about what they wish the way, the, the way they wish the world would be." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "44:49", "start": 2689.16, "text": "Yeah, I mean, I wish that too." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:51", "start": 2690.82, "text": "Rather than understanding, you know, technology that's in place." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "44:53", "start": 2693.38, "text": "I mean, I wish, I wish like it was just rainbows and unicorns too, like You know, I wish we, I wish we could just put out a big ol' solar panel and then just easily distribute all the energy to the world and never-- You know, I wish that too. It's just, it's just not reality. It's detached from reality, like you said. you're right. Like that's-- It's like this kind of fairy tale idea, but everyone's going along with it. Everyone's like, \"Yeah, we're, we're transitioning, we're gonna be, you know, completely fossil fuel free by twenty thirty five.\" And I'm like Jets to have, to decommission them in, in ten years, like, no way, sorry, like it's just not-- And honestly, w-what that would mean, it would mean for humanity to revert back to what, eighteenth century, nineteenth century lifestyle, right? Like, so what, we should all go back to burning logs every night? Like, like the emissions from that is gonna be better? like, I mean, what are we talking about here? Like, we have to, we have to create heat still, we have to generate power still. I mean, Means by which we leverage technology, it's the means by which we improve quality of life. The fact of the matter is, there are people today that still don't have electricity, and there's people that-- like, billions of people that don't actually have economic and reliable electricity. and I think Bitcoin's gonna be the mechanism that, that gives them electricity, right? I think it's gonna be the incentive to generate power because you can earn a profit, that people are gonna go and provide these emerging communities and remote communities that don't have electricity with electricity, because until they can consume You can mine Bitcoin, right? So you can erect a solar plant and you can use it, you know, predominant, maybe a hundred percent of your power in the beginning, you're mining Bitcoin with it, but then slowly as you build out infrastructure for this, this community and maybe become able to consume electricity, you can then taper off, right? And then you can relocate your Bitcoin mine to the next place you're gonna do it, right? There's gonna be a- Capital incentive to go do this really good thing, to, to go provide electricity to a market that doesn't have it, right? To supply what isn't, what isn't meeting demand. where now the only time that that happens is through, is through like the Gates Foundation, right? And then the Gates Foundation, like, has their, has their thumb on this community, and it's more of like a, a mafia relationship because really the Gates Foundation is, is doing this at a loss, right? They're burning money every year to provide electricity, and so if they leave, nobody else is Come in and replace them. And so everybody's like, \"Please don't leave, we want the electricity.\" Well, with Bitcoin mining, like, if the person that comes in and provides electricity behaves tyrannically and, and tries to cheat the system that way, well, somebody else will come in and just outcompete them, produce power at a better rate, right? Leverage Bitcoin in order to do it at a better rate and put them out of business. And so it makes people play fair. It makes the upstream oil and gas producers play fair, right? The, the pipeline companies in the" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "47:47", "start": 2867.2, "text": "producers and say, hey, listen, I, I've got a pipeline here. Like, you're gonna sell me your gas, and you're gonna sell it to me at this price. Otherwise, like, you know, screw off, because what, what are you gonna do with it? All, the only other thing you can do with it is burn it. And now the oil and gas producers get to come to the table and they say, hey, pipeline company, if you don't give me a good price for my gas, I'm just gonna mine Bitcoin with it. Like, I don't Everybody have to play more fair, and I think it's gonna bring up the market to, to a higher equilibrium, right? Like I think what we're gonna find is, is greater efficiency, the consumers oughta win, the producers oughta win, it's beautiful, right? It's free market." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:30", "start": 2910.1, "text": "Yeah, so that's a really interesting way to put it. And so, yeah, it's really about, in negotiations, it's about what's your alternative." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "48:37", "start": 2916.79, "text": "Exactly." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:37", "start": 2917.21, "text": "And because now there is an alternative, it actually makes it a lot better for that. So I guess in" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:47", "start": 2927.22, "text": "In some way." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "48:48", "start": 2928.34, "text": "Yeah, yeah, and, and it gives the upstream producer, you know, another tool, right? Like gives them a little bit of some-- or at least something else to bring to the table, right? but I, you know, I think Michael Saylor has said this before, but he was talking about it from, from like a, you know, the billionaire or a company's point of view where if, you know, the bank treats you poorly, you can now just say, \"Okay, bank, like, I'm just gonna take my ten billion or whatever," }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "49:17", "start": 2957.16, "text": "Really in the marketplace, you have just that, just that optionality, just the threat of being able to move your money changes how the bank treats you. In the same way with oil and gas, right? Just the optionality, just the fact that these producers could potentially go, go buy a Bitcoin mine instead of sell to the pipeline is gonna change the way that those discussions go. And, yeah, it's, it's a real-- I mean, and this, I gotta imagine it's happening across other industries that I'm not even aware of yet, right? Like this is-- Bitcoin bleeds through Economic incentives, it's, it's this very insa- like, I guess, insidious kind of signal, I guess the signal, right? It's an economic signal in, in the minds of every, of every participant in an economy, right? So it's just pure signal out there and, I mean, oil and gas producers can't deny it, they can't deny the price in the sky, right? When, when Bitcoin is at fifty thousand dollars, they had to pick up the phone and figure out if they should be mining Bitcoin, like, if this mining Bitcoin thing is" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:17", "start": 3017.16, "text": "Yeah, that's funny. I mean, I've mentioned it before, but so many things in this space are indexed to the price, whether we like it or not." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "50:24", "start": 3023.6, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:24", "start": 3023.86, "text": "Number go up drives developers, hash rate, more, you know, wallet downloads, podcast downloads, all of these things are basically indexed to the price. So as the price runs up, more people get interested. And so even if we don't like, some people don't like the kind of overly price-pumpy moonboy behavior, some of that is a bit, you know, over the top, but fundamentally, number A lot of these other things, and, you know, we believe it will drive freedom go up and number of people going up as well. So I think that's probably the interesting point and question as well around oil and gas and what it takes for more of them to get into this. And of course, the smaller Bitcoin is as a market, the less interested they are, but the bigger it becomes, well, now it's starting to make a lot more sense for them to actually get involved, right? And so I guess it's all a matter of time." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "51:11", "start": 3070.71, "text": "Yeah, and I, yeah, the risk With, with Bitcoin, where the, the bigger it gets, the, the less scary it becomes, at least to the investor, maybe the more scary it becomes to the regulator. so, you know, I think, I think the most powerful manipulator in the room is price, and nothing's gonna change that, because I, like I said, I mean, I, I was going around twenty eighteen, my boss, Steve Barber, I mean, even earlier than I was, I mean, just getting laughed at by the oil and gas guys initially, right? Like, I It was a, a humorous topic for like ninety-nine point nine percent of the people in, in, in the industry. And honestly, as it kinda should have been, right? Like the, that idea is just like, \"Oh, really? Like that's gonna be-- This magic internet money's gonna, it's gonna come infiltrate oil and gas?\" Okay. But then here we are, like, here we are, and this is really serious. The most serious oil and gas producers are looking at this. and the, the greatest outcome of all is Bitcoin is going to become, I mean Much more spread out than it has been the last, you know, five years significantly. I mean, like China kicking out all the miners, a gift from God. I mean, I'm not, I don't see where it's, where it's some kind of an attack vector or like it's a long con of some sorts. I mean, maybe I'm missing something, but as far as I can tell, it was just a gift from the heavens, and we should all celebrate it, and in celebration, bring on some hash rate here in North America because, like, you know, the, the Time for, for these oil and gas producers to take a look at this and get started because they, they have significantly less competition than they would have four months ago." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:57", "start": 3177.0, "text": "Yeah, yeah. And also wanted to get your thoughts on the Bitcoin Mining Council because I know- Oh, yeah. This is also a big topic in the industry. And so, I guess maybe let me s- let some of the, I'll lay some of the found- foundation a little bit for people. So I guess some of the arguments here are around this idea, now, Michael Saylor and others in the Bitcoin- Bitcoin mining council might frame it like, okay, it's, it's about education. We're trying to just form an educational council to teach people, hey, this is what Bitcoin mining is, and they're trying to disclose statistics about the percentage of Bitcoin mining that is, quote unquote, sustainable. And I think the number I've seen thrown around is about fifty-six percent, meaning either usage of wind and solar hydro or where they're, they've paid for a carbon offset. so what's your, I guess, kind of thought on that idea? Is there value to that idea of having a voluntary open Bitcoin mining council?" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "53:52", "start": 3231.86, "text": "I think there's value to the idea. Listen, I think, I think it's possible the mining council was made in complete good faith, with complete, you know, I guess, altruistic and, and altruistic intentions rather than malicious intentions. I don't think that that's their goal was to become the, the mafia regulators of the industry by any means. but it's just one of those, one of those things where it's a slippery slope in my opinion. Where it's, it's a fine line, right? It's a real-- you quickly cross over the line between, \"Hey, we just wanna, we just wanna know what percentage of your Bitcoin miners are on, quote-unquote, renewable energy, so that we can report accurate data, so that people can have, you know, information, and so that we're transparent in, in how we're, you know, conducting this, this new industry.\" There's a fine line between that and, \"Hey, we need to know what percentage of your miners are renewable, otherwise we're shutting you Right? Or otherwise like you can't be a part of the, the carbon reduction mining council, and if you're not a part of the carbon reduction mining council, you don't get the carbon reduction mining council credits at the end of every month, and if you're trying to mine without these carbon credits that this council is now releasing to incentivize people to mine on renewable, then you can't even really mine. Like, you, you could end up fucking up a lot of things, and you can, you can Screw up the incentive structure of Bitcoin pretty well by creating, I mean, by creating carbon credits. Honestly, if you think about it, if really, if a ton of oil and gas-- or not oil and gas, sorry, sorry. If a ton of upstream energy producers get involved in mining Bitcoin with wind and solar, and they're getting a ton of carbon credits from the government They're essentially being subsidized to mine Bitcoin, right? And so if they're being subsidized to mine Bitcoin, they could scale to the point where you-- unless, unless you have like essentially free energy, you can't mine Bitcoin without a subsidy, right? 'Cause these guys are essentially mining at a loss in terms of their power, but their subsidy brings them above, you know, brings them into profitability. I mean, that's, that's where you-- that's called deadweight loss, right? That's called creating deadweight loss in a market, and, that's what the government" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "55:58", "start": 3357.9, "text": "Bad intentions. I don't hold any grudges against them. I think that the possibility of this becoming something worse and, and, you know, iterations of it to some degree, it's scary to me, right? And, and I, I like to, I, I honestly don't like that risk. and so like I, I, I think I might on the side of," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:16", "start": 3376.06, "text": "yeah," }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "56:16", "start": 3376.44, "text": "it may do more harm than good," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:19", "start": 3378.54, "text": "yeah, but" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "56:19", "start": 3378.9, "text": "I'm, I'm not gonna argue that it does no good, because I think there's definitely some good that it can definitely-- I Ignorant the lawmakers are in the United States. I mean, they're literally regulating an industry that none of them understand, and they admit that they don't understand it, but they're gonna regulate it anyway. I mean, so obviously, like, I mean, it's one of those things like, sh-should we even have, should we have a Bitcoin-only lobby, right? I think obviously now it seems like we should. Like, how did this stuff get in the infra- infrastructure bill and come out of nowhere? Like, I thought that there were crypto lobbies in Washington, like, what like, you know what I mean? Like, I'm, I'm all over, I, I'm sitting here like, I, I'm not sure if it's futile or if, if it's worthwhile. Like, it seems to me to be futile because obviously, look, like, they make the r-the rules to their own game, and they don't care if they even understand what they're regulating. So, yeah, hard to argue that we should spend money and time discussing with these people. Like, maybe we should just build out our industry and," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "57:12", "start": 3432.22, "text": "you know, and then fight them I think it's one of those things where I, I agree that there might be a future risk there, because as an example, this is probably a good example, Sir John James Calipsoet, British civil servant, and he was the Financial Secretary of Hong Kong from nineteen sixty-one to nineteen seventy-one. and so he has a really interesting example because, do you know why? He didn't want to keep government statistics, and he was famous for this, and the reason for that is because he knew that government technocrats, when they had these statistics, would try to manage You can see where I'm going with this, right?" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "57:51", "start": 3471.25, "text": "No, that's it. No, you're right. That's a-- No, you're right. And so that's a, that's a great example." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "57:55", "start": 3475.03, "text": "And this is something that libertarians speak about as well from an economic statistics per-perspective, because they say, \"Look, if you give all these economic technocrats the statistics and this data, they're gonna try to manage it, right?\" And so in the same way, if we're out here saying, \"Oh, look, guys, we're fifty-six percent renewable in terms 56%, well, that's not enough. We need 90%. And if you're not renewable, if you're not wind and solar as pre-ordained by the Green Church, you're not allowed to operate. Or maybe they'll, they'll, apply pressure on the loans, and maybe they'll say, they'll pry pres-pressure through the financial system and say, \"Hey, you're not allowed to give them loans and credit unless they are pre-ordained green.\" And so this is potentially where the angle and the risk could come in. well, and" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "58:47", "start": 3527.49, "text": "then to There, right? Like I just, I had a phone conversation last week with an oil and gas producer, a good, a good friend of mine, here in Colorado, and he's currently drilling wells. And not many people maybe n-kind of know how this, how this works, but companies that go out and kind of explore for wells, right? They go out and they try to raise money so they can drill, right? And so like they have a budget that they wanna get to. And but he said, he literally told me, he's like, \"Listen, the issue, he's the environmental aspect, and he's like, \"Not because the regulators are penalizing us, but because unless we have a sexy ESG story, we can't get any money. Nobody will invest in us because we're the dirty oil and gas industry. And so in order to invest in the dirty oil and gas industry, people will only invest in the companies that have the sexiest, greenest, cleanest story of this dirty industry. Right? And so they're only investing the cleanest, you know, newest kind of, oil and gas producers. And so the reason that he likes this is just so that he can turn around and get money so that he can go drill oil wells. He doesn't really care much about, you know, mining Bitcoin at all. Like, he just wants money to go drill oil wells, 'cause that's what he is, he's an oil man, right? I mean, he's a producer. but he can't get the money unless he sells these guys a sexy" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:00:07", "start": 3607.82, "text": "story. And" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:00:12", "start": 3612.62, "text": "Which is, which is just a big virtue signaling game. It's nonsense. It's like, no, no, hold on, people should invest in this technology because it's, it's really worth investing in. Like, there's not, you know, the, the saving the planet and saving humanity points aside, like this is great technology. but you're right, that's exactly-- it's already happening, right? We're, we're oil and gas producers right now are having a hard time getting anybody to invest in them, whether they're coming from like hedge-- they're, they're Green story. And so it's already happening, we're there, right? So I'd say the, I mean, historical data has shown us that the risk is one hundred percent that, that such a, such kind of a council could become corrupt. and I, I, I like, I like that, government statistics one too, because on the surface, right? The initial reaction to saying we shouldn't do government statistics is like, why wouldn't we want the information? That's so foolish. Like, be ignorant to the data. But you're right, like, inevitably it just Of statistics rather than, you know, statistics are trying to push a story rather than reflect something that's already happened or taking place. It's" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:01:20", "start": 3680.15, "text": "exactly, the metric becomes managed. And so then," }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:01:23", "start": 3683.27, "text": "exact, the metric becomes managed. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:01:24", "start": 3684.93, "text": "that's one way to think of it. And I, I look, in fairness, I can't, we can't expect people like Michael Saylor to be out there one hundred percent towing the anarcho-capitalist-libertarian line, which, you know, you know, obviously we might like that, but we don't know, you know, That it's maybe it's just part of what is helping Bitcoin grow larger, and then it, it, you know, it might just not matter in the end. Like, let's say in ten years' time, if Bitcoin has just grown that large, it, it might just be-- it might have become an unstoppable train by then, so who knows?" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:01:57", "start": 3717.99, "text": "Well, yeah, I mean, I think cool thing about Bitcoin is it's got this, this unique quality where it only, it only attracts enemies that are just too small to crush it. So like, like it only attracts the, like the government Big enough to defend itself against the government, you know what I mean? Like, 'cause the government, I think, the US government specifically, could have crushed Bitcoin in twenty thirteen. Like, I truly think they could have, like, destroyed this thing and probably, like, sent it packing for good. maybe it would have, you know, popped back up somewhere else, but they, they probably could have thwarted it pretty good. maybe twenty twelve. But now? Nah, there's no way, right? And so it's like, by the time Bitcoin's enemies even, even realize it, it's too big to fight. And that's one of the, I don't know, it's just like this perfect balancing quality of Bitcoin is that when it's-- when people don't care about it, they could crush it, but they don't care to. And then when they wanna crush it, they can't." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:02:47", "start": 3767.93, "text": "Yeah. So, yeah, I, I don't know. I mean, it, it, it is At the same time, they wouldn't necessarily be able to go and get, like, acquire that many ASICs to try and commandeer the network or, right? Try to DOS the network because there's a constraint there on that too. But I guess it's a complicated story, like, well, and the energy, yeah." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:03:12", "start": 3792.29, "text": "I mean, where do you get the energy, right? I mean, like, to try to get that much energy in one place, like, is really hard to do. Like, I mean, we're talking about gigawatts of power, like, there's not just Say, you know, hash rate is equal to security, like kind of, but I think there, it's like, it, it's kind of like a step system where, where once Bitcoin's at like a hundred exahashes or two hundred exahashes, it's not like two hundred and twenty exahashes is ten percent more secure, really. Like, really two hundred exahashes is just like beyond attack, like beyond what's possible to attack, so it's secure, like checkbox, not like secure on a spectrum." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:03:53", "start": 3833.59, "text": "Right. So you're thinking a bit more like a binary?" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:03:55", "start": 3835.43, "text": "Yeah Because, like, I mean, once you're at like a, a, you know, what is it, a, a zeta hash, right? Right? Once we get to a thousand x hashes, like, it's not like another x, you know, 100 x hashes really does all that much to the security. but, yeah, it's, it's kind of the- Binary aspect, and right now, I'd say it's beyond attack, right? plus there's just so many people paying attention to Bitcoin, so many people actively operating nodes, like not just passively having a node running, but like they're operating lightning nodes or whatever. And so the node operators really are the gatekeepers here, right? So even if somebody were to, to get that much power and hash rate, like I, I think they'd fail. I, I, I truly believe that they would fail, and they'd waste a lot of money doing it, and Bitcoin price Probably, but then it would cover because it'd be hard. I mean, it's hardened. So, you know, it's-- I think we're about to learn really quickly though, that there's only like one government hard money out there, and all these other ones are really subject to regulators' will, and we might see, I'm like, we might see a fight here. Like, I mean, with this recent infrastructure bill, like it's, we're kind of at the point now that, I, I think Marty Bent said it, it was like a shot that was, the shot that" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:05:14", "start": 3914.18, "text": "Of course, I, you know, I believe in, you know, anarchocapitalism, libertarianism, so I certainly don't wanna see-- I, I, you know, believe in the free market and fully privatize everything. But I, I think maybe some are thinking of it like, \"Oh, don't engage at all.\" Or maybe, maybe you, you should, if it's, if it's in like a low cost way that you can concurrently employ every strategy available to you. So of course, open source software, open source hardware, development effort, Bitcoin businesses, absolutely," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:05:44", "start": 3944.32, "text": "Like, i-is it the end of the world to make some phone calls or to maybe put some money into Bitcoin lobbying to, to at least try to stave off the worst of it? That's, I, I guess that's my perspective. What do you think?" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:05:54", "start": 3954.34, "text": "No, I mean, I'm, I've been battling back and forth with that the last few days, and even 'cause I, like the last couple days, I gave some crap to Coin Center, on Twitter, you know, and, and like I got some pushback from, from some people, and people that I Right? I have a hard time buying shoes for myself right now rather than just buying some Bitcoin. And so the idea of like donating to a lobby, I would really need to be like, they, it would need to be an individual that I spoke to, you know, one on one and, and they compelled me, right? Like they, they gave me a really good reason as to why me specifically as to how it's gonna impact me or, or, you know, mining in the oil field, right? and how they're specifically going to, like, you know, their plan to approach" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:06:44", "start": 4004.2, "text": "Lobbyists, like what their, their methods of, of trying to push regulation are. And so for me, it's almost, it seems to me like kind of like a black hole of money, where you just like, you companies just dump money into this thing, you know? They, they always just allocate half a percent to, for lobbying, and so they're gonna, you know, if you're the one of only three lobby companies in this industry, you're gonna get some money, and then you don't really have to do much because Washington sucks, and so nobody's gonna blame you when Like full, they have full kind of deniability of results, right? And I don't like that. I don't like putting money towards something where people can have full, have full pre-planned excuses as to why they don't need to deliver anything. so I, I go back and forth on that. that being said, I obviously with what just happened in Washington, we, we gotta get, we, we need some voice. I mean, I would, I would give my voice to it, right? If, I've, I've spoken with, with some people Reached out to me and, and I said happily I would," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:07:46", "start": 4066.32, "text": "you" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:07:46", "start": 4066.78, "text": "know, like speak on behalf of what we're doing and why I think regulation could stifle some really great things that, that are going on with Bitcoin mining. But obviously we haven't had very many compelling or intellectual people give those arguments in Washington, 'cause these guys have no idea what the fuck is going on. I mean, and we had no idea that this was coming. So, I, I'm a results guy, right? And the results I see right now are pretty, are pretty lacking. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:08:08", "start": 4088.93, "text": "yeah." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:08:09", "start": 4089.49, "text": "And so the money" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:08:14", "start": 4094.18, "text": "I have a hard time thinking about donating, you know, given, given the results. Right." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:08:18", "start": 4098.44, "text": "Yeah. So, so absolutely, I think a Bitcoin only lobby would, I think a lot of Bitcoiners would feel more comfortable donating money for that as opposed to be-- always in the back of their mind wor-- worrying if there is some shitcoin apologia going on as well. Yeah, they're out there" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:08:32", "start": 4112.43, "text": "trying to get like NFT legislation, like, yeah, like I don't care about NFT legislation, man, like, I really don't." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:08:38", "start": 4118.71, "text": "And, look, maybe the other-- Because of all the, the lobbying. So maybe it's, it's a, it's a lobby that's gonna grow over time and we could argue that potentially politically, bitcoiners become more powerful in that sense. So maybe it's not necessarily just the lobbying, but it could also be politicians that have to try to, I hope so, cater to the bitcoiner voting base, if you will, that they might-- So, you know, obviously people like Senator Cynthia Lummis, obviously is probably at the top of that list, and other, you know, and other prominent voices. So maybe People like her, and she's great, coming out of this." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:09:17", "start": 4157.16, "text": "Yeah, and I think there's game theory here, right? I mean, the government's made up of individuals, and so these individuals are, they, they benefit from Bitcoin's characteristics just as much as I do, and so, you know, and not to mention they get to work on the game of, of regulating it, so they get to buy a whole bunch of it, and then they get to come together and say, \"Oh, no, by the way, we're gonna totally let Bitcoin be like viewed To everybody else that plays this, this game theory. But, and, and I do agree with you, like I hope that the maybe politically, bitcoiners' voice becomes more powerful or, or I guess more politicians are inclined to listen to the, you know, concerns of this industry, of this community. I think maybe for me personally, it's just, I hate that game so much, I'm probably not gonna be the one that participates the whole time in it. I just, I, it's just so, you know, I, I really like doing honest business. I, I, And like in Washington, and with politicians, you don't get that, man. Like, you get a whole-- It's, it's all a facade. It's a lot of saying, it's just, you know, yeah, it's just all saying things and getting elected, you know, saying the, saying the thing to, to either get into power or retain power." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:10:29", "start": 4229.49, "text": "But here's the point, like, of course, I'm, I'm with you. I think, you know-" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:10:32", "start": 4232.51, "text": "But you're right, we have to play the game. Like," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:10:38", "start": 4238.05, "text": "it's either if" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:10:41", "start": 4241.17, "text": "we The reason I wanna-- I'm probably gonna be like in Wyoming or South Dakota here soon, and like, you know, I, I wanna be left the hell alone as much as, as much as anybody else, right? you know, and, and, and I don't, I don't like think that people that are putting effort toward, toward that aren't bad I mean, I honestly like, good on you, that's fantastic. I, I like, I don't have-- I, I maybe I just have more disdain for, for some of these, these regulators than others, and I, it's just really hard for me to give them my hard-earned money, right? I mean, they're already taking so much of it, it's like, it's hard for me to, to spend money because I, I really don't know if that's how the impact happens. That's why I said I'd absolutely lend my voice or my time Personal experience from the industry, I would happily do that. It's hard for me to just give money because, you know, I, I don't know. It's like, I, I feel like I'm, I'm accommodating this." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:11:38", "start": 4298.23, "text": "Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that, and I think part of it is like a lobbying game of nonsense," }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:11:42", "start": 4302.29, "text": "you know? I don't know. It's, it's like, there's got to be a better way." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:11:45", "start": 4305.11, "text": "Yeah, I, I, it's sort of, I think we all have somewhat conflicted feelings because at the same time, it's like" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:12:00", "start": 4320.02, "text": "Yes, you know, good. I mean, good on them. And, and if they've got the talent for it, like, awesome. Like, I hope, I wish them all the success in the world, right? I'll benefit from their success, so I, I definitely don't, don't want like Bitcoin lobbyists to fail by any means. Of course not. I'd, I'd love to see some, some legi- like regulation of, of over- oversight of Bitcoin that was logical, right? Like things that actually made sense, right? So that we were, we Yeah. Things like innovation, right? Rather than- But I think" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:12:33", "start": 4353.25, "text": "at the, at the end of the day," }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:12:34", "start": 4354.37, "text": "you know, stifling that, like, let's, let's cycle monsters, you know?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:12:38", "start": 4358.03, "text": "Yeah. Yeah. But the way, the way I would put it is, is more like, we don't even necessarily need, government regulation of market competition to have perfect competition and things like that. What we-- But I think- No," }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:12:47", "start": 4367.9, "text": "we don't." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:12:48", "start": 4368.44, "text": "Like, no. You know, I guess bringing it back to the main point really is most of the work is in" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:12:57", "start": 4377.46, "text": "the It should be, but maybe a little bit of effort or money or resources or time, as disgusting as politics is," }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:13:06", "start": 4386.91, "text": "I think you might, you might have convinced me that as disgusting as politics is, you might have" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:13:09", "start": 4389.81, "text": "convinced me that. As disgusting as it is." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:13:11", "start": 4391.89, "text": "As disgusting as it is, I mean, I will say, you know, worst case silver lining is that it reminds me of, you know, why Bitcoin is so awesome because it, it renders a lot of this nastiness obsolete. in many ways, right? And at least, or at least hopefully takes away a little bit of power from, from these swamp creatures that, that just print money at will without any, without any thought of it. You know, it's, it's, I, I like that you brought this up because the overarching point is this, we all want Bitcoin to succeed, and I think we all-- I think for the most part, most, most people that understand Bitcoin think that Bitcoin will succeed whether or not there's thoughtful regulation around it or not. it's just the point A Path, right? So this is the thing, I think inevitably, central banks and the politicians that they own currently, aren't gonna go down quietly. And if Bitcoin truly renders their money printing obsolete and really, I mean, that takes away all of their power, I don't think they're gonna go down without kicking and screaming and, and doing some really, really crazy things like crazy regulation, making Bitcoin legal kind of things, right? As, as the last ditch efforts, right? But maybe I'm, maybe I'm out of bounds, like, you know, it's like, From, you know, regulating it and calling it a money and recognizing it as a currency, and then all of a sudden just, like, yes, they can, like, they absolutely can. Have you ever heard of emergency measures, like, have you not seen the last year? Like, they, they can't just tell you that you, you know, they can't make you show them that you're vaccinated," }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:14:47", "start": 4487.69, "text": "but" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:14:53", "start": 4493.37, "text": "Somebody that, that said, \"Hey, this is our course of action for how we plan to get this regulation in place, and this is why we think it's gonna be helpful. This is, you know, how we plan to do it.\" Like, it'd be hard for me to not," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:15:02", "start": 4502.88, "text": "you know," }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:15:03", "start": 4503.66, "text": "support that. But what I see right now, it's just kind of like, \"Yeah, throw them money and hope for the best.\" And I'm like, \"I don't, I don't play that game.\"" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:15:11", "start": 4511.12, "text": "Yeah, yeah. And, and I think to reflect maybe the local country, jurisdiction, and the people who are doing the Bitcoin development, Bitcoin mining, Bitcoin education, whatever in that country, they're the ones who might suffer. Yeah. And if you want your country or your area to do well, that's where you have to be able to, as disgusting as it is, maybe have some political engagement or some lobbying engagement to try to stave off the worst of it, to give Bitcoin more of a chance to grow until it gets too big to, like, just realistically too big for anyone to really stop this thing." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:15:51", "start": 4551.87, "text": "And for, and too many people involved for it, for, you know, the people to allow it to, to become like, you know, public enemy number one because too many people are winning off of Bitcoin, right? Too many people are, are benefiting from, from it. So I don't know, I mean, that being said, it's also re- like the regulators, it's also really easy for them to, you know, put in a couple short positions and then get together and ban it. I mean, it's so easy for them, it's so easy for them to like rig the game in their favor. I mean, like Pelosi, you know, with her Tesla buys and stuff right before, like they, they- Pass law that Teslas are gonna be used for government cars, it's like, come on, like, how the hell is this legal? but I guess they get to, they get to live in that world, and we, we just, it's their world, we're just living in it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:16:39", "start": 4599.17, "text": "yeah. But, look, I think the broader message though that I see is that Bitcoin is growing bigger, and I, I just don't see it being stopped at this point. And so there's a massive opportunity for people, whether you are holding Bitcoin, whether you are mining" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:16:53", "start": 4613.74, "text": "Oh yeah, call it five to ten years as the industry is, you know, really going to that next level. So, do you have any closing thoughts for listeners out there if they're thinking about how they should get involved or maybe if they're in the oil and gas industry and they're thinking, okay, this guy's talking about Bitcoin, what should I, what should I do? What's my next step?" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:17:10", "start": 4630.01, "text": "Well, definitely check out Upstream Data dot CA. That's, that's, I think the coolest stuff that's going on in the oil and gas industry is there. I'm" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:17:23", "start": 4643.8, "text": "One of the kind of closing points I'd like to make is that right now is a time of overflowing opportunity, kind of like what you mentioned, not just in Bitcoin, really in the world and, you know, with the internet, but definitely in this industry. And it's one of the driving reasons as to why it's so easy for me to, or like why I guess I-- it's, it's crazy to me to think about these, you know, people going out and scamming and making, you know, vaporware tokens and dropping them on people because, you know, if you wanna make There's so much opportunity to, to do it today that all you gotta do is go learn about whatever you wanna do, right? You just have to go be passionate about it and dive in, start talking about it, and it probably won't be very long before you're getting paid to, to talk about it and do whatever it is you like to do. And so, like, you know, I, I would just encourage people that, that maybe you're sitting there thinking like, \"Man, I wanna get involved in this industry, I don't know where, don't know how,\" I Find is you'll, you'll get back a lot more than what you put in. And plus, there's no excuses to people that, that sit there like, \"Man, I have no opportunities today.\" It's like, \"Bullshit.\" Like, the, the world is, the world is endless opportunities if you've got a little bit of creativity, a little bit of motivation, and you can go out there and really, you know, really make something of yourself. and so I, I'd say, don't be discouraged, go, go find whatever you're passionate about and just You, you, you almost don't even need a college degree anymore to, to become an expert in whatever, you know, specific thing you're interested in. So, I, I'd sign off with that. Check out Upstream Data for sure, though. Really cool company, great founder, great team. we've got like, I think we've got like a hundred and twenty-five Bitcoin mines delivered to the oil field as of to date. And so, you know, doing a lot of cool things over there, helping a lot of oil and gas producers learn about this stuff" }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:19:18", "start": 4758.59, "text": "Stefan, you're, you're awesome. I love your show. Keep doing what you're doing. Keep, keep up the good fight. I think I'm gonna see you at, BBB, so I'm, I'm sure I'll see you here in just a couple weeks." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:19:25", "start": 4765.43, "text": "Yeah, we'll see you there." }, { "speaker": "adam_o", "time": "01:19:26", "start": 4766.53, "text": "Awesome. Cheers, man." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:19:28", "start": 4768.13, "text": "So get the show notes at stefanlivera dot com slash two nine nine and make sure you subscribe to the show by going to stefanlivera dot com and clicking subscribe. I've got a big episode coming up" } ] }