The Mark Moss Show Feb 11, 2022

with a friend with Gibbs. He's uh the CEO of Compass Mining and you can find him on Twitter at bitcoin Broski, and um, I want to bring to you. UM, I try to bring to you some interesting perspectives each and every week. So anyway, with thanks for joining me in the studio today, Mark, thanks for having me on. I appreciate this. Yeah. Cool that you just happened to be in l A and you could swing by swing by these studios here, UM, not a bad place. I've had a great set up here. Yeah, I got a

pretty good setup. I mean, you know, we can do it remote over zoom, but it's much more fun being in the in the studio here. You just can't recreate the person to person experience, right, yeah, exactly, Yeah, there's definitely definitely better doing it person to person. UM. I

want to talk obviously we're talking about bitcoin. Um. You know, one of the things that bitcoin has so many things that are revolutionary about it, um, but I love the fact that it's like open borderless, permission lists, the essentilized, etcetera. And one of them is that it's permissionless, and so that means that you don't need permission. So there's a I saw that you you know, as of a couple of years ago, you and said there was two billion

adults in the world that didn't have bank accounts. Someone said the other day four billion, So it's somewhere in that number. Um, And they don't have it because they don't have permission. But anybody can just download a bitcoin wallet and have bitcoin without permission. And on top of that, anybody can join the network and start mining bitcoin as well without permission. You can't just uh log into Facebook's API and start building stuff on Facebook, but you can

with bitcoin. Talk to us about that permission list piece of bitcoin and the way you see it, you know, first and foremost, I think the formula of the four billion number is correct. I think it's more than two that that are without bank accounts. And you're absolutely right when it comes to the permissionless aspect of bitcoin. It's so important that that permissionlessness exists when it comes to

supporting the network. If if everyone needed permission to mind bitcoin, never would have got off the ground or run a node or Yeah. I mean that aspect of it makes it such a great thing. And you know when we when we launched Compass, it was a big part of

of our battle cry. Right, since there's this permission list, the next thing that you need to do is add a democratization to that permission list, because there is still this hurdle that people have to overcome if they want to get into mining or running a note, and that's the cost to get started, right, So there is an element of that to it, and we're working every day to decrease that cost and eliminate that hurdle so that truly everyone can mind bitcoin or run a note or

participate in the network. Yeah, a lot of people, um a lot of criticism. Actually, I spent I think three weeks breaking down like the top fud things that people would say, and one of them being that you know, bitcoin is not fair because because you know people have access to it, the rich people have this unfair advantage. But I said no, because everyone has the same opportunity

to mine bitcoin. Um. Now, granted, there's these giant firms that can go buy you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment, but then someone could buy one mining one mining rig, right, and they do. They have the same opportunity they do. I mean, economies of scale differ slightly,

but I liken it to real estate. Right, if you're looking at a black rock or a massive land developer, they have an outsized reward for developing that land and and you know, selling that property versus let's say someone who's just buying one income producing property or rental property or whatever the case may be. It's very similar to mining. You have an ability to generate revenue, but the amount of revenue you generate, As with most things, it's it's

a capital and capital out right, so equation. So um, while someone might be able to buy a thousand mining rigs and I can buy one mining rig on a per rig basis, are we doing about the same have a thousand of them? Kind of to the real estate example that you said, Um, I can buy one single family rental home. Black Rock can buy a thousand single family rental homes. But on a per single family rental home,

we're doing about the same. Now, granted they make it a little bit better terms correct because of the volume, but your unit economics are generally the unit economics not the same. And so for that piece of fud it's not really true because yes, because they have more money, Um, they can have more rigs just like Black Rock and buy more homes. But um, we have the same opportunity

to join the network and mine on the network. That's correct, And this is really where Compass works to help people, right, is because the economies of scale do make a slight difference, and we're able to give people this that are coming in on an individual level the ability to tap those same economies of scale, and the economies of scale matter. I mean, when you're talking about a thousand machines versus one machine, your power price is going to be a

little bit different because you've got a bigger draw. Right, you consume more, you pay a little bit less um, but it's still very very profitable for everyone participating in bitcoin mining right now and it has been for the

last two years. Yeah, I mean no different than back to the real estate analogy, because everybody understands that if I owned fifty rental properties in this town, the property management company I would use would probably give me a better rate, and then I can have one full time you know manager that can do all that versus you, you'd pay more because you just had one. That makes sense. But from the permissionless standpoint, we basically all have the

same opportunity to do that. Absolutely. Yeah. Now, um, you know one thing that I love about bitcoin is that while it's still new, um, it's actually pretty battle hardened at this point, right. I mean, we had the block size wars in two thousands seventeen, um, and I believe correct me if I'm wrong. We had about eighty percent of the miners went against the network in two seventeen, and then we saw where China attack the network and

it was about sixty of the miners. And both those times the miners weren't really able to hurt or affect the network too much. So for the block size debate, the miners certainly influenced things. The Chinese comment that is, uh, that's more of the hash rate just resided in China. There wasn't an attack on bitcoin by the Chinese government. But um, but yeah, the miners in China are certainly independent of the government. They they were there to support

the network. Um. And they're honestly the ones who really bootstrapped the network, if you want to look at it like that. But you're right, the miners have not had and have not taken um you know, the stance of of attacking bitcoins network. They've always been very pro bit cooin. You'll find that most miners are actually the law longest bitcoin, the most bullish on bitcoin, because not only are they buying it, they're also buying equipment that costs hundreds of

billions of dollars to support the network. Yeah. Yeah, the cap x right, So the the investment that you have to make. So even if I was on my own mining and I'm going to spend whatever five thousand or ten thousand dollars on an equipment, I'm in for the long run because now I have to get that ten thousand dollars back plus all the time and whatnot that I put into it. So um. In in those two examples, UM, the mining couldn't really change the network. You're talking about

democratizing bitcoin mining, So why why democratize it? Is it so people can earn it as opposed to having to buy it? So it could miners could influence the network.

And you know, maybe this is a little a little bit of a tinfoil hat scenario, but I think of it like, if you have enough of these large public mining companies controlling enough of bitcoins hash rate, it's only a matter of time before the control of those actual companies is held by some of the same players right now, which we you know, effectively support bitcoin to fight against.

So it wouldn't be too far off a stretch to think that like a black Rock or some of these other big firms could come in and take substantial positions and publicly traded mining companies, and then they would have sway over the entire bitcoin network. So when we want to democratize hash rate, what we want is to put a minor in the hands of every person, because if we have enough of those note holders throughout the world, you're never going to reach that consensus that you need

to meaningfully influence bitcoins network. Yeah, that's a good point. Um, there's been several videos. I haven't I don't think I've actually done one, but several videos showing how all the biggest companies. If you go they're publicly traded, and you go look at who owns their stock, it's pretty much black Rock and Vanguard owning them all. Um. And then if you look at who owns those they all own each other. And so to your point, and even even

like micro Strategy, I mean they own that as well. Um, just because they're they own all those uh those stocks. So um, that is that is a risk. I want to dig into that risk, um and and play that out a little bit. And then I want to talk about maybe some of why China wanted to get rid of their bitcoin power. I want to talk about that as well. You're listening to the Mark Moa show. Of course we're talking about bitcoin. We're talking about this decentralized

revolution that's happening right now. Um, sitting down in the studio in Los Angeles with With Gibbs. He is the CEO of Compass Mining. You can find him on Twitter at bitcoin browski, and uh he knows about bitcoin mining. That's what they do. And I got a lot more questions coming up again. You're listening to the Mark mo Show talking about bitcoin and the decentralized revolution. I'll be right back. Don't go away here, everyone, Welcome back. You are listening to the Mark ma Show and we are

talking about bitcoin. Of course, what else would I be talking about the most important thing that will ever happen in our lifetime multiple lifetimes for that matter. I'm in the studio in l a with sitting down with Gibbs. He's the CEO of Compass Mining. You can find him on Twitter at bitcoin browski. Um, maybe at some point you should maybe make that a little more professional there with but but anyway, Uh, yeah, Bitcoin and bitcoin mining is such a big important piece. A lot of people

don't know about it. Compass Mining is helping to democratize that for the average person. Now before the break, we were talking about that permissionless aspect and how uh you know Compass is trying to democratize that. Um, let's go back. I want I want to dig into some of what you said about maybe these public companies getting this an ordinary amount of you know, share of the bitcoin mining power.

What could happen? There's some risks that I want to talk about China and maybe what happened and why they got that kicked out. But before we do, let's take it back a couple of notches for everybody that's listening, UM, give us the I hate when people do this to me. They say, explain bitcoin to me like I'm five years old and two minutes and I'm like, dude, that ain't gonna happen, like I can't do it right, But uh, explain mining to us like or five years holding in

two minutes. Problem. So, if anyone is listening to this right now on a phone or on a tablet or on a device, right they're listening to radio. It's running on that device, and I heart radio is pining servers somewhere to support the function of the network itself. Bitcoin mining are the servers which run the bitcoin network. So just like our heart radio is peing servers so it can operate on your cell phone, Bitcoin is paining the bitcoin miners network so that it can operate, It can

process transactions, and it can add new blocks to the blockchain. Right, that's why it's called the blockchain. Miners create batches of transactions, they put those into blocks, They add those blocks to a chain. Which is that blockchain or an immutable ledger, and it allows for us to maintain resiliency, keep the security of the network, and to keep the chain moving along. And that's the easiest way to think of it. So they're processing transactions. That is this, Yes, that is simply

put the best way to think of it. It is the security and processing of the blockchain and the network itself. Now, Bitcoin actually has a couple of layers, right, So you have coin holders if I own coins um and then the nodes which run the database. So we have a centralized database like Facebook and centralized. Bitcoin is a decentralized database.

So there's a bunch of databases. Those are the nodes, and then you have the miners which then process the transactions and I think to your analogy, they're pinging the databases. So the miners are then connecting and talking to the nodes. Minors. Miners are effectively nodes themselves. So you have nodes which are they are an aspect of the network, but they do not batch and and add blocks to the chain.

And then you have the miners, which are nodes. They can be pinged, but they also have the ability to add new blocks to the block chain. Okay. Um. Now, in the early days of bitcoin, you could just download it onto an old laptop and probably mine from there. Um. Today it's gotten a lot more competitive. We have all these you know, specialty computers, these new mining chips that have been brought out in etcetera, and so um I do still see things about mining on your phone. It

seems kind of scammy to me. Can you really mind bitcoin on the phone? You cannot mind bitcoin on your phone, and anything that you ever see that says otherwise, you can't really mind any cryptocurrency on your phone. So anyone that ever says that it's a buyer beware situation. Um, this is an industry that is wrought with people trying

to sell you pipe dreams, and that's certainly one of them. Yeah, okay, now, um, you talk about democratizing bitcoin mining, and uh, here we are in southern California, and in southern California where I'm at, we have a tiered electricity pricing structure. So the more electricity you use, the more you pay. In the summertime, at my top tier, I'm paying forty cents per kill a lot hour. Can I mind bitcoin at my house? At forty cents a killo? What hour? You should not

mind bitcoin at your house for forty cents per killo? Okay, I mean you can profitably profitably mind bitcoin at at around thirty cents right now, you can, you can at home. However, that's going to change, and as the network grows, as more people plug these A six, which are the servers designed specifically to mind bitcoin, as they plug those in, you're going to run into situations where you're not able to to mind profitably at home. Where do you need

to be to be competitive? Like under five cents? Under eight cents? Eight cents, yes, so eight senses where I would I would put the absolute cut off a compass. We don't list anything for seven that's seven cents or greater. Okay, we are under seven cents for all of our offerings, okay, yes, and then a seven cents. So so the single biggest expense that you have besides buying the the initial upfront investment of buying equipment is then running it, which is

the electricity. And so that's that's your cost. That's correct. It's about a hundred and sixty dollars a month per machine sine um. What does the average machine go for the average machine right now is selling for about nine thousand dollars. Yes, and you're looking at making roughly, depending on the model, twenty bucks a day. So interesting side note, um in I've been, Uh, you know, I've been. I've been. My whole career has been investing. I've been investing in energy,

oil and gas for a long time. In twenty nineteen, I'm a GP in the oil field that we have going. It's not super profitable. Should should it should have done better. But but in twenty nineteen, I was working with a publicly traded oil company out of Dallas, Texas, and uh, for a while I was trying to see if I could find a way to get this flare gas and turn into bitcoin mining. And uh, finally I got a company. The CEO was into it. Um in in late twenty nineteen,

I think it was November. We spun off a subsidiary, created a new pub a new subsidiary company just to do mining on the on the flare gas. UM December. I remember going to the company party like January hit the road and going to raise money. Had all the quotes for the you know we're gonna put up put put riggs at the wellheads and do all that. Alright, I think the invoices for the mining riggs. At the time, we're like like this was, uh January, February, December, nineteen January.

We went on the road show, raised the money, had commitments on the money, had all the invoices to buy the mining equipment, a couple of thousand bucks apiece, maybe three thousand bucks apiece. Everything ready to go, and then March happened. Oil went negative thirty five dollars a barrel. That little pubico, uh ceo lost his job and uh my whole thing fell apart. I could have looked like a freaking hero man. It would have been like the best time to start it. Your front ran the trend.

That's a big trend now, mining with flared gas at the forefront of that. I mean there was there, you know, there was people people doing it. But since that time, so bitcoin also, so oil plummeted to negative thirty five.

Bitcoin also plummeted to what or whatever, and from that price it went from thirty eight dred and today it's I don't so we had this massive bowl run in the price and so that was good for mining, right, the price going up, So I'm guessing is good for mining because your cost is fixed right once you buy your equipment and you have your fixed electricity. Then if the price goes up, you make more money, although the

difficulty adjustment changes. Um. But then um, as that happened, then um, about a year later you had sixty pc of the networks shut off in China, which was also good for bitcoin mining. So the last two years have been very good for bitcoin mining, and I would say a golden era. A golden era. UM, I'm curious what the next two years looks like with all this institutional mining jumping in and then we don't know what the price is going to look like, so I want to

ask you about that. I also want to find out, Um, you say it's the golden era of bitcoin mining, but really, if we look back through history and we have these having cycles, there's good and bad sections of the bitcoin mining So I'm curious what that looks like. By the way, you're listening to the Mark Moss Show where we talk about bitcoin, and we talked about the decentralized revolution. Bitcoin is revolutionary for so many reasons, one being its permission

list and anybody can jump in and mind it. I'm joined in the studio in Los Angeles with With Gibbs. He is the CEO of Compass Mining. You can find him on Twitter at bitcoin browski. They're working to democratize bitcoin mining because I can't mind it in California because it's forties cents per kilo an hour. But with Compass mining and I could do something like that. We're gonna be back with those questions and more. Don't go away, Hey everyone, welcome back. You are listening to the Mark

Moa Show and we're talking about bitcoin. Of course, what else would I be talking about. We're talking about this decentralized revolution that's happening right now. Borderless, permissionless, immutable, censorship resistant. Bitcoin is also personless. Uh. I was just thinking about this. I remember um Andreas Atopolis talked about bitcoin being personless and what does that mean. So in order to have money today you have to be a person. In order to get a bank account, you have to show you

have to be a person. Bitcoin is personless, So a machine could have a Bitcoin wallet. That is true. So like if you think about like Tesla and their self driving autonomous cars, and the idea is that you could go to your car, could drop you off at work, and then while you're working, your your tesla could go around and run an Airbnb for you or something. So you could have an autonomous car with its own bitcoin

wallet and it could earn money. Bitcoin is person lists, But the real question is wouldn't a person have to set the wallet up? Yeah, that's kind of like this evolution argument, like okay, we evolved from an omib, but where did life come from? That's a whole anther subect chickender, that's a wholenother subject. Anyway. Uh So I was talking about my almost home run becoming a CEO of a publicly traded bitcoin mining company, one of many swings and mrs I've had in my career. Although I've had some

home runs too, so that's that's cool. But it went into this kind of perfect storm of this golden age, this golden Arab bitcoin mine and as you've called it. But now we have the flood of bitcoin mining equipment coming on board. Um, which actually there's another subjecle we'll talk about, but um they're waiting one to two years to get equipment. It seems like some of these big, big public traded companies I've seen, uh maybe it was Mara said they're just gonna go buy a bunch of

bitcoin while they're waiting kind of a thing. Um, So there's that coming on board, and then we don't know what's going to happen with the price. So what do you think happens. We've we've had the golden AIGs. That was your words of bitcoin minding. What does the future of bitcoin mining have? So in one word, stability. Now, I want to go back to the reason why these publicly traded mining companies take a year or two years to acquire all of the hardware that they're looking at,

and that's simply just for price. They're able to get steep discounts if they can fund the tape out and the manufacturing of these new machines well in advance. So when you buy Spot, you're gonna pay generally a forty to six premium on the hardware. Versus, if you're willing to buy a future's order, you can get that discount and you're still going to produce the amount of bitcoin. You're just going to have to wait six months, four months,

whatever it is for that machine to come online. Um. With regards to the cycles that we're going to see in bitcoin mining, I think it's actually we're entering a very exciting time because we now have institutional buyers of

bitcoin who are eliminating any cell pressure pressure. Right when we see a big dip, it gets eaten up by big buyers who have got an average entry price of around forty dollars, so they obviously need to average down if you're gonna see bitcoin drop below forty, these buyers are stepping in and keeping us above three in most cases could have dropped below sure, But what I think is most likely to happen is we're going to see bitcoin range at what are our you know, our new

lows in the thirties, and then we're going to continually stair step ups. We'll have a big run, and then we'll find a new range low, and then we'll have a big run. We'll find a new range low. And what this does it gives miners every time there's that run to maximize their profitability. And then once that new range forms, now we have a new standardized range for where mining profitability will sit, and each time will be more than the last, going to the increased profitability year

over year. I mean, there's not gonna be any more bitcoin, so because of scarcity, the price of bitcoin should continue to increase. Fortunately, with mining equipment now we're seeing a little bit of a break from Moore's law, which means that every two years we're not seeing a drastic improvement in the hardware, but we're still seeing, you know, similar

machines being priced similarly. So that would say that as mining continues to grow, which it will need to as a function of bitcoins network, each miner coming on has more and more profit potential in the coming years. Yeah, Moore's law has to take a break at some point. I just bought a brand new seventy five inch flat screen, and uh, I've replaced my sixty inch flat screen that

I had for nine years. And I went to the store and I looked at every single one, and I'd compared one to the next, and I was like, if they didn't have the prices next to them, I couldn't even tell the difference. I end up buying one of the most you know, one of the more expensive ones. I just figured, shoot, if I haven't, if I've gone ten years about a new one, I guess it'll give me another ten years and I get home and I look at my old sixty five Time'm like, I don't.

I don't think it's any better. And so more's law like at some point, like it's incremental, right, Like how much better can I get? Well? These chips? Right, So when we talk about nanometers, Okay, here's the way to think of it. A seven nimeter chip, which was the last generation of bitcoin mining machines. Okay, you take a strand of hair. A third of one strand of your hair is a seven animeter chip the width of it. Right, So now we're into five nanometers. Soon we're going to

be in three nimes. There is a finite amount that we're going to be able to achieve with this because the technology to produce these ever thinner machines, it's going to be just more and more. Yeah. Um, but maybe more energy efficient? Is that something that you think will probably happen? So maybe maybe the hash power, the performance of the machine doesn't get as much, but maybe the

but the energy can sumption is better. Yes, that's ultimately what the new targets are right there, looking for more energy efficient chips. Um bit main is just announced their water cooled unit there, you know, s nineteen hydro um, which we'll see. I mean, there's a lot that can happen when you introduce water into something that's normally dry. So we'll see how that's engineered. Now. I got a lot more questions that I want to ask you. I want to I want to dig into uh China. I

made a video called the Second Fatal Mistake. They may I want to talk about that. I want to talk about some of this E s G kind of narratives. But before we do, a lot of people say compass mining is a scam, and I dug into some of that stuff, and uh, it just seems like I don't know why people are saying that. Everyone is just I think mad because their bitcoin mining equipment is taking longer to get than they thought it was going to take. Um as if people don't realize supply chains are broken.

I'm in southern California. I can see the ships sitting off the off the coast all the times, and I can see, Uh, do you want to address that? Yeah? I mean, look the metric for success that empus is the shortest distance between the time you purchase and the time that your machine comes online. That's when success can be achieved. If we can make that twenty four hours, everyone will be happy. Now because this is mining, and

because this is a bitcoin. After I spend money on a product or service, any delay between when I'm able to start realizing the benefit of that product or service flood creeps in everyone. I'm going to go online and I'm going to see, Oh, it must be a scam. In the past, these have been scams, and eventually you believe the narrative. But ultimately all that has happened is Compass has done very well at getting most of our

miners online within seventy two hours or less. When China came offline, it created this unprecedented delay in rack space because there just wasn't enough theren't weren't enough facilities to host all of this equipment that now needed to find a new home, and Compass was impacted. We had twenty three megawats of customers, or about seven thousand customers who were impacted by these delays um and we had to

work vigorously to stand up new facilities. Is it is it the rack space or is it the mining equipment itself? The rack space? Yeah, it's not the actual computer. It's a space, that's correct. But the thing is that the supply chain plays apart there too. You need electrical equipment, you need panels, you need p d us or power supplies. Right, all of these things come from China as well, so their delays on those. So that's where a lot of this comes in. And I mean before these equipment, the

equipments coming in. If the rack space system, the miners are no issue whatsoever. So what's the what's the average weight time to get one's done up? So right now your average weight time is about four months four months, yes, but as of March we'll be back to seventy two hours because you have new facilities that are coming on board and stuff like that. One we put on about

forty three megawats were worth of hosted capacity. We already have two and eighty two megawats of hosted capacity um guaranteed and slotted for two So yeah, uh, that's that's a lot. And when when someone buys it through Compass and then you host it for them, do they own that piece of equipment? They do, Yeah, they receive a serial number so that if that if the facility went bankrupt or got shut they would get their equipment returned

to them. They would, they would, And we also have a marketplace, so if they wanted to sell it, they could sell it right through Compass to somebody else. Are people selling them right now? They are? I mean, you gotta think if you bought this machine in for three thousand and I can sell for ten thousand now. Yeah, you bought it in July for you can sell it now, or you could have sold in October for fifteen thousand, sixteen thousand. So okay, you're listening to the Mark Moa Show.

We're talking about bitcoin. If you're just tuning in, we're talking about bitcoin. We're talking about bitcoin mining specifically. I'm in the studio in southern California with With Gibbs. He is the CEO of Compass Mining. You can check them out there helping to democratize bitcoin mining. We discovered a lot of ground. We have more talking about what to expect, what's happening in China, and so much more. Check out wit at Twitter, at bitcoin Browski, and don't go away.

I'm gonna be right back with more. All right, welcome back. You are listening to the Mark Moa Show where we talk about bitcoin and the decentralized revolution that is happening. Trying to help you make sense of this. This is the bigest opportunity, in my opinion, the greatest risk adjusted investment that you may ever see in your life. And you want to be in the right position to take

advantage of that. And you do that by having the right information, the education and the information, which is why you should be listening each and every week to the Markmas Show. I'm in the studio right now sitting down with with Gibbs. He is the CEO of Compass Mining. They're helping to democratize bitcoin mining for everybody like me

in southern California. I can't mind bitcoin at my house because it's too expensive for the energy, but using a company like Compass, I could set up my own bitcoin mining um. Anyway, with we've covered a lot of ground here.

One thing that I really want to talk about, because this is probably the biggest hot button issue, is that mainstream media tells me that bitcoin mining is gonna boil the oceans and it's going to kill the polar bears and even Grandma, and uh supposedly it uses more energy than uh well, actually I think was it the world that Comic Forum said in seventeen that would use more electricity than like the entire world, than the world could produce, and the world it would use all the electricity of

the world could producer. And I think I saw yesterday that the latest reports showed it only use zero point eight percent of energy or something like that. Zero point eight percent of the world's production every year. That's correct. Yeah, so I went so they said it was going to be a percent, and we're at less than zero percent, yeah, less or less than one percent. Yeah. So are you saying that it's not going to boil the oceans and

kill the polar bears and Grandma? It's certainly not Grandma's safe. What I will say is that I don't want Grandma to die. They told me she might know. You know, we still got to figure out how to get Grandma to set up a wallet and receive transactions without a being a headache. I think that's the focus that we should pay to Grandma. But you know, mining is mining is easy to attack. It's the low hanging fruit. It

consumes energy. Um. But I really think that anytime you see these headlines, the real question is who's putting that out there and why and it's it's just I mean, Nick Carter said the best. An attack on bitcoin mining is just an attack on bitcoin. It's an attack on nonstate money. And it's usually perpetuated by the same people who are in power right now, who want to stay in power. Take away people's ability to control the monetary supply.

What do they have left? Yeah, the one thing that I hate about it, well, there's so many things I hate, but the one, the probably the biggest thing that I hate is they say it's a waste of electricity. And the thing that I hate about that I don't I don't like to use that word typically. But what I do hate about that is that who are you to tell me what a waste is? Or who am I to tell somebody else what a waste is? You may like to meditate for thirty minutes, what a waste of

your time sitting there? You could be productive, or you might like to play video games or TV or whatever it may be. And I who am I to say what waste is? One man's trash is another mess treasure, right, and so um. Just because you don't find value, and it doesn't mean I don't and so I that's what I do hate. Um as far as a lot of the other misinformation that may be out there, Um I did, Actually I did a whole series debunking a bunch of

these foot headlines, and that was one of them. But um, when you look at the data, we actually have a lot of wasted electricity or energy right now. And when I say wasted, not that it's being used for use that you don't like. What I mean is that it's actually being produced and no one's even using it, and then it just goes to waste, like literally like in a waste like in a waste bin. And so um, bitcoin can only use really to be profitable, has to

use wasted energy something like that. Do you want to explain that? So bitcoin mining is going to always gravitate towards the cheapest, most plentiful sources of power, and naturally people are going to sell energy that they wouldn't otherwise be able to sell at a discount, right because it's it's it's some of some of them. A little of

something is better than all of nothing. So supply and demand, right, So in California, we don't have enough power, which is why it's forty cents a lot, correct, in order to get it for three cents a lot. Why could I get it so cheap. Well, because someone's people are buying it, that's right, so that I would go there. Yeah, well, I mean and actually I think this impact you. The last time that we spoke, we had talked about your mining operations back in the day, and I think you

had something set up in Washington. And the reason that Washington shut down is because the power plants in Washington had to sell at a seep discount to locals, and a lot of miners went there because they had all of this excess. Then they realized that they could export that energy and send it to California and sell it for five times the price, So they shut down all of the bitcoin mining facilities so they could sell it at a markup somewhere else. And that's just the that's

the market that's letting the market do its thing. And I think that's what pisces me off, is that you have people that are trying to interfere with free markets. Right, the energy is going to be produced. If you want to have a meaningful make a meaningful change on the environment, attack industries that are consuming lots and lots of fossil fuels. When you look at bitcoin mining, it consumes a very small amount of energy and the majority of the energy

that it is consuming is coming from renewable sources. So, you know, I'm okay just going against that whole narrative overall. To be honest with you, I think what they've done is they've framed up their argument, and now we're trying to argue in their frame. The reality is is that humans have flourished because of our use of energy, agreed, And so even trying to argue in this E s G box that they've built, we're already losing in my opinion. But that's a that's that's the topic for a whole

other story. You know. It's actually a very a very valid point though, because we are now, you know, us us not arguing within their box is almost like us being bringing a pin to a gunfight. Because now we've got it out being argued in front of Congress, we've got all of these these depositions and hearings that are taking place. We need to fight back on the narrative. For sure. This brings us back to the previous common

is why does this narrative. Narrative exists in the first place, it's because there's so much of bitcoins network and bitcoin in general being held by people like the Black Rocks, who have set out to make E s G a thing. Well, they like E s G because it's a way they can control, they can control. So um, the way that they can achieve control is Henry Kissinger told us. He told us, he said, control the food, you control the people. Control the money, you control a nation, Control the energy,

you control the world. He told us, food, money, energy, those are three things. And so the energy control the world. And so if I can set these arbitrary E s G narratives, then and I can make you comply to them, then I can control and if I can control the energy output that you do. And so that's what ultimately comes down to is this is this control function. And I think unfortunately a lot of people aren't able to think very good today. Nobody listened to this show, of course,

but nobody. You know, people aren't able to think very well today because there's so much nuance in this and so like, just because I'm saying that people are probably listening and thinking. Mark hates the environment that could be nothing further from the truth. Like I love him, I'm i'm I'm in the ocean surfing almost every day. I'm in the mountains snowboarding, and I love desert. It's like I love nature and I wanted to be there for my great great grandkids or um. Those two things aren't

mutually exclusive. Right. We can love the environment and still believe that they're trying to control the world through an E. S G narrative. Well, and I think that's absolutely correct. And I think the flip side of this is you gotta ask yourself, do you love people? Because if you love people, then you need this energy. Right. We look at Texas last year there was this deep freeze that broke the grid effectively and people died, right, And now you look at this year, same storm. Right, We're the

same freeze you see right now. But the difference is that over the last year bitcoin minors have flocked to Texas. They've helped to build a better grid, and now we're not facing the same blackouts in Texas because the miners can feed that energy that they've spent a year building back into the network, which can power those people so home, so people don't have to die. They don't have to

freeze to death. It's a great point. I just bought a twelve and a half acre ranch just outside of Austin, and I got four cows and a goat and a donkey and all that with it. And um, I just took possession about a week ago. The previous owner was renting back for a while and he messaged just yesterday and said, uh, hey, ice storm is coming, animals may die, Like you better do something. I'm like, what am I gonna do? I don't know how to deal with animals

and ice storm in Texas. I'm in California. Anyway, funny story about the ice storm, I guess. But I'm glad. I'm glad the electricity will stay on. Yeah yeah, yeah, Well we have a ranch hand. So he was like, oh, I'll go out there and I'll I'll take care of him. So put some jackets on him or something. I don't know. Um. Anyway, you're listening to the Markmas Show. We're talking about bitcoin and bitcoin mining today. I'm joined in the studio here with with Gibbs. He is the CEO of Compass Mining

and they're helping to democratize bitcoin mining. UM I think that bitcoin is the most important thing, that it's the most important thing in the world right now. That's why I'm decided to focus my whole career on it right now. And everybody can do their part by mining some by running a node, buying some holding in cold storage, and so forth. UM and you can do that with Compass Mining or another company like that. UM I would advise you to check that out. Check out running a node. Again,

you're listening to the Mark Mass show. UM check out Compass Mining, and thank you so much for listening.