Bitcoin is The Real Occupy Wall Street
with Kent Halliburton
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Bitcoin is The Real Occupy Wall Street with Kent Halliburton
Bitcoin never seems to catch a break from criticism that it is evil — both for its perceived harm to the environment and its potential to turn the traditional economic setup on its head.
Yet, Bitcoin is not looking to do any of those things. If anything, (and ironically) it just might be the antidote to both climate change problems and the ills of the financial system. Bitcoin can deploy underutilized forms of energy, such as solar power, accelerating the use of clean energy worldwide. And thanks to its peer-to-peer and decentralized nature, Bitcoin is inclusive, unlike legacy finance which has excluded millions.
Brad and Kent dive into this and more themes in this episode, including:
Whether Bitcoin alone can alleviate suffering
The intersection of family and Bitcoin/Ethereum/NFTs craze
How Jeff Booth's book The Price of Tomorrow was a "lightbulb" moment for them
How investors who get rekt on DeFi projects always end up in Bitcoin
Let's look at some of the convo's highlights below.
#1. All Roads Lead to Bitcoin
Kent borrows a popular refrain of Bitcoin maximalists: "All roads lead to Bitcoin." This phrase means that despite the explosion of blockchain products, including DeFi, the conversation will always steer back to the pioneer cryptocurrency.
To some, DeFi is the holy grail of what blockchain technology is capable of: accessibility of finance for all. And yet, it has courted controversy for being nearly taken over by scams, heists, and bankruptcies. In short, DeFi is yet to prove its mettle. But all is not lost. As Brad and Kent contend, at least it serves as a springboard for Bitcoin.
Kent asserts that DeFi, also "a distraction," is shortening the learning curve "for people to hop across" to Bitcoin. Brad believes all this "DeFi nonsense" will "eventually just ruin a lot of people financially, but will lead them to Bitcoin."
#2. Printing More Money Doesn't Stop Suffering
As the money printer goes brrr, the result is the complete opposite of what central banks want to achieve.
For instance, at the height of COVID, governments everywhere turned to the money printer to revitalize sluggish economies, but this only triggered inflation and increased prices. This sort of thing deepens social inequality and unfairness.
Indeed, as Kent points out, there is no "more corrupting force for humanity than the money printer." Brad contends that printing more money only perpetuates more violence in the world.
#3. Bitcoin is the Real Occupy Wall Street
The Occupy Wall Street movement protested the steep wealth gap, with the world's richest people making up just 1% of the population. While the movement was applauded by many quarters as revolutionary, it would go on to fizzle out with few or no tangible achievements.
Kent observes Stella Assange — whistleblower Julian Assange's wife, recently said, "Bitcoin is the real Occupy Wall Street." Earlier, Brad had called Bitcoin "a productive protest" that is not always perfect, but "there's always hope."
Bitcoin is a productive protest because it gives back economic power to the average folk instead of being a tool only in the hands of the political and economic elites.
Timestamps
00:00:00: Intro by Brad and an overview of Sazmining by Kent
00:04:23: What did Kent do before Sazmining?
00:06:20: Discussion on Bitcoin mining and solar energy. What are the possibilities?
00:14:30: Diving into Jeff Booth's book The Price of Tomorrow and how it changed each of their economic worldviews
00:17:32: How the duo reconciles crypto with family and the cognitive dissonance of liking NFTs yet being averse to Ethereum
00:22:44: All roads lead to Bitcoin. When people get rekt on DeFi, they eventually find their way to the pioneer cryptocurrency
00:26:31: How a Bitcoin operations company can survive the prevalent bear market: lessons from Sazmining
00:30:11: On Bitcoin promoting clean energy. Also, is JR Tolkien's ring of power an analogy for the money printer?
00:55:35: A personal anecdote by Brad on the impact of capitalism and the unfairness of the conventional money system
01:05:23: Kent's recommendation for a good Bitcoin podcast, lighthearted reference on "surfing" the market waves, and Kent and Sazmining's socials
Links to Mentions in the Show
Jeff Booth: The Price of Tomorrow
Aspen Digital
NFTs
Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD)
The Progressive Bitcoiner Podcast
Kent Halliburton Socials
Sazmining Socials
Sazmining StartEngine Campaign
Find Brad Mills
Transcript
[00:00:00] Kent Halliburton: I mean, there is no more power that is a more corrupting force for humanity than the money printer. You know? What's that expression? Absolute power corrupts absolutely. If you look at our current power dynamic in society, there is nothing that supersedes from a power standpoint, the money printer itself.
[00:00:20] So if the money printer is absolute, Then we could actually change that statement to say the money printer corrupts absolutely magic.
[00:00:35] The market has changed from, from, from speculators to allocators. Magic money
[00:00:41] Brad Mills: down the rabbit. Looking into, okay, so Kent, welcome to the Magic Internet Money podcast. You guys are part of this company, SaaS Mining, which does renewable bitcoin mining, or what is the company, can you, would you wanna explain what, what your company does?
[00:00:59] And we can talk about the mining industry and where you're based and all that stuff.
[00:01:04] Kent Halliburton: Yeah. Pleasure to be here, Brad. Thank you for, uh, for hosting us. My name's Kent Halliburton and I'm the president COO at SA Mining. And we are all about offering turnkey, uh, bitcoin mining services to the retail customer.
[00:01:20] And doing it in a way that is a bit unique and different in the space, and aligning incentives, but also doing it with clean energy. And so that means even either carbon neutral or carbon negative equivalent Bitcoin mining services. And so the energy sources that we mine with are hydro, solar, wind, nuclear, and flare stack because the methane mitigation piece, and that's probably the most interesting conversation right now going on in, in the mining spaces about methane mitigation.
[00:01:52] We started this business in 2018 and uh, made a pivot about a year ago to develop this platform based on consulting calls that we were receiving while we were in a consulting phase of the, the growth of the business. And we came to market in March and we're really kinda launched at to validate that the model was gonna be a success.
[00:02:17] And what we do is, We follow kind of the Tesla cyber truck model of having people put a small deposit down to reserve a mining rig so that they don't have to tie up all the capital necessary to purchase a mining rig. And then that allows us to aggregate customer demand to access the low cost power and mining rigs of the bigger players.
[00:02:39] And once the facility is up and operational, then we turn around and resell the mining rigs to the end customer so that they have basically brand new mining rigs that we just tested to make sure that they're operational and functioning and they can start earning Bitcoin mining rewards immediately.
[00:02:56] And we do that without any markups to either the mining equipment or the power costs. And instead we only receive rewards when the customer. So we take 15% of the mining rewards on our end, and that means that we're really incentivized to keep the mining rigs up and operational as much as possible. Oh, that
[00:03:16] Brad Mills: sounds cool.
[00:03:17] So, so you guys manage the facility relationships. Yep. Do customers legally own the rigs or is it they're renting them from you? Or like how does that work?
[00:03:26] Kent Halliburton: They legally own the mining rigs. That's right. So provide serial numbers, Mac addresses, it's their Bitcoin. We never touch it. Actually, the mining pool itself is responsible for distributing the rewards.
[00:03:37] So we've got an arms link relationship with the, the Bitcoin flow that keeps us pretty safe and secure from S regulation and really allows us to be in the position of saying, Hey, you know, here's the picks and the shovels. It's really your goal to keep Well, how many
[00:03:53] Brad Mills: customers do you guys have right now?
[00:03:55] Kent Halliburton: Right now we're getting our, our first facility off the ground in Wisconsin. It's a hydro powered facility, about two megawatts. and we'll have about three 50 mining rigs placed there. So probably a couple hundred customers, but this is our first facility. You know, proof of concept and such is are signing up.
[00:04:18] Unique experience really hasn't existed in industry.
[00:04:23] Brad Mills: Is it you and multiple other partners? Like how, how's it structured and Yeah. What'd you guys do before doing the Bitcoin mining company? My
[00:04:31] Kent Halliburton: personal career was actually in the solar energy industry where I worked, uh, from about 2005 to about 2016. And during that timeframe I helped to build in scale a couple of rooftop solar c.
[00:04:46] The second of those was publicly traded. We operated in nine states through mergers and acquisitions and deploying thousands of rooftop solar systems across the nation, dealing with everchanging subsidies and dynamics and local market conditions. As you can imagine, the operational aspect of building a rooftop solar system is construction and quite challenging to get all the pieces together and the right players together to build these systems in different built environments.
[00:05:16] So the operational side of mining is actually quite trivial in comparison to that construction sort of background. But it's really interesting coming from the solar industry where it also felt a bit David and Goliath, you know, where the utilities were constantly, uh, trying to push back against solar adoption in much the same way that like maybe the central banks are, uh, against Bitcoin adoption and the solar panels produce power and the, uh, bitcoin mining rigs, you know, harness power, but they're both decentralized, distributed and disruptive technology.
[00:05:47] So there's a lot, a lot of parallels between the two. So it's quite fun to be, you know, at like the, the point of the spear for a new emergent, uh, industry. Like I was in my early career with solar and that's actually why I made the transition is because I saw the cost curves of solar were gonna align with, uh, Bitcoin mining just seemed inevitable that there was gonna be quite an explosion.
[00:06:11] And I don't think we've seen it quite. But it seems quite inevitable that it will, uh, because of the intermittency with solar and the, the price point with it. So,
[00:06:20] Brad Mills: um, you believe that, like what in the next couple years or how long do you think it'll be before Solar's efficient enough to be able to mine Bitcoin
[00:06:30] Kent Halliburton: with?
[00:06:31] I believe it's not even a matter of efficiency, so matches, it's a matter of some, some other technology that's being developed that needs to come to play and really that technology has to do with shifting where the power is going. So I think that the dynamic between having some big data solution to shun power between the solar panels and batteries and Bitcoin mining rigs or the grid is kinda the missing link.
[00:06:58] And I know people are working to develop that right now as we. But that's where I see the, the missing, the weak link right now for solar and Bitcoin mining to come together is sort of that decision making piece that sits there and says, Hey, the power is most valuable right now for bitcoin mining, or it's most beneficial for the grid.
[00:07:17] Or right now we better store the power to keep the bitcoin mining operations up and going. Longer term the cost curves. I mean, if you look at the levelized cost of energy, which is a pretty known metric within the solar. But not discuss much in the Bitcoin mining industry. Solar's already the cheapest form of power that's out there, and at the end of the day, that's what all Bitcoin miners want is the cheapest source of power.
[00:07:41] Brad Mills: Oh, really? Solar's already to the point where it's cheaper than natural gas or anything like that? It
[00:07:47] Kent Halliburton: is. If you look at levelized cost of energy, it is, what
[00:07:50] Brad Mills: does that mean? Levelized cost of energy.
[00:07:52] Kent Halliburton: The levelized cost of energy is if you look at the anticipated energy that's gonna be produced by an energy asset over its lifespan, and then you use net present values to bring it back to what the current value is.
[00:08:06] You can come up with a metric that says, Hey, for the cost point, for unsubsidized, solar energy is X. And I believe right now that's about 3 cents per kilowatt hour. If you look at wind, it's a little bit higher. If you look at natural gas, it's a little bit higher. If you look at nuclear, it's a little bit higher than that even.
[00:08:23] So what that does is it brings all the opex and CapEx. I'm
[00:08:27] Brad Mills: a little confused. Does that mean. You're kind of calculating out how much power the solar panels or the solar system or whatever is gonna make over like a hundred years, and then averaging the cost in the present. Is that what that means?
[00:08:41] Kent Halliburton: Yeah, so it's sort of like that.
[00:08:44] So you have guaranteed power with solar energy systems for 30 years. The guarantee is actually that on year 30, you're still gonna be producing at least 80% of the power as on year one. So it's not like solar panels, uh, die immediately. They sort of have a slow, slow rate of decay. And so you take a single solar panel and say, Hey, how much is this thing gonna produce over that 30 year timeframe?
[00:09:09] And then you bring the, the values back to present using the net present value calculation to say, Hey, this is what the actual cost is.
[00:09:17] Brad Mills: Okay. So that, that's kind of an accounting trick though, because doesn't it cost a lot initially at the beginning and then it's kind of like eventually the solar power's free.
[00:09:28] Yeah. But at the beginning, the solar power is really expensive.
[00:09:32] Kent Halliburton: Exactly. So it is, it's the difference between CapEx and opex, right? This is where the conversation gets quite interesting about energy. So if you look at the fuel source for solar, right? It's free, it's the sun. Right, but the sun's not always shining.
[00:09:48] So that's where the intermittency comes from. If you look at the fuel source for other energy assets, you know, natural gas, you know, you have to pay for the, the natural gas, you have to pay for the coal, you have to pay for the nuclear fission material, and that's basically taken out of the equation for solar.
[00:10:07] And what you have is you've got a device that's producing power. It's the only solid state energy production device that we know of right now. So there's no moving parts in it, and that's reason why has such longevity solar, lot of the big systems finance is actually through green. That's done because they are able to get long-term returns for the CapEx.
[00:10:33] So it's a different financier of solar than would finance bitcoin mining. And I think that that's actually one of the other missing gaps that needs to be filled for solar to be a big, a big portion of the Bitcoin mining. Cause Bitcoin mining financiers want a fairly quick rate of return. Solar financiers are looking for this long, drawn out return and low risk.
[00:10:55] And so there needs to be somebody in the middle that's looking at that blended rate of return and the risk profile between the two. And I see some solutions starting to emerge for that right now, but not a lot. And I think that niche opens up is also gonna help to, uh, to bring solar mining to the forefront.
[00:11:12] What's
[00:11:12] Brad Mills: the, uh, cost for doing that flare gas mining versus solar mining? Is it similar or is it cheaper to do the flare gas mining, but it's not as abundant of a resource? I'm curious the economics between flare gas mining and solar mining.
[00:11:31] Kent Halliburton: Yeah, so I think there's a couple things. Energy gets quite nuanced, right?
[00:11:36] And I think that that's part of the, the thing that we in the bitcoin mining community are learning is some of the nuance with energy itself. So on one side you've got a lot of CapEx to get a solar system up and going, and then relatively low opex. And so you can get like a low cost of power, but it's intermittent natural gas flar.
[00:11:56] On the other hand has its own sort of idiosyncrasies and one of those is that a natural gas well is gonna have a rated decay to it. And you need to have a relative volume of natural gas. It makes the unit economics work out for bitcoin mining. So it's not gonna, you know, if you got a really tiny, uh, natural gas flare, it's probably not gonna work for bitcoin mining.
[00:12:20] So it needs to be big enough and it needs to be clean enough natural gas too, that it's not gonna clog or jam up the sets as they're producing the power. So that's one dynamic. But then there's also the dynamic of, hey, how long is this natural gas gonna come out of the, well, the steady state? There's a curve to that to where the production is gonna go down over time.
[00:12:42] And so then figuring out how you're gonna build your unit so they can be mobile and adjust and go from site to site. You know, there's some complexity with that. They're two very different offers. And what I see right now, you know, we've been talking to several hosting providers and our business model is not to run the operations, but to find hosting providers on behalf of our customers.
[00:13:04] And we've been talking with several, and right now the price of that energy seems to be in like the sixth sense at the very low range, up to about eight and half cents at the high end for natural gas provided electricity. And I'm not seeing too many solutions yet for hosting providers on the solar side.
[00:13:23] You know, there's Aspen Digital outta Colorado. Seems to be really at the forefront right now, pioneering that, but they're not doing much in the, in the way of hosting at this point. It doesn't look like so much as self mining. How
[00:13:35] Brad Mills: long have you been doing the Bitcoin mining for Kent?
[00:13:38] Kent Halliburton: Uh, about two years now.
[00:13:40] I got into Bitcoin in 2015 though, got bit by the bug and started studying it. And with my energy background. You know, had this thesis that it was gonna wind up driving renewables. And then when I read Jeff Booth's book, the Price of Tomorrow, the fifth chapter in that book talks about solar specifically cause of its, uh, deflationary costs.
[00:14:01] And I was just like, man, there's gonna be an explosion here. Jeff says it better than I could. But it really inspired me to say, Hey, lemme take a pivot in my career and focus on this. And I found Will Mining the ceo, talking on a podcast with a podcast host I knew, said, Hey, why don't in touch will I like
[00:14:26] wonderful working relationship since I, I joined at the beginning of last year. So you
[00:14:30] Brad Mills: guys met from just both being in. Yeah, Jeff Booth's been on the show before. He, he's awesome. His book really did help shape my, uh, my view of things, because previous to Jeff Booth's book, it was more, I was more thinking about how we're just so screwed and there's nothing we're gonna be able to do.
[00:14:51] Like, we're just gonna have to go through the failure of government money and manipulation and just, they're just gonna blow the whole system up and then we can rebuild with Bitcoin. But that's the not an optimal solution for, uh, like human suffering. Because if, if we allow the system to implode on itself, because governments and politicians and bankers end up messing up the system so bad that it causes a massive great depression in a world war, et cetera, it's gonna cause massive suffer.
[00:15:21] So his book actually was a real hopeful take on how we can rely on technology to get us through this in a transitionary phase rather than a a, an explosion and then a rebuilding, like the forest fire has to come burn down all the big trees to let the small trees grow. We don't necessarily have to go through that with Bitcoin and with technology we can transition from a failing system to a productive deflationary system in a peaceful way that is minimizing human suffering.
[00:15:50] So his book was awesome. It was a real good hopeful take on, uh, on how there is a possible way to get onto the lifeboat without having to see everybody sink on the Titanic. Like there's enough lifeboats and it's just gonna take a while to go back and forth to the, just the Toshi Island .
[00:16:06] Kent Halliburton: Couldn't agree more.
[00:16:07] I, uh, I found it to be one of a couple books that I read at the same time that sort of just told me, gosh, man, I need to put my wheel in, uh, my shoulder against the wheel in the, in the Bitcoin mining space. Cause this is where it all comes down to. But he really deeply inspired the business model that we're running right now at SA Mining.
[00:16:26] And it took me a while to understand why Michael Sailor purchased hope.com to represent Bitcoin education. But at this point I totally agree with that. And when you take everything else away from Bitcoin, I think that that's actually the unifying value that brings community is I don't any other transition to the next phase of our civilization, if not through Bitcoin.
[00:16:56] I think we get often marked as being zealots for trying to orange people from our vantage point. But I think once, once you are, it's almost impossible not to want others cause you just can't come up with another solution that allows us to make this transition without avoiding all the human suffering like you've mentioned.
[00:17:17] It's an interesting, interesting place to be in. Cause it's hard from the outside looking in to understand why we're so crazy about Bitcoin. But once you're across that event horizon, it's almost impossible not to wanna try to pull other people across as well. Do you
[00:17:32] Brad Mills: find, uh, yourself, Kent, like having to defend Bitcoin a lot to like people in your family and friend circle that are kind of maybe progressive and saying things like, oh, well yeah, Bitcoin's not for me.
[00:17:43] It's too dirty, or it's, I'm into, uh, Ethereum because Ethereum's clean green. Like, do you get that a lot or is that not something you have to deal with? ?
[00:17:52] Kent Halliburton: Oh, totally. Yeah, even within my family, it's, it's quite funny because like I've got both of my parents orange filled, but I've got two sisters and they're definitely not, you know, they think I'm kinda crazy for being, uh, so obsessed with Bitcoin as I am.
[00:18:06] And my wife is big into NFTs and I'm constantly talking to her about it. And, you know, she, she appreciates Bitcoin, but she's like, no, there's technology with NFTs, like NFTs in the future. I'm like, you're missing the boat here, honey. I'm sorry. But, uh, anyway,
[00:18:21] Brad Mills: yes. How does she get into NFTs? What, what does she follow somebody that's like into it or?
[00:18:25] Well, I think
[00:18:26] Kent Halliburton: it captured her attention because she's always been very aesthetically minded and seeing the art there and the creative process. Caused her to wanna go down that particular rabbit hole and understand how it worked and why it was unique. And you know, I think the understanding of what money itself is is such an abstract topic that it takes a very unique mind to want to focus in on that or see why that's a problem.
[00:18:55] So I think that's why as Bitcoiners, the folks that are curious enough and diligent enough to go through that process are a unique breed still. I think that will change over time as we see adoption spread and, and we get past this point of the adoption curve. , but I don't think it's for everybody at this point to really want to spend the time and effort to get there.
[00:19:17] And I think part of it too is continuing to see better user interfaces and experiences developed for people. So
[00:19:24] Brad Mills: you guys are, um, going through counseling, I guess, to try to reconcile your maximalism with her. Uh, N F T, uh, we just wind up with a lot of
[00:19:32] Kent Halliburton: sore foreheads as we head
[00:19:34] Brad Mills: that over the, the issue , I get it because my daughter actually did an N F T.
[00:19:41] I encouraged her to do it because she's a creative kid. She like writes, she, yeah, she writes stories and draws all the time. So in the N f T bubble was real, real strong last year. I kind of got her to do it. I was just like, there's a Bitcoin N F t you can make if you want. She was just asking me about it and she heard me talking about Rare Peppes cuz there's on Bitcoin, there's rare Peppes, right?
[00:20:05] Yep. On counterparty. So she heard me talking about that and she's like, what is that? And I was like, well, people are like drawing funny frog cartoons and they're actually making a lot of money doing it. And then she's like, oh, I wanna do that. So she made her own rare Pepe card and it was like cognitive dissonance a little bit for me because I'm, I'm so against the, the nonsense bubble of NFTs and especially the Ethereum and the other crypto NFTs things because really that I look at as, as a game theoretical war for the future of money.
[00:20:39] It's a front in the battle of money and that like N F T craze really amplifies the network effects of the pre miners that end up funding Bitcoin fud. It's a marketing campaign really to like promote Ethereum as this great network for artists to disintermediate these greedy corporate middlemen or whatever, and it washes all the nonsense and Ponzi schemes and scam.
[00:21:10] Ethereum really has enabled, which is the majority of the activity on Ethereum, is Ponzi scams and schemes and rebuilding everything that's wrong with Wall Street on a blockchain. So that's why it's like cognitive dissonance for me, because I actually do like the concept of NFTs. I like the idea that you can have a game where your ships or whatever can be a digital item, or I like digital collectibles.
[00:21:34] I'm, I'm into digital collectibles. Digital art makes sense to me. I'm an investor in Scarcity, which is a, a bitcoin art marketplace that also lists Bitcoin, digital art, like counterparty, NFTs and stuff. So my daughter made some money drawing her rare Pepe, and, um, I always get triggered, like even when I get friends of mine that are like, yeah, I'm doing an NFT now.
[00:21:55] I'm like, oh, why would you do that? It's like, if you're gonna do it, do it on Bitcoin, but don't do it. don't, don't do NFTs as a marketing play or like a way to milk your audience. It's just so grif. It's a tough.
[00:22:10] Kent Halliburton: Fully agreed with your perspective there. And I think there are some interesting silver linings that I see, you know, as I, as I think through like my wife's experience, you know, she got captured by that, but she has learned some really interesting tools that I think actually help with Bitcoin adoption.
[00:22:27] She's learned about private key management. You know, she uses a hardware wallet, right? So making the shift to holding Bitcoin is not a big thing at that point. Also, learning about markets, the psychology of markets, the ups and downs. You know, this has been her first series of invest. That's also beneficial to understanding Bitcoin.
[00:22:44] So I can't remember who says this if you do credit them appropriately, but somebody that has said all roads lead to Bitcoin. And I tend to agree with that. All these ancillary things, while they are a distraction and there are the Ponzi elements, they are on an ancillary basis also teaching the skills and other areas that surround Bitcoin to make the bridge a little bit shorter for people to hop
[00:23:09] Brad Mills: across.
[00:23:10] Yeah, that's a good perspective to have. You can take the, like, the hopeful, uh, perspective and say like, yeah, it's teaching people about managing public and private key pairs or like teaching them to hold their keys. For sure. Millions of people have learned through trying to make 1000% a p i on a defi Ponzi scam, that they have a seed phrase now
[00:23:33] So even though they don't have any money left, they have a seed phrase. So when they're ready to invest for the long term and save in Bitcoin and understand Bitcoin, they know how to work a seed phrase and it's not gonna be so foreign to them. I like that idea. There's probably like less expensive tuitions though.
[00:23:49] There's probably better ways to do it, but we had a crazy bubble. Tens of millions of people came in through celebrities, shilling, NFTs, and Ponzi scams like Celsius and Luna and all that defi nonsense that influential Silicon Valley angel investors and stuff were shilling and still are shilling, which is just insane to me to think that people are still pushing Defi Ponzi scams and N F T launches as if it's a good investment.
[00:24:16] But we are here . This is where we. and we're in a volatile time right now. Bitcoin, I think is around 19,000 or so. At this point, we're at the highest inflation we've ever had in our lifetimes. We have global instability where countries are starting to stop cooperating with each other and starting to have like economic wars with each other.
[00:24:39] Where the United States just recently stopped exporting chips to China, which caused massive routing of value. 200 billion of market cap got wiped off the American chip manufacturing companies because they're no longer allowed to sell to China. The Federal Reserve and the central banks of the world are trying to save their currencies by stopping the Ponzi, the giant Ponzi scam of the bond markets from collapsing, which is causing like massive loss of value in currencies global.
[00:25:09] which is also destroying risky assets like NFTs, non-profitable tech companies. And unfortunately, Bitcoin's getting caught in the crossfire because billions and billions of dollars came into Bitcoin through these Defi treasuries. And these people like Mike Novogratz, who were tattooing Ponzi scam logos on their arms, , and then convincing high net worth individuals that like Bitcoin is a great place to start, but then you want to get some Luna and , and then you want a yield farm with your.
[00:25:40] and then 80 billion to a hundred billion dollars of value just gets wiped off when all this stuff blows up. And we're now in a bear market and things are crazy right now. So I guess we'll take what we can get. Maybe there's people that will come through this. I think there actually will be, a lot of people that came in are now starting to recognize, oh wait, maybe these Bitcoiners are not just uh, like Maxis that are Luddites, but maybe they understand these things.
[00:26:06] Maybe they were right about a lot of the stuff being bad investments and scams and schemes and pyramids and Ponzi and everything else. And I think by 2025 we'll have another million Bitcoiners created through the tens of millions of people that came in for things like safe moon and Axi Infinity and Board apes and all this stuff that's gonna eventually just ruin a lot of people financially, but will lead them to Bitcoin.
[00:26:31] So it does make sense. It is gonna be a long couple of years, I think. And I wonder how do you guys deal with this bear market? , we're in this potential two year more bear market as a Bitcoin mining company that's getting started up and in the bear market. Do you think that's giving you a competitive advantage?
[00:26:49] Because a lot of people are gonna leave and they've already taken massive debt. One big mining company I think is like filing for chapter 11 right now. They raise a hundred million or something just not a year ago. So what does that whole scene look like for you in this crazy time that we're in right now that's unprecedented that none of us have ever lived through?
[00:27:08] Like how are you guys thinking about that for the next few years? A
[00:27:10] Kent Halliburton: couple comments I would make there is that, first of all, I don't know about you, but I personally had to go through the, the shit Wheel of Samsara, uh, before I got Bitcoin. And I think that that's a relatively common occurrence for a lot of people that may come in the of Bitcoin, but then seduced by the Song of Shit.
[00:27:32] It's about blockchain and not Bitcoin, and then ultimately coming back to realize if you stick with it long enough, no, this is really all about Bitcoin and you sort of get hardened in your stance, you know, not much leeway for the shit coins that are out there, which makes it particularly problematic if you've got a wife that loves NFTs, right?
[00:27:50] That's, uh, interesting and very common occurrence that I've seen as I've met other Bitcoiners as having gone through a similar cycle. But it's crazy times and I think the key for us, and I'll talk about SA mining and then the mining industry at large, but I think that SA mining, the key for us is to just put our heads down and grind, just build value for customers and make sure that we are bringing on the absolute best players that we can to our organization.
[00:28:19] Our vision is to transform the way that people relate with money and energy, and that vision has really been attracting some top talent. This is a third organization that I've scaled in my life. , and by far this is the most high quality team that I've ever worked with. And I'm a huge believer in that if you surround yourself with good, smart people and get the team dynamics right, you're gonna wind up winning in the long run and working together as a team, you're gonna go farther.
[00:28:46] So that's our personal, uh, our internal approaches, uh, to sa mining, build value, get the right players in the organization and grind it out. So I, I actually call our team, you know, Spartans right now, we're just lean, mean, and driven to succeed and dominate. But within the mining industry, what's actually really wonderful at this particular moment is we're building in this bear market and watching what's collapsing around us and saying, okay, great.
[00:29:17] There's another lesson of what not to do when the bull market comes. Because at the end of the day, most of the issues that have come about came about because people have over leveraged themselves in the mining industry. They've taken a bunch of capital, they levered it up. They never imagined the prices would come back to where they're now, and that the network difficulty would be where it's so they just didn't model risk appropriately and that led them to getting out over theirs.
[00:29:43] So what do we not wanna do over extend ourselves and get out over ours? So, you know, be methodical. Have a low time preference like the, the Bitcoin network is already instilling in the Bitcoin community and just focus on the long horizon and just keep making forward progress. So it's a slog and interestingly enough, it's not much different than the slog that I experienced in the solar industry.
[00:30:07] So it doesn't feel totally abnormal to be going through
[00:30:11] Brad Mills: that. Do you feel that Bitcoin mining. Is having an impact in accelerating adoption of clean energy yet, or do you feel like we're still kind of at the early stages
[00:30:22] Kent Halliburton: there? I think we're at early stages. I'm taking an idea from somebody else, again, I can't attribute, cause I've forgotten who this came from, but somebody described you and topography map of electricity prices around the world, right?
[00:30:37] And high power prices created mountain tops and low power prices created valleys. And then you took a picture of water and poured over that top map where the water settles is where Bitcoin mining is gonna go. And that's the existing infrastructure that that's out there. And I think we're still in that phase to where bitcoin mining is going out and basically grabbing energy that's been underutilized, under-resourced and taking advantage of it because that's the cheapest power is the power that nobody else wants.
[00:31:09] So that makes sense for Bitcoin mining to do that. I think that's kinda the, the first evolutionary step for bitcoin mining. The second step will be when long-term power projects start to integrate Bitcoin mining into the project design from the get go. And I think that that phase of the market is probably just in its nascent form right now, but I think that that is where the Bitcoin mining industry really starts to grow up because then we're actually combining the entire supply chain for Bitcoin from the production of the electron all the way to the output of Bitcoin that becomes the supply chain that's integrated.
[00:31:49] And developed from a project finance and project development standpoint. And I don't think we're to that phase yet. I think we're in the very, very early innings of starting to develop that.
[00:31:59] Brad Mills: Well, that's exciting. I mean, there's definitely some data out there from different sources like, uh, the Cambridge, uh, digital currency study.
[00:32:08] I can't remember the exact name that they use, but they do it every year and there seems to be an increasing amount of miners that are, that are using renewable energy. There is a lot of renewable energy that's currently just being wasted, at least here in Canada, like in Quebec. There's more power just wasted in Quebec, not utilized, then actually goes towards running the entire Bitcoin network.
[00:32:33] Apparently we could be a hundred. , renewable, clean energy easily. I mean, a lot of people think that Bitcoin is gonna, I mean, well, not just people think, but this message is being shoved down people's faces from corrupt organizations like Greenpeace that are lying about Bitcoin and confusing progressives about Bitcoin, turning it into a political issue and making it like a left versus right thing, when really, progressives should want to see Bitcoin mining adopted.
[00:33:04] They should want to save Bitcoin themselves because Bitcoin is a perfect tool for progressive because it, it promotes financial inclusion, it promotes financial literacy. It helps accelerate the adoption of clean. and in general, it, it like helps with like the, the, the massive wealth income gap that we have because a again, Jeff Booth's book, the Price of Tomorrow is such a great resource for any progressive to read.
[00:33:29] Most folks in my life that are on that spectrum also kind of have a hard time with Bitcoin because for some reason they think about like making money as a bad thing and money itself just thinking about money as a bad thing. But they focus their energy on political issues and social issues, yet they're slaves to corporate interests when they're, you know, Paying crazy interest rates on their credit cards, and they're supporting things like UBI and bailouts, which actually create higher differentials between the highest 1% and the bottom 99% of the bottom 50% or whatever this business that you have Actually, I, I feel like it's a mission and a business that people like you guys are doing, where you're proving that Bitcoin mining can be done in a renewable way that does actually use net negative carbon power, which will hopefully at some point in the next couple years, if you guys can scale and other bitcoin mining companies can scale to the point where we do see a, a measurable impact in the adoption of clean negative carbon neutral or carbon negative energy because of Bitcoin.
[00:34:43] It'll be real hard for them to put that in our, you know, poison the well with that, with that terrible logic of how bitcoin's gonna boil the oceans and all that stuff. So, I hope you succeed. I really hope you succeed, .
[00:34:56] Kent Halliburton: Thank you. Well, I'm, I'm counting on it. I've got skin in the game here, that's for sure.
[00:35:00] You touched on something really important there that I wanna hone in on, which is that Bitcoin is apolitical. The first wave of adoption that's occurred here, or maybe it's first, second wave, has been primarily libertarian voices. But I've been extremely heartened in the last year to see that there's a progressive element within the Bitcoin community that's starting to have a louder voice.
[00:35:23] You know, Troy Cross, Troy is an advisor to our project, you know, Thein, so her name's Margo, John Mayer, the, um, the guy that's writing the progressive Bitcoin, or you know, Peter McCormack is out there bringing on a lot of progressive voices onto his podcast. It's kinda an unusual progressive still that's seeing a signal through all the noise.
[00:35:44] But I do see the value set of progressives that come in, get shifted. I went through it myself. And I will say completely, honestly, as a progressive coming from the solar industry, I started to shift my attitude probably about two 12 when I saw how money was influencing the solar industry. Actually disgusted.
[00:36:06] But I realized that was pretty ignorant about money and that's what Bitcoin has opened my eyes to is money itself, how it works, how it operates. And I think that that is the weakness within the progressive community. And I would no longer call myself a progressive or libertarian. I dunno what I, what I fall into independent free Bitcoin, maybe the best approach.
[00:36:29] Cause I have very nuanced takes on most topic. But at the end of the day, I see Bitcoin, uh, being adopted by the progressive community as an super important aspect of Bitcoin that all Bitcoiners should start try to develop. Cause we can all hide in a cave and say Bitcoin's gonna make it on its own. I think that attitude is totally true.
[00:36:51] However, if you care about it in your local jurisdiction, then we have to avoid allowing it to get co-opted by the red blue situation that is occurring throughout the world. and we should all welcome progressives and allow them to go through their journey of learning Bitcoin rather than shaming them for not understanding money itself.
[00:37:12] Cause I do think that that's a blind spot and try to help bring them up to speed because the social layer of the network is only protected if we avoid it from turning into a political football. So I think for the protection of the network and local jurisdictions, it's important that we try to, uh, embrace other people's journeys into Bitcoin and try them up.
[00:37:36] Speeders are, because I know I definitely am much more libertarian journey, I'm still kind of in that direction personally still where I care about other people and, and don't wanna see them left behind.
[00:37:50] Brad Mills: Yeah. Like that's, a lot of folks I find are going through a journey of almost like rubber banding away from mainstream politics towards things like libertarianism.
[00:38:01] and it does make a lot of sense. Philosophically. Everything that the libertarians say for the most part makes a lot of sense. But then after a while you start to realize that there should be a social safety net of some sort. We should make sure that there's not, and you know, like tons of human suffering and a pure libertarian play would end up with a lot of suffering.
[00:38:24] It's like hard to define what you are when you, when you kind of come back a little bit from the libertarian dogma. And, uh, a lot of it makes a lot of sense. I mean, I agree with most of it. I, I considered myself a libertarian for years and years and years, but now I don't think so. I, I, I think I have like libertarian tendencies, but I'm Canadian, so, I mean, I'm okay with paying taxes to sort of support the poor, but I think like the ideal goal is increase financial literacy, fix the money.
[00:38:55] Educate people about the way the system really is and the way money really currently works, and how we can have a better system, where you can have a dignified life on a lower wage and not have to incentivize consumerism, which is polluting the oceans and counterfeit capitalism, which is bailing out all these companies that should fail.
[00:39:15] The market should allow companies that suck to fail instead of weaponizing the the central bank and the money printer to just keep allowing this cycle of never ending growth to keep happening, because that just continually makes people poorer, increases the wealth gap, and makes things inefficient and unfair.
[00:39:33] So something like Bitcoin is a good mix of capitalism, libertarianism, fairness, progressivism, it's almost like, um, a nearly perfect solution. I mean, Bitcoin doesn't fix everything, but technology plus Bitcoin. Plus education. I think it's definitely in the right direction. I still don't know the full answers, but I love having conversations with people who aren't, like you said, like just like hardcore libertarians or anarchists or whatever, because that's not scalable.
[00:40:04] We need to figure something that's gonna cause the most amount of positivity in the world, which is gonna end, end like suffering. Which is really the big problem because there's a lot of people suffering right now. Reduce, reduce suffering. Sorry, I sounded kind of like a little crazy there. End suffering.
[00:40:18] Bitcoin can't end suffering. There's always gonna be suffering. Unfortunately, if you're part of the homo PN group,
[00:40:23] Kent Halliburton: you're always gonna have a little bit of that, that internal monkey that you gotta deal with on your own, you have your own journey with, but,
[00:40:29] Brad Mills: um, well, and there's always people, there's always going to be people.
[00:40:33] Want a bigger stick, they will gather more resources and acquire more wealth. And then on the opposite end of that, there's always going to be people that just don't have motivation and won't be productive. You can't stop that. That's human nature, right? So, so there's always going to be murderers and bad people.
[00:40:51] just the same as there's always gonna be extremely wealthy people and rich people and ambitious people. So it's just a matter of like reducing all that, like inequality in the middle, which is being, it's increased inequality because of policies that progressives are pushing for. And that's the craziest thing that every time they print money to try to stop inflation or help with inflation.
[00:41:13] or equality, they're actually causing more suffering in the long term. It's a, it's a strange concept for people to get, but every time they print money to stop suffering, they end up causing more suffering cuz they're increasing the wealth gap or putting more violence
[00:41:26] Kent Halliburton: in the world. And I mean, this has been a, a human cycle, what you're describing that has been going on since the days of Rome.
[00:41:32] Right? Like this idea that printing money can ease suffering is counterintuitive. I think for us as a species to understand it. I think it's actually one of the side benefits of social medias for the first time. There's enough of this idea getting out and enough historical examples for us to look back on that those of us that are curious and, and looking at what's come in the past can say, Hey, we're just recreating the exact same cycle over and over again.
[00:41:59] And as Bitcoiners, I actually think that you un unifying idea in the Bitcoin community is simply separation of money and state. , and that's why I consider Bitcoin to be on par as an invention with the printing press. And I, I'm not quoting new ideas when I say this, but I think it's really interesting because if you look at the, and look at eventually the
[00:42:25] of church and state and ultimately to democratic nation. I think of Bitcoin similarly, I don't think that we understand what the knock on effects are gonna be, but I think that it's clear, at least to me, and, and I think a lot of the Bitcoin community, that one of those knock on effects is gonna be the separation of money in state.
[00:42:44] How does society organize itself after the separation of money in state? Do we organize ourselves like we did under a gold standard? Again, I don't know, but to me, labeling myself with like a hardcore, I'm this libertarian, anarchist progressive, I feel like it's missing the mark. Cause we don't know what's coming down the pike with all these, you know, tectonic plate shifts on the, the geopolitical stage right now.
[00:43:12] And so the best thing to be is, is curious and open-minded. And what's that famous quote of, Hey, when the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do is kinda, one of my guiding principles is like, let's just get the data, get the facts. I'm willing to have strong opinions, but I'm gonna hold them pretty loosely right now and allow myself to shift as, uh, as these tectonic plates and the monetary global reserve asset is shifting.
[00:43:39] I don't know what comes in the future and I don't wanna plant myself to just one position when there's chaos going all around us. I wanna be able to be adaptive and, and move laterally if I need to. So let's see what comes. But I do know that separating money in state seems like the greatest good that we can do right now and will dramatically transform civilization.
[00:44:00] Brad Mills: That is a great point. And I also kind of thought about this a little while back and I kind of come up with this framework of the invention of the printing press enabled the masses to read the invention of the internet, enabled the masses to. and the invention of Bitcoin will enable the masses to think.
[00:44:20] I like that. And it's not to say that everybody that uses the internet is a good writer, the same way that everybody that uses Bitcoin won't be a good thinker. But for sure the massive adoption of both the printing press and the internet helped for sure to get ideas out there and to get more people thinking and, and or writing and reading.
[00:44:40] And with more and more people learning about Bitcoin and having Bitcoin and holding that asset and being sovereign, there will be a lot more people that will think more deeply about money and they'll think more long term. And that will cause 'em to think more of like a, a savings mindset. Maybe we won't solve all of humanity's problems, but for sure that's gonna move the needle in the right direction.
[00:45:02] If you have more people thinking about conservation long term, that's for sure gonna solve a lot of problems. So the more people we can get to hold Bitcoin and to learn about Bitcoin, the better our species will be at thinking. So, so that's hopefully a good, a good bright spot. And then maybe we'll figure it out.
[00:45:21] Maybe we'll know what to label ourselves after. Everybody can think. I like that. I, I think
[00:45:25] Kent Halliburton: I, I've used slightly different language, but I like that language about that. Bitcoin helps us to think. I have identified it more as like time horizons. So there's this really interesting example that I stumbled across looking at monetary history.
[00:45:39] And so, you know, the gold was around from about 1250 to 50, about a three year span. And during that time period is when the Renaissance started and the gold came from Italy. The Renaissance started Italy. I don't think that's a coincidence, but there's also, the Milan Cathedral was started in like the 1380s.
[00:46:00] It took 600 years for that cathedral to be finished being built. It was completed in, I think like 1965, something like that. So 600 years. I sit back and I think about our society living under the Fiat virus that we live under. And I think that's just impossible. We would never be able to plan and execute something that took 600 years to develop right now.
[00:46:23] And I look at that and say, we move to a Bitcoin standard and we know it's more saleable across both time and space than gold was. And you know, I see the time horizons of everybody that adopts Bitcoin seems to end out into the future. And I think while there's this huge focus on the energy side of Bitcoin, that's kinda the the supply side, the production of Bitcoin.
[00:46:48] And I don't think that there's enough focus or data yet even that can be drawn on the demand side for Bitcoin and what that does for our relationship with the environment and harmonizing our. But I actually see both sides of that equation being kind of like the dual helix of the DNA coil where I think they're inseparable over time.
[00:47:09] And you know, I think Jeff Booth does a good job at describing that deflationary force, but it's both the fact that people have long-term savings that they look to extends their time horizons and moves them into a more timeless thinking state like you've described. While also we're harmonizing ourselves with through the energy production side using Bitcoin mining.
[00:47:33] And I think those twin forces, you know, at the end of the day, I think it's kinda almost a horrible thing for people to hear in the Bitcoin community. But I do have like this deep caring for the environment and it motivates, motivated me to get into solar, motivated me to get into Bitcoin, but I think that those dynamics of moving more timeless.
[00:47:52] And harmonizing our relationship with energy as ultimately settling our species and our relationship with each other in the planet. I dunno how that looks or how that works out, but it seems like those directional arrows are there and it seems inevitable that that's gonna occur as long as the adoption continues to occur.
[00:48:11] Oh, I love
[00:48:11] Brad Mills: that. That's a great message and totally agree with you. I think that it's almost taboo to say that you're, uh, interested in the planet or whatever. , like, I don't even know how to phrase it anymore with a, cuz you get canceled by one side. If you say the wrong thing, you get canceled by the other side or judged or whatever.
[00:48:29] But yes, I think most people can agree that pollution is bad and we should solve the pollution problem. Consumerism is bad and we should try to stop being so consumerist. Those two things For sure. I think people can agree on clean air. Clean water. And then when you start getting into the political side of global warming and all that, maybe that gets a bit contentious and people get emotional.
[00:48:50] But everybody agrees that you should have clean air, clean water, you know, you can go towards the property rights thing or you can't pollute whatever. But nobody that I've ever spoke to, I think, disagrees that you should have clean air and clean water. And then it's just a matter of getting, finding the bear, finding the limits of where the person is.
[00:49:08] Like maybe they think global warming is a scam, so you don't want to go quite that far. But moving people more towards the center is always the goal. Like, I think take people away from the extremes and bring them towards the, the center of, we want to help the planet, of course we want clean air, clean water, and clean energy.
[00:49:25] There's nothing wrong with energy. The idea that using energy as bad is something that we tried to fix that perspective with the This Machine Greens, the short film that I helped produce all about the Bitcoin energy conversation. The goal of that was to bring people towards the center. I mean, if you are a super progressive activist, environmental activist or whatever, and you think Bitcoin's evil because it uses energy, we wanna bring you towards the center where we can show you that we believe that the planet is suffering and we want cleaner air and cleaner water, and we can do that with Bitcoin.
[00:50:01] We can help accelerate the adoption of clean energy with Bitcoin and. The pollution in the air and things like that. And then folks that are on the right in Bitcoin, we made that for them because a lot of people are so rubber banded away from the mainstream narratives that they just, they honestly think that there is a scam in terms of global warming and that there is no global warming happening at all.
[00:50:26] The planet's fine, there's no problems with the planet at all. So we're trying to bring them towards the middle and acknowledge, yes, there's some issues. We are polluting too much, like the, the water has got garbage in it. Like this is not good. So that's my ultimate goal anyways, with the podcast and films that I work on and things like that.
[00:50:43] I, I wanna promote conservation, the ideas of long-term thinking. And it's great when there's other bitcoiners and stuff that, that are doing that. And it's awesome. Like you said earlier, it's awesome to see people like Troy Cross and Gin and Darren Battens and other guy recently. There's, there's a bunch of folks that are starting to make their progressive sort of voices heard in these logical, in these great logical ways.
[00:51:04] because we should pull people away from the fringes on both sides and back into some sort of reality of acknowledging, yes, there's a problem, Bitcoin can help fix it, and Bitcoin is a better form of money. It's a more fair base layer of operating the system. So it's unlike you said, those, the two strands of the helix, the double helix.
[00:51:22] Bitcoin helps with all of it, uh, helps with, doesn't completely solve it all, but like definitely helps reduce the problems that we have right now. And the best way to think about it, I've, I believe, is that adopting Bitcoin personally and choosing to vote with your fiat and saving Bitcoin, it's a productive protest because you can spend your whole entire life.
[00:51:45] Being triggered and feeling hopeless and helpless about the problems with the planet, with environmentalism or the problems with politics, with corruption, or the problems with money, with debt slavery. And just be disappointed constantly that you can't really make that much of an effort and you can just alienate yourself from your friends and be constantly posting crazy stuff online.
[00:52:08] Or you can choose to do a productive protest. Start saving in Bitcoin. Start digging into why Bitcoin actually can help accelerate the world to clean energy and maybe like yourself, actually get involved and become like part of a Bitcoin mining company that's promoting green energy. So whether you're, um, on the left or the right, or you're against the deep state, or you're against the, the greedy corporations or whatever, you can find your productive protests in Bitcoin.
[00:52:41] I do get triggered and frustrated all the time about lots of issues. , but it's nowhere near as bad as it was. Being a libertarian trying to root for Ron Paul and seeing Ron Paul get totally like shut down. And same with the, the progressives like what they did to Bernie Sanders. It sucks being like protesting in those ways.
[00:53:01] And when you find out that Bitcoin, it can be a productive protest, I find it, it really. Help . It's not as depressing, you know, like, sure, it sucks when the price goes down, but there's hope, there's always hope for, uh, Bitcoin to make a real change. And it always does. Over a long ti all long timeframes. Yeah.
[00:53:18] It,
[00:53:18] Kent Halliburton: I think what you're saying there really reminds me of one of my favorite all time quotes by Buckminster Fuller, and I'll paraphrase it cause I, I don't have it word for word, but it's, if you wanna change the existing system, you don't fight it. You just focus on building a new one. That's better.
[00:53:32] That's what I see in Bitcoin is, hey, here's this thing. It offers me hope. I think it offers hope for all of humanity. I'm just gonna put my head down and build over here. And eventually, you know, if you build it, they will come. And it seems like that is what is occurring with number go up. Technology is the price.
[00:53:50] Ultimately suffering people in and you know, those of us that stay around and and are curious long enough realize, hey, this is not just a speculative thing, but this is a revolutionary. And I dunno if you saw it, I think it's Stephanie is is Julian Assange's wife, but she just posted on Twitter yesterday.
[00:54:09] Bitcoin is the real Occupy movement. Oh,
[00:54:12] Brad Mills: awesome. I didn't
[00:54:13] Kent Halliburton: see that. And that just really hit home and, and resonated with me. I was just like, it's totally true. Like having gone through and lived through the 2008, you know, great recession and been completely impacted by that, having seen nine 11 and what happened when the aftermath of that with the Patriot Act and going Iraq and, and all these things.
[00:54:34] I think, you know, you seem like you're, you're a similar age and life experience, but I think that our framing has been so shaped by these massive events. That you just can't help but see that the problem really comes down to the money printer and if we can break our relationship with it. Cause you know, the Money Printer is, is the, I Andron it seems like there's hundreds of times that we've tried to control ourselves around the, the money printer.
[00:55:00] We just can't seem to do it. So if we, for the first time, we can actually just liberate ourselves from that, you know, siren song of, of the Money printer and needing to. What better service could we, could we do with our generation? So I can't imagine anything that would be better for us to, to work on and focus on in life than trying to, to drive Bitcoin adoption right now.
[00:55:22] So at the end of the day, while I'm in Bitcoin mining and you're out there putting out great media content, it takes all stripes that if you're passionate about Bitcoin, then, I dunno what else you, you could do with your life. They put your shoulder against the wheel and help out.
[00:55:35] Brad Mills: I totally agree, man.
[00:55:36] Like, uh, you just reminded me of something with the io soran comment. That's so funny. Like the money printers, the ring of power and we can't help ourselves around the around the ring. I was having a conversation with my brother this summer when I was home visiting in Cape Breton and, um, he's in a situation where he's depressed and he's, he lives kind of like below the poverty.
[00:55:59] He's been frustrated since he's been a teenager with those issues of money and doesn't feel like he belongs in that world of like consumerism and, and capitalism and things like that. And he's always struggled with it. And we kind of always, when I go home, we kind of have conversation about money and about Bitcoin and he's kind of to the point where sometimes he believes that we're just not worth saving.
[00:56:21] Our planet is just destroy the humans are the virus. Look what we're doing to the planet. So it's not a very hopeful perspective, but I had a long conversation with him. This, this summer, went home. I, I got him the price of tomorrow and he said he is gonna read it. So hopefully he's reading it. I'm gonna catch up with him.
[00:56:38] But we had a big talk cuz he's super into Tolkin and Lord of the Rings and his perspective was like he started to go down towards the path of I am a part of this planet. The people using the resources owe me something. Not just me, but everybody. I'm part of this country. The trees, the oil, everything.
[00:56:57] The resources are part of this country. Why should these capitalist people be able to just take it and not give me back anything? So I should be getting paid just like they're getting paid and he is just frustrated. Right. That's the problem with socializing the money printer. Even when you use the money printer to subsidize people and companies, it does cause a disruption in the the way that you think about things because the money just breaks.
[00:57:23] And it's true. Like I kind of relate with some of the things he was saying, like, philosophically I could get myself there to the point where I think, yeah, I am a part of this planet. Like why does this person get to just use this cheat code in the, in the game and have everything when I'm sitting here, like having nothing and having to struggle.
[00:57:44] The problem with money and the wealth gap that's created by Fiat money and too much debt and putting everybody into debt, slavery, and bailing out corporations and banks. It goes all the way down to. Psychology of value and the psychology of socialism versus capitalism, democracy, communism, all of these things, they're like deep topics.
[00:58:08] And we had a conversation about this and I got him to the point I think, where he realized that he, he wasn't thinking deeply enough because there always has to be somebody enforcing those rules. And when you give people. The power to enforce redistribution of wealth. Just like when you give people the power to print money, to give out to the citizens, it's like the ring of power.
[00:58:32] It always corrupts. It's too strong of a power for humans to deal with and always ends up through history in corruption, and it always ends up causing more wealth disparity and creating a powerful elite class who steal and become consumed with greed. And maybe they think they're doing it for the right reasons, but you're always end up having violence by trying to enforce a system like that of fairness and equality at the power of a military or police force.
[00:59:02] In the end. In prison, you end up like endorsing. So he, um, shortly after sent this, uh, this message that he, he was reading ton's biography and Tolkin actually was right wing. And so in this book it says Tolkin. This is what he said for it is those who are unsure of their status in the world, who feel they have to prove themselves and if necessary put down other men to do so.
[00:59:27] Who are the truly ruthless Tolkin was in modern jargon right wing in that he honored his monarch and his country and did not believe in the rule of the people, but he opposed democracy simply because he believed that in the end his fellow men would not benefit from it. He once wrote, I am not a democrat if only because humility and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, but universal greatness and pride till some or gets ahold of the ring of power
[01:00:01] And then we get and are getting slavery. As to the virtues of an old-fashioned feudal society. This is what he once said about respect for one's superiors. Touching your cap to the squire may be damn bad for the squire, but it's damn good for you. So I don't know what inspired me to wanna read that and tell you that story, but that's probably a lot of Lord of the Ring fans, you going, we got the new, the new, uh, series out and it's such a good analogy of the money printer and just political power in general being that, that that corrupting force of the, the irresistible corrupting force of power, the ring, if we had Bitcoin in ton's time and decentralize unc censor.
[01:00:45] you know, government resistant money that allowed people to have privacy and be able to protest the unfairness of the money system in a way that was productive for themselves and have sovereignty over their money. Maybe, maybe Tolkin would've been a Bitcoin. I don't know. It kind of sounds like he, he was a little bit more of a, a, a bit into, I don't know what, what that philosophy is.
[01:01:10] Not communism, but , he was definitely didn't, didn't seem to like the corrupting force of democracy. . Yeah.
[01:01:17] Kent Halliburton: That's super wild. I'm glad you did read that. You know, the question that was coming to my mind as you were, is, my gosh, is the ring of power actually, and analogy for the money printer. Did JR actually see that and that's what it was representing in his books.
[01:01:32] It makes
[01:01:32] Brad Mills: perfect sense, eh, it
[01:01:34] Kent Halliburton: does. I mean, there is no more power that is a more corrupting force for humanity than the money printer, you know? What's that expression? Absolute power corrupts absolutely. You look at our current power dynamic in society, there is nothing that supersedes from a power standpoint the money printer itself.
[01:01:54] So if the money printer is absolute power, then we could actually change that statement to say the money printer corrupts Absolutely and it would be exactly the same thing. I think that that's actually what Bitcoiners have woken up to and why we have so much hope. And a couple years ago, I think it was Anthony that was uh, talking about Bitcoin as, but actually that's, I think Fis down of people like your brother.
[01:02:26] I think that that can wind up feeling like helpless and lost in life and like, Hey, the system owes me. And to a degree, you know, they're not wrong when they say that. I understand that perspective and like you get there psychologically. Why they get to that point is because all of us fundamentally know that the rules of the game are unfair, and it's hard to accept that.
[01:02:51] And Robert Breedlove talks, uh, quite a bit about how when the rules of the game are fair, everybody just plays the game. . And that's what I see with Bitcoin is it introduces a fair set of rules for the entire game when it comes to money. And I think with the money printer, the rules are not fair. And the people that sit closest get the, from being close to the money printer and we know like deep inside of ourselves that that is, is terribly unfair.
[01:03:22] And then it gives all of us that are sitting a long ways away from the money printer, Hey, if they're doing something unfair, I should be allowed to too. That means I'm gonna go step on my neighbor's toes in order to put a little, a little bit of money in my pocket because who cares? They're doing that to me, right?
[01:03:37] So it spreads this moral corruption throughout society. And it's all because the rules of the game are unfair. I mean, you can see it with children. I've got a four yearold and if you start changing the rules of the game, even with a four year, they get pretty pissed pretty quick. I think it's in to humans like, hey, we need fair set of rules.
[01:03:56] And the beauty Bitcoin is the through open source code that uses electricity and produces Bitcoin in a decentralized uncensorable fashion. And so we've got completely fair rules of Bitcoin and as humanity up to, I see that it almost seems inevitable that people are gonna go that direction cause people just get off and current set of rules.
[01:04:21] And I think you can actually see that in the marketplace right now with what's going on with bond markets, right? People are starting to lose faith and trust in the bond markets. And my current working thesis on the next wave of adoption is personally based on sovereign debt defaults, right? Where people say, Hey, this risk free asset.
[01:04:41] Is not really risk free. What is the most risk free asset out there? Well, the most risk free asset that I can see from my vantage point is a form of money that is not controlled by the system. And there's really only about three choices if you wanna form of money that is outside the system. Right. And that's Bitcoin, gold and silver.
[01:05:01] Right. So seems pretty obvious to me that if the bond markets continue to blow up, like they have been the last couple months, that people are just gonna naturally turn to outside forms of money and ultimately that's gonna lead Bitcoin. Bitcoin, right. But yeah, it's super fascinating to watch it all unfold Bitcoin, Bitcoin community while it
[01:05:22] Brad Mills: does.
[01:05:23] Yeah, man. Well, listen, we've been going for a while. I, I think it was a great conversation. I think, um, maybe I'd like to finish off with, you've talked about it already, but where do you recommend that anybody listening that is progressive and is maybe. Trying to understand that perspective a little bit more.
[01:05:41] What, what resources do you recommend for folks like that to grip the benefits of Bitcoin? Like what's a good podcast to subscribe to, or, you've mentioned Price of Tomorrow a couple times already. That's a good resource, but podcasts, people to subscribe to. And then also how can people, uh, find you on, uh, online
[01:06:02] Kent Halliburton: when it comes to progressive resources?
[01:06:05] I think that they're still being developed right now, but my personal favorite at the moment is a podcast called The Progressive Bitcoin. It's been going for about a year, I believe about 40 or 50 episodes. But he brings on people with progressive mindset that have also adopted Bitcoin and sort
[01:06:28] Bitcoin actually listen to that and realize how far I've come in my journey to see people's thoughts that have just recently adopted Bitcoin. And I, you know, I can remember being there with the way I saw it and, and can, you know, have some retrospective on my background. But as far as resources, definitely recommend that.
[01:06:48] And then for SA Mining, I'm personally, you know, you can go out there and find at sa Mining on Twitter. Sa mining.com is our website. And then me personally, I'm at K Halliburton on Twitter as well. All right.
[01:07:02] Brad Mills: And uh, for those that aren't watching, you got a Hawaiian shirt on there, are you on vacation or what's the story there?
[01:07:08] Just like Hawaiian shirts? No, no. It's uh,
[01:07:11] Kent Halliburton: it's kind of a, an internal cultural thing. So Sas mining's a remote only team, and we sort of decided to have something fun culturally that Fridays would be Hawaiian shirt day. So, okay. If you talk to me on a Friday, you see a Hawaiian shirt the rest of the week.
[01:07:25] Brad Mills: You don't. Oh, cool. I thought, I thought you were surfing or something and you were taking a break to do this. I do surf
[01:07:30] Kent Halliburton: and I do anytime I can, but, uh, but no, did not surf today.
[01:07:34] Brad Mills: Well, we'll, uh, surf the, uh, the volatility in the markets together over the next couple years. , hopefully it doesn't take that long, but it might gonna be some big waves out there.
[01:07:44] There already has been. Well, thanks a lot for coming on the show, Kent, and uh, really do hope you guys succeed with the company. Think you're doing something that's great. Anybody that's working in this industry to try to accelerate the adoption of clean renewable energy, using Bitcoin as a subsidy and promoting those ideas of using clean, renewable energy and.
[01:08:05] Solar energy and of your experience, there's super valuable to have people like that coming into the space and take an action. So hopefully maybe you might also inspire somebody that's listening to want to get active and get involved in the bitcoin mining industry that has experience in other progressive sort of, uh, industries like, like solar power and stuff.
[01:08:23] So yeah, for sure reach out to Kent at K Halliburton you said on Twitter, at K Halliburton? Yeah, on Twitter and SaaS mining. On Twitter is s a z mining. Yep. S a c. Perfect. Yep. All one word. All right. Well thanks. Thanks for coming on the show, Kent. Talk to you soon. Yeah, thanks
[01:08:40] Kent Halliburton: so much, Brad. It's been
[01:08:41] Brad Mills: a true pleasure.