Bitcoin in Politics and Beyond: A Conversation with Dennis Porter

world is bitcoin, the decentralized technology. And you know, I like to bring to you some late breaking news and some education to change your the way that you think about things, but also some some guests so you don't have to listen to me all the time. And I have a returning guest. I have Dennis Porter in the studio with me today. He is the CEO and co

founder of the Satoshi Action Fund. He's the president and founder of Satoshi Action Education as well, which of course are two things that I like.

But anyway, you know, Dennis, I know, you know, we've had you on before and you were involved on the on the politics side for any number of things, and then you kind of put together this action fund really kind of helping to educate and and and take you know,

action into the you know, kind of political realm. And we're kind of at this point where, you know, specifically specifically around bitcoin, kind of like left it alone for a decade, you know, until it started kind of getting big enough and starting to show up on people's radars, and then politicians were trying to kind of figure out what they want to do about this, and now it seems to like really escalate where it really seems to me like the Biden regime that we have in place today,

which would include you know, Elizabeth Warren and Gary Gensler are really anti bitcoin, anti crypto, and almost even anti tech overall. Do you see that like really coming from from you know, kind of that group, like there's really like this anti innovation, anti tech movement.

We have seen though, I will say with Gary Gensler, although he is very anti crypto at this point, seemingly going after exchanges with no sort of restriction on what he's willing to do, willing to go after you know, XRP and various crypto assets, but has pretty much left Bitcoin alone. And you know, some of a crypto side of dial will say, well, you know, just you wait till Gary Ginsler comes for you. But he's been pretty clear about his viewpoint that he believes that bitcoin is

a commodity. And the CFTC I believe is also in alignment with that, so we might be narrow as narrowly escaping that bullet. The biggest area where I do see the most concern is not necessarily on the sec CFTC front for bitcoin. It is actually, in fact for the majority of bitcoin businesses and prolific individuals within the bitcoin space that are getting limited in their ability to access banking.

We've seen banks all across this country not only prevent bitcoiners and bitcoin based companies from having access to financial services and we're just talking about basic banking services at this point, but they've also kicked them out on top of that. I was just talking to a gentleman today who said he went through thirty different banks before he

was finally accepted. I spoke to one of the largest bitcoin mining companies in the entire world, and they said they were at a bank for six years and then they got kicked out. So this is the air where I think we need to have the most focused and not be so concerned. If you're a bitcoiner, if you're a crypto person, you should care a lot about Gary Gensler.

But as someone who's focused on bitcoin, I'm more so worried about this banking issue, and I think it's something that we should pay a lot of attention to.

get more info there. But you know, because we have bitcoin in the name, we were having problems get ban accounts and like we had commitments of people ready to wire money over and all of a sudden we can't get the bank. And we're like, dang, why didn't we just why did we have to put bitcoin in the name? We should have put We're just a we're just an investment fund, right, But because bitcoin was in the name, we had a big problem. We finally found a bank, but it was it was we had to go through

quite a few it was difficult. So I definitely see that. But you know, you talked about you know, Gary Gensler specifically, which of course I did as well, But so so do you see it really as like this, I guess what I was trying to ask, is it really like this attack on digital assets? Are they trying to protect money, trying to protect the digital dollar or the dollar or do you think it's also hostile to tech in general?

And I say that because of what we see happening like with a restrict Act and you know, TikTok bill and things like that.

somewhat of a national security threat. And generally speaking on national security threats, not always, but generally you do see Republicans and Democrats working across the aisle on these issues. And unfortunately, in this sort of situation, that national security threat is in a position now where it seems like it's going to be limiting the access to innovation, limiting the access to tech. But ultimately, you know, we do

need to be careful. We do need to be careful about apps that are wholly controlled by the CCP, like TikTok, and making sure that we are paying attention to what's going on, because we also know that TikTok collects a lot of information that's on its users, so something to

be cautious of. I don't like necessarily that in kind of the effort to go after things like TikTok through the restrict Act, that we are kind of ultimately broadly hurting other things, other types of innovation, other types of technology. So we have to be very careful in the way that we go after bad actors in the space. We can't just take, you know, throw the baby out with the bathwater. I don't know the specific in the details

of how this would directly hurt Bitcoin. I have heard some good arguments on it, but I don't think it's the thing that we should be the most focused on right now within the space.

and innovation is always inherently disruptive. I want to go back to, you know, back to Social Action Fund and I know you guys help put forward the right to mind bill. Give me, give me a minute, minute a half summary of what that right to my bill is, what you're trying to do with that.

generally rooted in a misunderstanding of the technology. People often hear about bitcoin mining and they either think, you know, one of two things or both that this is a scam, that this is a you know, Ponzi scheme, why are we letting this thing use up all of our energy, or the other one is that they have been misinformed to believe that bitcoin mining is bad for the environment, which is an argument in fact that we are doing a much better job of winning these days but unfortunately,

there are still a lot of individuals out there who still believe that bitcoin is a scam or that it's bad for the environment. And so at the local level, we're seeing attacks on bitcoin mining, everything ranging from changing calling emergency meetings and changing zoning rules and zoning laws, which led in the County of Missoula to a twenty

million dollars bitcoin mining operation going completely bankrupt. We also see in the state of Idaho they regulators they're agreed with an increase in power pricing for bitcoin miners, which is fairly unheard of generally speaking, in the world of energy in the United States, you are not allowed through the public Utility Commissions, which are the state regulators when it comes to energy, you're not allowed to discriminate against different groups. But they did the attempt by Idaho Power.

They were trying to raise rates on all the miners broadly within their footprint. It was much more aggressive and so fortunately it got tampered down and it was much more of a reasonable increase, but still we did see that type of discrimination. We also see frivolous noise complaints taking place all across the country, and and so the bill that we created it just protects in law bitcoiners

and bitcoin minors from those sorts of attacks. And also with it just so happened in the state of Montana, we did pass a law.

the Mark Moss Show. I'm in studio with Dennis Porter from Satoshi Action Fund and we're discussing what's going on in the political landscape in regards to bitcoin and technology and journal you know, Dennis, before that break, you were just talking about, you know, some of the things that you guys have been doing, and specifically you were talking about, you know, some of the education that you've been doing

to try to counteract some misinformation that's out there. And then you're kind of going into an actual bill, So not just the education, but the action of what you're doing and submitting the bill. I want to I want to find out about the bill, and I have some questions about that, but before we do, just kind of going back to the education side for a second. You know, we've seen a lot of miss I mean, they they, you know, they the mainstream media accuses everyone else of misinformation.

It seems like they're the ones putting out the misinformation when they constantly put out misleading stories sort of like what the New York Times have have done in Texas and so is that kind of what you're trying to counteract, so to speak, right, kind of going to these politicians who are kind of getting this misinformation and trying to kind of educate them on you know, what's really going on there.

is consuming. So we are educating on a regular basis. But one of the other components that I think is really critical to changing hearts and minds on this issue is not just going out and saying, hey, well, actually bitcoin mining does this for the environment, or it's really good at balancing the grid, but turning around and also

providing research for the space. You know, we talked about Satotia Action Fund, but we also have satoti Action Education as you mentioned earlier in the show, and that entity is wholly focused on providing better research for the bitcoin mining industry and not just some white papers. We're also talking about peer reviewed research, which some people might have a problem with, but it is the best system that we have, you know, It's the good line for it

is it's the worst system except for all the other ones. Yeah, but the peer review process what it does is it puts it puts the people that are on the fence or might be opposed to bitcoin mining back into the thinking cabinet and having to think about what are they going to do with this issue and is it something that actually can provide value because right now they're sitting around saying this thing is destroying the environment, it's bad for the grid, it's hurting the planet, it's soaking up

all the energy. What are we going to do about it? We want them to go back to the drawing board and start thinking about how maybe there are some things that they don't like about bitcoin mining. Let's say that you're like on the fringes when it comes to the environmental issue, and you're very very very staunchly opposed to using fossil fuels. Well, great, you can use bitcoin mining

to advance renewable energy across this country. In fact, it may very well be one of the most important technologies for that, and we want to provide the research to be able to back up those claims.

focused on fighting or are we focused on building? Right? Are we focused on holding back or where we want to go? And like, you know, I think when I was listening to you talk, it was kind of making me think through that on my own, where like are we trying to like constantly fight against the government to prevent them or could we just focus on building these brand new renewable energy grids? Like can we go and

help them accomplish what they want with this technology? And it's just the difference of that that focus, right, Like it's a positive focus where we're building out competing, Right, good ideas typically win because they're better, right, And so like if you can say, hey, look here's how you can scale a renewable energy grid. You can offset some of the costs with some bitcoin mining, and they look at it more as like a tool as opposed to

like bitcoins specifically. I don't know, is that maybe how you sort of present it.

We need that sort of education out there for the public. But as it pertains to policy makers, it's really important that we build the things that we're talking about so that we have evidence to show that these things are

taking place. And that's happening at a rapid pace. You know, in the last five years, we went from oh, maybe bitcoin mining could be good to balancing the grid to bitcoin mining is actually balancing in the grid all over the country, particularly in Texas where during a winter storm there, bitcoin miners were able to deliver up to fifteen hundred megawatts of power back to the grid in the middle

of an emergency. And just to put it in a context, fifteen hundred megawats of power is enough power to heat one point five million small homes, and that's in the middle of an emergency when no one else is wanting to get up their power. So we just need to keep building, keep proving, and eventually that also helps us in our arguments when it comes to convincing our world leaders to adopt bitcoin and bitcoin mining.

me a little bit. But it seems like most lawmakers, the legislators that go into office don't actually create any bills. They don't create the laws, right, Like they co sponsor bills, right, they co sponsor the bills. But where do the bills come from? The bills come from like the lobby groups, I'm guessing, right, So like maybe one correct me on that, but too, if we can get those paragrades companies to go like, dang, this is a tool that we really want.

It can help off set extra revenue, then they might be the ones actually pushing for that themselves.

mining into a very, very very positive political position. Because at the state level in the United States is where the majority of energy policy takes place. And because every single almost every single one of these utility companies and energy companies are highly regulated at the state level. In fact, you know, most utilities in the United States are you know,

regulated monopoly so to speak. So in order for them to make sure that they don't get abused by the state legislator or that they don't lose out on their current sort of protections that they have because that with the with the monopoly comes a lot of regulation. Like there, it's a trade off. They are monopoly, but they get they are very restricted and they want to make sure the restrictions don't get worse. But they also want to make sure that their monopoly doesn't get you know, taken

away from them as well. So they care. I'll give you enough story here just as a quick example that we can move on to the policy quipment before you do.

when we come back. But we're going to take a quick break, so don't go away. We'll be right back, all right. Welcome back. If you're just tuning in and you're listening to the Mark Maas show. We're talking about the bitcoin mining space and the policies and regulations around that. I'm sitting down with Dennis Porter from the Satoshi Action Fund, and Dennis I had to kind of cut you off

and we left everybody hanging. So you're going to kind of give like a little illustrative story there for seconds, So go ahead, Yeah, definitely.

talk about what we were doing. Well, ultimately, it just didn't end very well for us, right because they didn't see us as a friend in the fight. They saw us as someone that might be a threat to what's going on there in that state. So ultimately we weren't able to get anything done in Mississippi. But imagine the inverse.

Imagine if all of the utility companies and all the people in the state of Mississippi that are working within the energy sector see the value of this technology all of a sudden, instead of them fighting us at the state legislator to pass this policy, they are working with us as a partner in tandem to help make sure that the state of Mississippi is a leader on bitcoin mining. And so I think ultimately we'll come around. We're going

to come around this next cycle. We might have a little bit better work with us to do in that state. But we had to sit down with all these lobbyists from all the other energy companies and they were talent, like you're worried about what we were going to do.

So the goal ultimately would be to get all the utilities, not just in Mississippi, but across the entire country to see the value of bitcoin mining for balancing the grid and for enhancing energy projects, and get them to fight for it at the state legislators, where the vast majority of energy policy is taking place, either through the state legislator or through the public utility commissions there as well.

come up with great policy solutions. So generally you're not really like, you know, they say the term is like handing policy to them, which is not something that we do either. Generally, what you do is you have bullet points and you just say, hey, these are some things that we think would be important, and you're going to take it and if you like what we're trying to do, you're gonna take it and move on it. So, for instance, the state of Montana you say, hey, you like bitcoin mining,

we like bitcoin mining. Here's some things that we know should probably take pay place if you want to see the adoption of bitcoin mining in the states. So then the policymaker takes that bill, sends it to the drafters who put it into Montana state Code, design it all out, and then the policy maker works and fights to make sure that that bill makes it through committee, through the House and Senate, and then passes it and hopefully signs

it by the governor. So, you know, handing them policy directly is not exactly the right way to say it. Although it does kind of take place, it's not the best way to describe what's going on. And if it does play take place, it's usually happening mostly at the state level.

it up. And then like maybe the left kind of Democrat side was kind of now saying, oh, it's like this political tool, and now it seems to be embraced by both sides of the AIS. As a matter of fact, I'm here speaking at the Freedom Fest in Memphis, Tennessee

this week. There's several presidential candidates here, including RFK Junior on the left and Vivic Garamaswami on the right, and Tulca Gabbard was speaking this morning and she's not running for president, but she's in the middle, and they're all proponent for bitcoin. Do you think that bitcoin has sort of, I guess jumped. It's kind of scaled to that level where it's no longer left or right, it's no longer like a political tool. I mean, both sides are for it. Or how do you view that now?

coming out in supportive of this. We also do have you know, in Congress, we have a blockchain Caucus and there are dozens of members there and many of them are Democrats, So you know, Richie Trus, You've got Darren Soto among many others like Rocana, who are very supportive of the digital asset space broadly. So although the I would say it's more of a narrative war than it

is an actual conversation about who is for and against bitcoin. Yes, right now, currently you do have an administration on the left with Democrats, Biden administration with folks like Elizabeth Warren who seemingly are you know, kind of charging forward with this narrative that we need to oppose the digital asset space by creating an anti crypto army. But that's not

really the tone of the entire Democrat part party. In fact, you have senators like Ron Wyden who are being supportive of the industry, who see the value of bitcoin mining

as as something that can use green energy. We also recently were meeting with various other folks in the Senate and we're going to be going back here again soon and we're having a ton of great conversations where people do see the value of bitcoin mining as it as an environmental cleanup tool, but also as something that could balance the grid and advance renewables in this country, and that's something that all Democrats love.

But then you know, when I listened to RFK Junior, I mean he's really saying that, like, you should just have the right to choose what you want, you should have the freedom to use money. So I think I think they're kind of getting at from both sides.

he is a candidate running for office. He's never held office, he's never been an elected official, although he's seemingly kind of rising in the polls and definitely rising in his media attention. I mean, whoever the guy's media manager is needs to be getting paid top dollar once he exits this campaign, because he's doing an incredible job of getting RFK into these sorts of media positions to get out the word on what his positions are on a variety of issues, and he has strong issues on a variety

of issues that Americans care about. So currently, like I said, you know, Biden current administration kind of negative towards bitcoin, bitcoin mining, but there are plenty of Democrats RFK, Darren Soto, Widen, many others who are supportive of the industry, and I hope that we get a chance to see that more of that take place as time goes on.

market environment for energy. Multiple times. He's been asked about it as it pertains to nuclear energy and to wind at solar, and he's come on the record multiple times saying that he believes in a free market for energy, and I think that that's really what bitcoin mining needs at this point.

a little bit misplaced in my opinion. And ultimately where it came down to was he believes that nuclear power is not safe and it's not cost effective, and we've had, you know, depending on how you want to look at the data, we've had maybe a few hundred people die total in the history of nuclear power. None had died in the last you know, nuclear problem in Fukushima. Yet who knows how many people die in creation of solar panels, digging out minerals out of the ground and all that

installing and probably falling off of the list whatever. So we've had you know, nuclear subs since the sixties, never had a problem with it. So anyway, I was a little bit a little bit taken back by that stance. But you know, we'll see. Now, if you're just tune in, you're listening to the Markomas Show. I got to take a quick break, but I'm going to be right back, so don't go away, you don't want to miss it. I'll be right back, all right, Welcome back. If you're

just tune in, you're listening to the markma Show. I'm sitting down with Dennis Porter from Soatoci Action Fund. We're talking about his work and the fun so Social Action Funds work on educating in the political space and taking action on that. Now, you know one thing, Dennis is

I'm curious. Obviously, you guys have been doing this for a while, and I'm sure some of it has been some of your impact, but I think there's also a bigger impact just happened in the mainstream, And I'm curious if you've seen maybe a little bit of a shift in the rhetoric around bitcoin specifically and maybe bitcoin mining a little bit even more specifically, around some of the rhetoric. And so, you know, obviously we know some of the

hit pieces that have been done. You know, bitcoin is going to consume more energy than the you know, the entire earth and things like that. We've seen stuff like that. We saw the hit piece I referenced earlier, like New York Times did and you know, the right bitcoin space

mining space. But then, you know, I'm curious, you know now that we're starting to see you know, black Rock coming in and like, hey, we're going to launch a fund atf Right and Fidelity and even Fidelity you know, doing some mining and things like that, do you think that will start to shift the mainstream media's portrayal of

what it is. I mean, Blackrock potentially is gonna have a lot of money to spend towards getting people into their edf do you you know, Blackrock is probably a big sponsor of some of those mainstream media Do you think are you starting to see it shift or do you think that will start to shift.

power to protect bitcoin. So I think, you know, there's something to be said about that, the fact that bitcoin is very permissionless and it has a very strong incentive structure, and so anybody can gain access to it, and it is going to use its in strong incentive structure to

encourage everyone to be a part of it. And once you're a part of it, you know, Mark like just like myself, you know, all of a sudden, I've been too bitcoin and five years later, I'm fighting at the front lines trying to make sure that folks are educated on this issue. I could probably get paid way better to go do something else, but you know, I'm out here trying to make sure that this technology is advocated

for and that Americans have access to it. So, yeah, I do agree that that black Rock coming in will be good in the sense that it will provide additional resources and another voice kind of in the voids, so to speak, a very large voice, one of the largest or if not the largest fund in the entire world coming in and supporting the industry. But also I do see there is a churn or a shift in a

narrative taking place. We do see a lot of bad articles coming out about bitcoin bitcoin wrining, but in the last six months there has been a rapid uptick in positive coverage. In fact, in the last month or two we have seen Forbes just come out with positive article after positive article around bitcoin mining. That means that, you know, the folks at the top at Forbes are starting to think that maybe that this is something that they had gotten wrong in the past, and that now they are

starting to see the value of it. I think that Forbes is just the beginning, and that you'll see more of this take place. We should be giving a very large shout out to people like Pierre Rashard, Daniel Batten, and others who have done a lot of work to try to convince folks that we need to be getting behind bitcoin and that America needs to be leading on this technology.

United States became a big beneficiary of that. You know, I'm not exactly sure. I don't know if the United States is about thirty percent of that. Now you can correct me if I'm wrong on that, but you know, we saw that the United States was sort of given that role, handed handed that role almost by default. I'm curious what you think the future is. I mean, if the United States continues on the you know, restrictive warpath, so to speak, does America lose its place with this technology?

And do you see other countries potentially stepping up to challenge that role, like for example, Georgia we saw which is obviously a very small country, but stepping in to start mining it directly. Of course, you know El Salvador has been talking about mind it directly. So do you think, like a is it ours to lose? Do you think if they don't, if they don't quickly change, another country could take the lead on this. What's your viewpoint on that?

really be anywhere, anywhere that there's energy. However, that being said, I will say that the United States is in an incredible position to keep a vast majority of the hash rate inside of its orders, simply for the fact that we have a lot of inefficiencies where bitcoin miners can take place over a vast area where they can start to benefit from the lack of inefficiencies that are created by wind and solar on the grid. But also we have one of the most stable political systems in the

entire world. Now, you know, you go and you set up in somewhere in Africa, somewhere in China, you name it, you might go there. They might have cheaper power. But a couple of things could take place. One is you might end up having to pay corruption charges. Like there are people that will just charge you money just saying hey, you got to pay me money, or we're gonna we're gonna mess up your business, or you have to worry about you know, for instance, Kazakhstan on the Internet going

down completely, or China designed to ban bitcoin mining. So those things are not taking place in the United States. So far, we have not seen any sort of really aggressive anti bitcoin mining policy take place other than just solely in the state of New York where it's kind of a one off situation. What about like.

takes a lot of work to get it passed. And yes, if the Biden administration was wholly invested in a thirty percent tax on bitcoin mining, they might have been able to squeak it out, but you have to remember there are many other much more important topics and issues to the administration then screwing bitcoin miners over with a thirty percent tax. I mean, you're talking about the war in Ukraine, you're talking about the border, you're talking about health, you're

talking about homelessness. This is not an issue that is worth, you know, even negotiating over. Fortunately, in a situation where we had the debt limit increase, where they were negotiating over that, Republicans had negotiated that they wanted no new additional taxes and that in that debt limit bill, which ultimately resulted in there not being any new taxes on bitcoin mining. So kind of Fortunately we were swept up

in that. But that's kind of how DC operates. Like you don't ever go to DC and just say I want this one bill to pass and it passed because it was such a good idea. Generally, it's like a movement or a wave of policy. Like you did you know that the healthcare bill was thousands of pages with hundreds of different types of policies in there. It's not just one little policy that passes. They oftentimes get grouped up into larger bills and passed or not passed. That's

generally the way it works in DC. And again, fortunate that for some reason within the Republican Party they were able to negotiate that they want to know new additional taxes. I mean, they're generally anti tax so that's part that's why. But for some reason that was a big part of their negotiation package.

you know, it's a matter of staying vigilant. Right, It's my fear is that they My fear is that they do these things and then you know, they kind of throw it out against the wall. It's kind of outrageous. It's like a it's what you'd call like a drop cell technique. Right, they throw something out outrageous that people object to, they take it away, and then they bring it back a little bit more tame, and then people kind of just like let it go through. So we

definitely have to stay vigilant. So I love what you're doing with Toshi Action Fund. If you're just tuned in you're listening to the Mark Mos Show. I've been sitting down with Dennis Porter from the Satoshi Action Fund, and you should definitely check them out. Dennis anywhere else, anyone should follow along.