← Coin Stories with Natalie Brunell
Coin Stories with Natalie Brunell
Beau & Christine Turner: From Real Estate to Bitcoin Mining for Passive Income with Abundant Mines
00:30:00
Loading summary
Transcript66 lines
- [00:00]
A
More than half of our clients have never set up their own wallet before.
- [00:03]
B
Really? Wait, people mining bitcoin with you guys don't transact in or hold bitcoin.
- [00:08]
A
I was as shocked as you are right now. Like, we are the first step for a lot of people getting into the space.
- [00:20]
B
Hey everyone. Welcome back to the show. Joining me this week are Beau and Christine Turner. They are the co founders of Abundant Minds. You've probably seen the banners pop up. Let's just pop one up right here. If you're watching this here, you guys are a mining company and I want to learn if I can be mining bitcoin. Thanks to you guys. So thanks for joining me here.
- [00:40]
A
Thanks for having us, Natalie.
- [00:41]
C
Thank you for having us.
- [00:43]
B
Okay, first, tell me your backstory a little bit because you guys have such an interesting story of how you came into bitcoin and creating and building this company. So, Beau, I'll, I'll kick it off with you.
- [00:53]
A
Sure. Well, I first found Bitcoin in 2015 and I wish I could say that I got it at that point and really went all in. But it was several years later, actually, when Christine was in my life that she forwarded me an email newsletter that made me relook at the space. So I own some. I followed it, but really wasn't thinking that I could do anything full time in bitcoin until she brought it back into our world. And at the time, we were full time real estate investors. And I, I saw that amid the 2020 investment era, a lot of things were moving and shaking and really wanted more bitcoin in our stack, but couldn't figure out how I could square the circle of getting something like real estate, where we could get cash flow, where we could get all the tax benefits that we were looking for in that industry until mining came along. And so we were originally just trying to be mining customers, much like the people that we serve in our company today. And unfortunately, a couple weeks after Christine and I got engaged, we started working with a mining provider. We sent about half a million dollars worth of equipment to that provider and it was a total loss. And so in that period, right after getting engaged, I had a kind of a crisis of. Of self worth, wondering if I could provide for my wife. And so we decided to go out on our own. Kept selling off parts of our real estate portfolio to build our own site in Oregon and just make sure that the experience that we wanted to have, we could have for ourselves. And after we got far along in the development, we actually decided to take outside clients and make sure that other people that wanted to do what we do could do it with the best care and the best service and with people who had been through that kind of painful experience and knew what it was like so that they never had to experience that.
- [02:45]
B
Coinstories is proudly brought to you by Gemini. Start your bitcoin savings account today. Plus investing in bitcoin has never been easier than with Gemini's orange bitcoin credit card. Earn up to 4% back in bitcoin on everyday purchases like gas, dining, groceries and more with no annual fee, no foreign transaction fees and no exchange fees on your rewards. Plus sign up today and get a $200 bitcoin bonus when you spend 3,000 in your first 90 days. Apply now@gemini.com Natalie it's if you want to stay on top of Bitcoin without getting lost in all the noise, check out the Weekly CIO Memo from Bitwise Asset Management CIO Matt Hogan puts together a quick five minute memo that breaks the biggest stories in digital assets each week. Bitwise has been around since 2017 and manages more than $10 billion across 30 plus strategies. The weekly CIO Memo is bold, sharp and totally free. Just go to bitwiseinvestments.com cio memo and always of course, carefully consider the extreme risks of associated with crypto. Coinstories is also brought to you by Leden. Need cash but don't want to sell your Bitcoin? Leden is the global leader in Bitcoin backed loans, issuing over $9 billion in loans since 2018 and they were the first to offer proof of reserves. With Leden, you get custody loans, no monthly payments and more. Visit Leden IO Natalie and get a quarter percentage point off your first loan. Make sure to get your copy of my new Bitcoin 101 book Bitcoin is for Everyone. The book explains why money is broken and how Bitcoin can help you build lasting wealth and freedom. It makes the perfect gift for those new to Bitcoin. Just visit the link in my show notes. Wow. Well I was having a heart to heart with you Christine. You know, offline off this podcast because I was recently scammed financially just doing work on my home of all things and I know how hard it is because you really felt taken advantage of. Can you share a little bit more about what happened?
- [04:36]
C
Yeah, I think.
- [04:39]
Out of all all that happened, you know, watching your husband, you know, I'll never forget the moment where he approached me to let me know that we weren't getting any of our money back and, you know, tears in his eyes. And as a, at that point, you know, fiance or wife, seeing your husband in such a vulnerable moment where they felt, felt violated, taken advantage of, and you look, you know, they, in their eyes, they think you look at them as the provider.
- [05:10]
B
Yeah.
- [05:11]
C
And then in his heart, I could tell that he felt like he had failed me and that he was ashamed. And I, in that moment, made it my mission to support him in any possible way to win it. It was like, however I needed to show up, whatever I needed to do for him, I was all in because I never wanted him to feel like that again. And I also wanted to turn that pain because it was such a painful moment in our life because we were planning a wedding that we had to postpone because we were doing all these things.
- [05:53]
That I didn't want anyone to go through it either. So then when we started to come together on creating the company, everything we thought about service wise was how can we make sure that this, this particular thing doesn't happen to the person that they don't not get a call back for eight months? You know, because we called, we emailed, we, you know, we tried to get in touch with this company.
- [06:19]
B
Yep.
- [06:20]
C
And there was just nothing. They ghosted us to the point where I asked him, I was like, just show up at the door. I need you to just drive. I just fly across country and show up at the door and get, get something done, like, get answers. And it was just infuriating, honestly. And then to start researching it and see how many people were scammed in the industry. It was so rampant that I thought, like, how does this even exist? How can people even conduct business like this ethically with their own morals? How do they sleep at night knowing that they're just out to take advantage of people? And, you know, we just started to create, like you said, a site for ourselves so that we could just mine confidently and know, like, hey, it's taken care of and it's run properly. And then people started wanting to mine with us and also put their machines there. And so we started off with one site, and now it's seven sites in the works. Five work, five online, and two more in the works across Oregon. And it's grown into such a beautiful thing from such a hard moment. Yeah.
- [07:30]
B
It's incredible to see what you've built and I relate to a lot of that because there is such a vulnerability you feel when you lose money, whether it's through a scam. I saw my dad go through it when he lost everything in the great financial crisis, including his job and we had to file for bankruptcy. That feeling again, like you're supposed to be the provider. Like you all of a sudden can't be. You aren't. You failed in some way. So I know how, how much that can impact you. But we can all build out of a terrible situation. We can make something good of it. That's what you guys are doing. With Abundant Minds, can you break down just a little bit more what your company really is and how people are able to mine with you?
- [08:09]
A
So we actually build the data centers, so we go out and find the energy source. We do all of the design, the construction and then set up a facility where people can mine safely. Someone wants to work with us, they would actually go through our sales process, purchase equipment through us so that we know that it's actually real and not some, you know, fake listing on ebay that's mislabeled. And they would actually have the machine set up in our facility where it's totally managed in an all inclusive service. We're taking care of, cleaning, of spare parts, of any sort of maintenance that happens. Obviously making sure that's online, that there's energy that's coming to the site and basically doing everything for it to be a passive, hands off experience for somebody who wants to get into mining. And I think, you know, the very foundational layer of what we do for people is give them a vehicle to make money in the mining space. But what I love about it, specifically for people who are onboarding for the first time, because more than half of our clients have never set up their own wallet before is really wait, people.
- [09:11]
B
Mining bitcoin with you guys don't transact in or hold bitcoin.
- [09:17]
A
I was as shocked as you are right now. Like we are the first step for a lot of people getting into the space.
- [09:24]
C
I think that's part of what we love, right? We love that we're actually like orange pilling people some for the first time and taking them through such a deep level of education because we provide a client side success lead that holds their hand through teaching them what bitcoin is to a wallet, to a pool and all of this, you know, information and education. I think that's really what we love about the company is we made it so educational based because people who want to get into the space, some don't know anything about it and they need that hand holding. You know, people are like, oh, we don't need mining with a white glove. Service. Well, the majority of our clients actually do. They actually need someone to say, like, this is what Bitcoin is. This is how you set up a wallet. This is what your mining machine does. This is what a pool is. And take them through nuts and bolts of bitcoin before they even start hashing.
- [10:23]
B
Yeah, so you brought up pool. Can we talk about that a little bit? So do you point to a specific pool? And can you maybe explain that for people that don't understand? Because for people who are Bitcoiners, there's definitely conversations and debates about pool mining, pool centralization. Right. Concerns around that, because there aren't that many pools. Can you talk a little bit about that?
- [10:43]
A
So we let people choose their own pool. And just for simplification, a pool is just a group of miners that are putting their work toward the network to try and mine Bitcoin. And in essence, pool centralization is this. This understanding that most pools are actually just pointing to a few places that control most of the network. So anybody that mines with us, they can choose whatever they want. There's as many under the sun as. As you could possibly imagine. We have our own datum node on Ocean, which is a way that we like to contribute to pool decentralization so people can make their own templates. And we are actually helping to take a little bit away from that central point of failure that I think a lot of people have identified. There's only a few ways that Bitcoin can possibly fail at this point, and one of the most concerning is just the centralization in the mining industry, both from the pool standpoint and from the production of hardware.
- [11:38]
B
But it doesn't sound like you're that concerned that it's a legitimate threat to Bitcoin and you think that it's something that could be solved through decentralizing mining.
- [11:48]
A
I think, in a sense, it's already been solved and it just needs to be more widely adopted.
- [11:53]
B
Interesting. You brought up something interesting about the tax advantages, because I have friends who do. Due to fiat, they've decided to invest in real estate. Right. Because you have a ton of tax advantages. When you do so, your money is making money for you. You get passive income, and then on top of that, you get to write off everything. What I found ironic about it is their properties would be going up in value, but basically you can. They're also depreciating at the same time in terms of your tax liability. So can you talk a little bit about that? Because maybe people will increasingly look at Bitcoin for Those types of advantages.
- [12:27]
A
Yeah, of course. Well, if you're already looking at Bitcoin, I think that mining is just a kind of advanced strategy within Bitcoin. If you've got this lens of I need my investment to do more than just appreciate. And there's three main components of an investment that I think investors usually look for. There's appreciation, which is that it's going up in value. There's cash flow, if you can get it some way to actually have a consistent income stream, and then depreciation, which is your way of actually lowering your tax liability. So mining satisfies that because we've got physical equipment which is depreciating. So you can actually write that off against ordinary income. You've also got cash flow because you're producing bitcoin natively. And then that bitcoin that you hold onto is an appreciating asset. So you get to check all of those boxes that people are usually looking for when you're looking for an investment.
- [13:16]
B
I get so many people who are real estate bugs who just are unsure about Bitcoin because they don't want to lose on the tax advantages and just, I mean, real estate has been a powerful vehicle for generating wealth. If I were to just simply ask you, why is bitcoin better than real estate? What would you say?
- [13:34]
A
I would say real estate is not truly finite and it's going to fall to its utility value over time. And unless you're in the very best markets in the world, I think that it's going to be a rude awakening for people who are putting all of their stock in real estate. And that was really what changed for me in 2020 was realizing, you know, even if I'm a very responsible allocator with my real estate portfolio, I am tied to everybody else that carries a huge amount of leverage on their properties. It doesn't matter if, if I've got zero debt on my properties. I am tied to the entire real estate market, which is largely fueled by the expansion of credit. And that was very concerning to me. Maybe not in the very short term, but I'm trying to think on a multi decade time horizon what is actually going to live for the entirety of our investing lifespan. And so to me, bitcoin was just the obvious choice. It's totally uncorrelated. It's outside of the system. Even though people think that there's a lot of leverage that drives it, it's just not the case.
- [14:36]
B
Want to accept Bitcoin and stablecoin payments. Speed makes it simple customers can pay via QR code in app online or pose speed helped Steak n Shake accept Bitcoin nationwide. Here's what Dan Edwards COO says and.
- [14:50]
A
When customers choose to pay in bitcoin instead of credit cards, we are saving about 50% in our processing fees.
- [14:57]
B
This led to more support from Bitcoin users and a 10% revenue boost. Getting started is easy. Sign up@trispeed.com or integrate the API in hours. Start accepting Bitcoin today. Download Speed at speed app coinstories or the QR code on the screen and use code COINSTORIES10 for fun 5000 free SATs Bitkey is a Bitcoin hardware wallet with multi 6 security, inheritance and a recovery system designed for real life. No complex setup and no seed phrases, just true self custody without the stress. It was named one of Time's best inventions in 2024. Use code STORIES for 20% off at BitKey World. Up next, the Bitcoin way. There's only one way to protect your Bitcoin from government, politicians and third party risk and that is 100% self custody. My friends at the Bitcoin Way will train you how to do this right way the first time. No compromises. Go to the Bitcoin way.com Natalie to speak with the experts about making sure your Bitcoin is secure and private. And finally, Coin Stories is brought to you by Genius Group, a bitcoin treasury company listed on the NYSE American undertaker GNS Genius is building a 10,000 bitcoin treasury and just launched the Genius Academy featuring free courses from safety, namse, myself and more. Start learning today at Genius Academy. AI Genius Group. Genius isn't measured in iq, it's measured in bitcoin. Christine, I'd love your take on this because every woman in my life, they don't necessarily want bitcoin. They want a house. They want the house.
- [16:28]
C
That's so true. I love that. Full, full disclosure. We rent and we have. We were looking for a house for probably five years and every time we found one that we thought might be the one.
- [16:43]
It was like, I don't, I don't want to sell my bitcoin. I don't, I'd rather rent. Right? And, and I think when we were in the real estate industry it was such a headache. Even though we had a property management company and we owned like some commercial buildings, some residential buildings. And I think.
- [17:05]
At the end if we really sat down and did the books about how much we made when we were, you know, real estate entrepreneurs, it would be minuscule because.
- [17:19]
We had to replace an entire H vac system on a house. You know, we had, we had squatters at one point that we couldn't get out of the house. We didn't get paid rent for a year and we couldn't get them out of the house. I mean there's just so many instances in real estate where you're taking a risk and you have people say like bitcoin is, is risky for us. That's not generally our belief system. But I think, you know, with real estate there are so many.
- [17:46]
High risk possibilities in what you're doing rather than just holding on to something that if you truly understand the industry is, is decreasing in value regardless of what the price, sales price say it would be. And it's just, I don't know, I don't look at it. I like not even interested in being part of the real estate industry anymore. It's, it's. We like to joke that we sell condos, right? So we have our data centers and in, within the data center you get your little condo that you own with your little machine that makes your passive income and you know, and you don't.
- [18:23]
B
Have to worry about the air conditioning going out or the property taxes, right? All these things that make bitcoin superior to real estate. That's fascinating. I have so many friends that really they're investing in real estate. It's like a fortune time job for them. And I'm trying to veer them more towards bitcoin, but it seems like this is an interesting way to do it with the bitcoin mining. So if someone wanted to start, is it, do they need a minimum amount of ASICs to participate? Like do they, how does it actually work?
- [18:48]
A
People working with us can get as little as one machine and you get everything that Christine mentioned, all of the education, you get to come to site visits and pretty much get everything that's, that's baked into that. So.
- [18:59]
B
And on average, how much is someone earning?
- [19:02]
A
Well, obviously depends on the price of bitcoin, but you can usually assume somewhere between 350 and 500 bucks a month in terms of top line bitcoin revenue. In dollar terms.
- [19:13]
B
Have you guys ever had a miner that's like a solo miner win a block?
- [19:19]
A
We actually have, since we're on datum, we can tell who is winning blocks. So we've had four machines in our facility win blocks in the last, I think three weeks. Four weeks, two weeks, two weeks we've had four machines actually find blocks that influenced one of our clients to start solo mining, but still, she is the only one.
- [19:39]
B
Oh my gosh. Really? Okay, so talk to me a little bit about how the mining industry is evolving, because a lot of the miners are now pivoting to AI, right, and selling their energy to AI. And this is going to be a huge ongoing issue in terms of just the need for infrastructure, the need for electricity. Can you speak to that?
- [19:57]
A
I think the mining industry and AI are going to keep interacting in the way that you see there's tons of merger and acquisition activity. There's so many contracts now of larger data center companies looking at miners for their capacity. But you're still going to have miners going to sources of energy that AI companies just frankly can't use. And so if anything, I see it as like a pressure release valve that might actually give miners a better opportunity that choose to stay pure. Play miners. Of course, it's nice to have the optionality. If you're finding sites and you're already looking at ways that you can get these energy resources to have some other way to potentially monetize it. And of course, the reason that many of these companies are doing it is because it's extremely lucrative. I mean, you can build and utilize the energy of a mining site for like quarter million to half a million a megawatt, and easily get into the multiple millions of dollars per megawatt for even undeveloped energy. So there's a very real economic reason why mining companies are looking at AI as another way to monetize their resources. But again, if you're wanting to be a bitcoin miner, I think that's an opportunity for you as well, because it means that everybody's looking over here and you can stay focused right here. Don't get shiny object syndrome and potentially have far better economics because everybody's taking their hash rate offline and pivoting to GPUs.
- [21:19]
B
Is it just me or has AI kind of helped soften the narrative of bitcoin uses too much energy? Because now AI uses too much energy, but everyone's okay with their chatgpt.
- [21:29]
C
I would agree. I, I think when we first got into the industry, you know, bitcoin wasn't as out there, right people, it wasn't as popular. It's grown in status over, over the years. And when, when they would hear that we're were bitcoin miners, it was immediately like, you're wasting energy, you're wasting water. Because our sites are hydropower. And you just start to understand how little people are educated and how Much they just don't know. They don't understand. Right. And the woman who was like attacking us on socials for wasting water, I said, we don't use water. Actually, the power in the water powers the electricity that we use. Right. And so it was just kind of such a deep misunderstanding which the energy industry is even coming from a place of me, myself, not really understanding the energy industry. Before I got into this and really educating myself on such a deep level, it was eye opening to see how it all works, how the industry works in general and how much misinformation is out there and miseducation of, you know, wasting energy. And, you know, if, you know, like Von Mayer's law, you cannot create nor destroy energy, you can only transform it. Right. So there's energy that is being wasted, you know, that. That nobody's even using.
- [23:01]
B
Yeah.
- [23:02]
C
And so, you know, it's. I think it's.
- [23:07]
Really. It can be a difficult industry to understand. So if you're not nerdy or into it, you just, you know, don't. Don't want to get. Go down the rabbit hole. But once you understand what actually is happening with our energy system and where all that wasted energy going to find a company that it's actually. It's almost like bitcoin mining is cutting edge. Right. Because they can go into places where other.
- [23:33]
B
Yeah.
- [23:33]
C
People can't and use that stranded energy, which is not wasting it, it's actually preventing it from being wasted and then monetize it. And so going into those intricate sites or places where nothing else can really be. Like some of our sites are in the middle of a desert. Why? Because nothing else can really thrive there. But there's energy there that's stranded. And then we take that and monetize it. And it's. It's the only industry that I know of that can do that. Yeah.
- [24:03]
B
When I hear the critics, I think of that meme where it's that guy that says, I don't understand bitcoin, but you're wrong about it. Right. Well, speaking of sites, where do you guys mine? Is it only domestically? Do you see opportunities internationally as well? And it sounds like it's a lot of renewable sources.
- [24:19]
A
We are 100% based in Oregon right now, focusing on the Pacific Northwest, partially because energy up there is great. It's very high renewables mix. And we've also got the benefit of a really wonderful, stable, cool climate. And I think, you know, there's. There's so many things that people get wrong about the mining industry. But one of them is over optimizing just for how cheap your energy is. There's so much that goes. I mean, these are sensitive computers. And so the better environment you can put these things in from climate, from an air cleanliness perspective, the longer they're going to last, the longer your investment lasts, the more it's likely to return over time. And then you also have these machines working not nearly as hard to keep themselves cool. And so you actually save quite a bit of energy. So it's this very holistic. I mean, I look at it like an optimization problem. And I just think that we found a really special place. And in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, we've got all of these factors coming together that make it a really great place to mine.
- [25:17]
C
Another reason that we, we centralize our operations in the Pacific Northwest is because most of our team is from there and we're also located there. And I. One of the things that I love about what our company does and is passion of mine that I bring to the company is that each one of our sites has a community impact. So one of my goals is to make sure that every single site we have has something that gives back to our local community. Love that. And because they're right in our, in our backyard, it means even more to us. Right that it gets. It's our communities, it's the people around us. And so we have a greenhouse in Eugene that takes the wasted heat from the miners and grows food and grows fresh fruits and vegetables and produce, and we give that to the local food banks for those incredible need. And then we have apprenticeship programs where we work with local high schools that teach them tech jobs and teach them financial literacy and what bitcoin is, and then gives them a skill set or trains them in a skill set that will allow them to possibly do something different than their small town of a thousand people that maybe the food service industry is, is what their life course looks like. And all of a sudden we come in with this new industry into their town and instead of people hating us, which is very.
- [26:38]
You know, those, those bad actors in the industry are out there and those stories about their sites and how their communities don't like them being there, we've really flipped the narrative in Oregon where they welcome us and we're part of the community and we're making sure that they're taken care of. We're making sure they're educated, making sure they know what we do, and then even training them in like soldering or how to fix the asics or, you know, Just skill sets that, that, that aren't really known and they don't know how to do and they don't really know how to get out of the community that they're in, which is like their parents have been there, their parents, parents, and they don't really see this avenue for change in their life. And then all of a sudden we kind of give them hope. And we have people that work for us now that started out by, you know, in the food service industry, just like, you know, working at the grocery store. And now they're part of our site ops team and they love it and they're thriving and it's just like taking a chance on people and, and allowing them like this new opportunity for hope.
- [27:43]
B
Yeah. And learning a new technology to revitalize the community. That's great. Before we wrap up, I did want to ask about another potential bottleneck which is at the hardware level and the chips. Do you guys have any takes that you want to share? Because we're always hearing about chips today and Nvidia and like where things are going and is China going to make better chips than ours? And a lot of this, the hardware's made in China. Right. So what can you share?
- [28:05]
A
I think that we're starting to see a diversification of that supply chain, at least as of where we sit right now. There's not any sort of fear of shortage of the chips that we use for mining. That said, it's just like pool centralization. The hardware centralization has been something on people's minds. I think companies like Auradyne and Block, who are based in the US and building their own supply chains over here are a huge offset to that kind of central point of failure. But at least as of the current moment, I think that we're in a really good place. And funny enough, the bitcoin mining chip supply chain is such a tiny fraction of the GPU supply chain that.
- [28:46]
Nobody really misses the fab space that we take up. And so I don't see it as a huge issue. We'll see what plays out over the next 12 months though.
- [28:54]
B
Well, it's been so great having you. Any final takeaways? Anything else that you wanted to share that you haven't yet?
- [29:01]
A
I'll just say there's no chance that we could cover all of the mistakes people would make in mining on a 30 minute show. So we actually put together for people that never get a chance to work with us or even if they do, a list of due diligence questions for people who are looking at mining. So anybody that messages on any of our social platforms just say 36 questions. And it's 36 questions you should at least have a reasonable answer to before you get into mining with anybody.
- [29:27]
B
Well, I'll Can I link it? Can I link it in the show Notes for people?
- [29:30]
A
Absolutely.
- [29:30]
B
Great. Well, I hope everyone checks out. Abundant Minds. Thank you guys for your support of the show as well. And thanks for joining me in person.
- [29:36]
A
Thanks, Natalie.
- [29:37]
B
Thank you so much for checking out this episode of Coin Stories. Make sure you're subscribed to the show so you don't miss any new episodes. And if you can turn on those notifications and leave us a positive review, they really help the show grow organically with new listeners. We have a free weekly newsletter. You can sign up@thenewsblock.substack.com this show is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing should constitute as a physical.