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- [00:00]
Danny
Foreign.
- [00:03]
Rod
Source, proprietary, highly regulated moats are not the way Bitcoin succeeds long term for 8 billion people. Let's continue to bring it back to make this attainable, to run a full node and the importance of that to custody and vote Bitcoin and to use Bitcoin the way you want to use it. I do think there's a convergence happening between Bitcoin, AI Energy and I want to always make sure there's a conversation happening within open source Freedom Tech. The stuff that we're going to build with having Bitcoin as the, as the monetary network in the apps at the applications and the tooling that we create is going to be fundamentally so freaking amazing.
- [00:46]
Danny
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- [03:10]
Rod
Welcome, Danny. This pleasure is all mine, man. Thank you so much.
- [03:15]
Danny
How are things in Nashville? You've. You've been busy. How are things in Nashville and in Austin?
- [03:20]
Rod
Yeah, both places are great. I mean, the mayor down in Austin, Parker Lewis, is crushing it with Zap, right? And he's doing well. Austin's commute, been there. The density of developers, engineers and entrepreneurs is absolutely insane, especially in the bitcoin space. Like, I don't want to say they got Nashville on any stretch of the imagination, but in that particular area right now, going there and just being around that high quality of folks, especially the diversity of different industries, from obviously AI but into robotics to bitcoin, to a number of different areas, they got, they got something special in that regard.
- [04:03]
Danny
I can, obviously, for anyone listening, you took over the commons. It's now bitcoin park. Austin park is obviously working on Zap right now. He's. He's podcasting. He's actually crushing. That podcast is really good.
- [04:14]
Rod
Killing it. Give it a shout out to him on his podcast.
- [04:17]
Danny
But I just, I can never figure out who won in that deal, whether whether Nashville won or Austin won.
- [04:23]
Rod
I think he did a very good chess move, and my 4D chess move is going to make him. I'm going to get it to the point where he has to actually run for mayor of Austin. I'm going to, I'm going to help build up the bitcoin community with his help, with Will Cole's help. And everybody's help, Ben, Carmen, everybody. I mean, we got a lit devs on Monday, Tuesdays with Paul Miller and Sahil. The design club meetup. We got the awesome bitcoin club meetup the Wednesday, and then bit devs on Thursday. We're going to continue to support that community to the point where I'm like, all right, Parker, it's time to run for mayor. He's like, what do you mean? Like, no, no, it's like actual time to run for mayor and you're doing it.
- [05:05]
Danny
And he'll be like, damn it, I'm bullish on. On the bitcoin as becoming mayor. We need you as mayor of Nashville, Parker as mayor of Austin, Pete as mayor of Bedford.
- [05:14]
Rod
That.
- [05:14]
Danny
That's how we change the world.
- [05:16]
Rod
Pete, I think, is going to do it. I think he's going to actually run.
- [05:19]
Danny
I see. I thought for a long time he was. So you've not been on the show as like a solo show before, but you had sort of a cameo in that last episode we did on the old what bitcoin did, and Pete was talking there like he was really going to run. And for a long time I thought he was, but I've spoken to him recently. I had him on the show and obviously speak to him privately pretty regularly. And I think he's feeling pretty bearish on all. Like, he's trying to make so much change and just coming up against obstacle after obstacle. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if. If that is behind him now, the idea of actually running for mayor.
- [05:49]
Rod
Yeah, I, I don't think it's. Well, for me, speaking me personally, I don't think it's ever going to be in the cards for me, but I do think to the point of bitcoiners getting to the point where they are so fed up. I think like a Pete or a Parker or somebody. Let's just say, you know what? Let me see if I can just throw my hat in the ring and be the change I want to see.
- [06:09]
Danny
Yeah, well, he's kind of. I guess Pete's doing that in a different way. He's just not doing it in, in the. The traditional, like, politician route. He's instead just trying to make change with hiring his private security guard, having his. His little army in Bedford and, And I like, I think he's doing some cool stuff, but honestly, the UK's a mess. It's. It's. It was pretty strange hearing him talk, like, because I, I obviously I'm from there, don't live there and Have a kind of detached relationship with it. But he's weird. From the uk. Yeah.
- [06:37]
Rod
Yeah.
- [06:38]
Danny
You just spent the summer there, right?
- [06:39]
Rod
I did, yeah. I'll give. And I like to provide the positives first before I ever throw any shade. I will say the uk, they got at least in Nashville in three ways. One, the. The tube is just the tap to pay on. The tube is so easy and you can get around. It's really spread out, but at least you can get around to their parks. For the kids are just phenomenal. I mean my kids were wearing out those parks like day in, day out. And they're so different too. I mean like water parks to like, what do you call them? The. The gliders and all. All this stuff. It was the kids. We had a great time. And then three is just like the kids museums and just the kids activities around that. They were just phenomenal. But it just, you know, people just kind of zombie ing around. I don't know. There's just. It was a. It was a weird vibe.
- [07:33]
Danny
We've definitely got you on culture too though. Like the, an old building in Nashville is like 17 years old or something.
- [07:39]
Rod
Come on, come on.
- [07:41]
Danny
We've got you on the culture side.
- [07:43]
Rod
Yeah. For a number of reasons. But. No, and, but, but I'll say this. Nashville is the best place in my opinion. And I'm biased to raise a family. It just. The. The community here is amazing. Our values are fantastic. You know, the schooling is great. We've got great family here personally. And I couldn't think of a better place in the world to raise a family.
- [08:10]
Danny
Yeah, no, I like Nashville. I've said for a long time there was somewhere in the US I was going to move. It probably be Nashville. But like you've also got an amazing bitcoin community and it's something. I'm in Brisbane now and we just don't have it. Like we've got.
- [08:22]
Rod
There's a.
- [08:23]
Danny
Don't get me wrong, there's a great crew of bitcoiners. They. They're like committed good bitcoiners. They have a meet up every month. It's really annoying because it just tends to fall whenever I'm away. So I go to like three a year. But I would love to have a more dedicated bitcoin space in Brisbane. You've obviously built that Nashville. Like, what are the challenges of building that?
- [08:43]
Rod
Yeah. So I, I'll. I'll say this. It wasn't like something Matt and I set out and like, well, we. We're going to build a Physical space. I mean, it. It kind of just hap. Happened to. To. To pan out the way it did. But to your point, it started with a meetup. We were just getting together. And for the audience here, who, if you have not been to a bitcoin meetup, I would just Google or chat gp whatever it is, just local bitcoin meet. And just make sure it's bitcoin and not like crypto or altcoin or treasury company or whatever it is now these days that people talk about. Um, but I would just make sure it's bitcoin focused and just go attend it. Even if it's like four or five people. You'll be so surprised to like, make that one connection and be like, dang, this is freaking awesome. I'll never forget one quick story. We hosted our first meetup. This was like, I don't know, August of 21, I want to say. And was it 21 or 22, I forget, but. And it was just at a brewery. 1520 people showed up. It was raining. But this one guy, his name is Dr. Fomo, he's like, came up to me afterwards and he's like, dude, I just need to tell you how thankful I am for you to organize this. I'm literally on just bitcoin Twitter, and my wife thinks I'm crazy because all I. He's got miners running in the house. He just talks to his Internet friends about bitcoin, and he's like, I'm the only person in the Nashville metro area that cares about bitcoin. And he's like, thankfully, there's other people like me. And then all of a sudden. And, you know, Covid did help for sure, but I would just say, like, there was just this gravitational force which is bitcoin, and it got people together. And so one of the things I think we did well, similar to Parker, who is a big inspiration, was just being consistent. To your point, the Brisbane made it up. I wonder if it's like the same Thursday of every month and you just happen to be out of town, but having a consistent such that you could potentially rearrange your schedule or plan around it, plan to be there. I would just make a. Make a point. But it's super hard. I mean, unless you got like. So. And we'll talk. Probably talk about this later on, but we have a lot of members that are outside of Nashville and Austin that are like, hey, we should have a bitcoin meet or a bitcoin park in Scottsdale or St. Pete or the Dallas Or Chicago, wherever that may be. I'm like two things. One, capital. And two, you can't really manufacture a bitcoin community. You gotta start at the grassroots level. You gotta start at the meetup. You gotta start, be consistent and more importantly, you gotta enjoy organizing it. I see a lot of folks, rightfully, they get just drained because it's taxing on their family time. It gets taxing from their wallet. They're the ones picking up the bar tab a little bit or maybe, you know, paying a rental fee just to be at the place. So I have a whole list of tips and that's like something we do at the grassroots bitcoin where we organize meetup. It's a meet up of meetup organizers where we exchange best practices such that we can empower these meetup organizers. Because I truly think meetup organizers are on this crazy. They're so crazy important in bitcoin education, adoption, globally. You may not think of it as even if you're an organizer of a 20 person meetup in your local community, but the trust that those individuals have in you that they then extend into their networks is beyond imagination, at least for me. And that's why I take. I know it's a Superman quote, but there's a lot I take a lot of pride in. Yeah, well, is it like with great power comes great responsibility or some. Something along those lines. But at the beginning of my meetups, I always say we take a lot of pride and responsibility in making this the best bitcoin experience. But even Danny, you have such a huge megaphone, right. And especially with all the noise that's out there, it's imperative that we kind of do the work a bit and distill in who are the best players to the best of our ability. Such that we can help educate, you know, you on a global audience and me on a local audience.
- [12:50]
Danny
Yeah, I think it's funny because like, I don't know if you guys were first or. I think Austin was first, right?
- [12:55]
Rod
Austin, yeah.
- [12:55]
Danny
Yeah. So there's. But there's now the park in Austin, park in Nashville, Pub Key, which I absolutely adore. I've been to the space in Denver. That's a really cool spot. The stuff that Tyler and Eric and that crew are doing there is very cool. And there's Presidio in San Francisco. Like there are these hubs popping up all over the US we need to get them more global. I know someone's working on one in London right now, which is going to be pretty interesting. But like when everyone's just talking about treasury companies. And I'm guilty of this. Like, I've done a ton of shows on treasury companies. Like, is it frustrating to you that people are kind of not talking about the grassroots bitcoin adoption enough?
- [13:28]
Rod
It does not bother me, but it gives us an opportunity to help change or combat the narratives that are out there. So again, I'm not really good on Twitter, I'm not really good on a number of things, but I look at this and I say, okay, this just feels, by the way, like 2017, the ICO boom. And it's just like whatever thing is being launched and saying this is the best thing since slice spread. I'm like, whoever was in Bitcoin around 2017, 2018, I don't know, at least for me, it feels like that, that timeframe. But I think this is actually a unique opportunity to help continue to differentiate and expand on the value of bitcoin. Like, so, for example, we're hosting a custody and treasury summit. And I thought it was extremely important to include custody in treasury because whenever you have a Treasury strategy, and my definition of a Treasury strategy is a business that holds bitcoin and then uses bitcoin. And it's. For me, the treasury strategy is wanting to learn ways on how folks are using Bitcoin on their balance sheet. For example, I'll say another story. Matt and I, we decided on day one we would only accept bitcoin and we'll only use Bitcoin. That was the wrong treasury strategy. Bitcoin was at like 45 some K and we were accepting bitcoin, blah, blah, blah. I'm not BSing you, Danny. We like literally the market top, and this is June of 2022, I believe. It just kept on going down and down. By December of 22, if I get my years right, the price of bitcoin was like 15k. I'm like, our bills are fiat denominated. We cannot run a business like this. And so that was a major wake up call. And by the way, that's also helped. I mean, I have the freaking battle scars to prove it. But that's also helped with the durability and making this a sound business or more sound and resilient business versus like, all right, we started a bitcoin business and it went straight up to 100 some thousand dollars. We look like geniuses. But. But that's where when people talk about treasury companies, I mean, I group them into like, okay, there's a financial engineering shell treasury company out there that's a stock, you're buying that stock to hopefully get more bitcoin. More power to you. Best of luck. God bless. It's kind of what I say at, you know, our meetups, especially the new folks. I don't want to, I don't want to push them away or, or anything. I just say, hey, we talk about bitcoin, the capital being the monetary network here, also the bitcoin, the lowercase B. What we don't talk about is altcoins, NFTs, LFTs, crypto shitcoins, shell treasury companies, you know, gold, whatever. That's another meetup. More power to you. But, you know, God bless, but here, because I take a lot of pride and responsibility in making this the best hour that you're going to spend in bitcoin. This is what it's all about. So I'll be honest, it doesn't really bother me. I think it's a really cool opportunity, especially for bitcoin park. Awesome bitcoin educators like yourself, sessions others to really double down to say, okay, here's the differentiation. Like, here's another quick thing. We're going to introduce a simple custody white paper as part of our Custody and Treasury summit. And it's not meant for, I mean it's meant for our attendees, but it's meant for the attendees, customers and their net, their grassroots network. They explain what are all the different ways to custody bitcoin from single sig to multi sig to full custodian to insured custody. The noobs just, they're probably thinking like treasury company, they hold my bitcoin. Why would I. What does custody even, how does that even come into the equation? And so again, I think there's a huge opportunity for all of us to leverage.
- [17:20]
Danny
Yeah, I think it's funny because like I'm a bitcoin treasury company. I'm obviously not doing any of the financialization, but I hold bitcoin for the company. When I invoice people, there's always an option to pay in bitcoin. Surprisingly few people take that option.
- [17:33]
Rod
Interesting.
- [17:34]
Danny
But when you say you ran this with bitcoin, only at first price went down. That was a bad treasury decision. Obviously prices way up from there. Do you still do that or if you change a strategy, do you take some in Fiat?
- [17:47]
Rod
Well, it's not so much take like if we, let's say it was 100% in Bitcoin and by the way, we do zap. Right. Makes it super easy. I'm not sure who you're using But Zaporize, great.
- [17:55]
Danny
I use them.
- [17:56]
Rod
Yeah, Yeah. I mean, it just makes it so easy. And honestly, the 4% premium on fiat makes my life easier as well because it's a slight way of just pushing them towards bitcoin. But also on the, on the Fiat side, I, you know, don't get dinged on the 3%, 4%, whatever it is on the credit card processing. But no, and I don't know if this is the right strategy, honestly. That's why it's so selfish of me. I do all of these summits just so I can learn and bring all my friends together and whether it's Nashville or Austin. So we're going to do one on custody and treasury, we're going to do one on bitcoin payments, we're going to do one on Grassroots. I mean, it's just, this is all selfish to me, but on the treasury side it's, It's a loose like 50, 50% and I don't know if that's a right. It's still a work in progress where it's just, what's my cash balance? What's my bitcoin balance? It's not something I'm like actively managing because I got a million other things going on. It's one of those like once a month, once every couple months, I'm like looking at my bitcoin balance, like seeing how that's working and looking at my Fiat balance and looking out two months, three months of AP and then saying, okay, does this, does this feel right in terms of Runway, if you will? Because I do think there's a non zero freaking chance we see this for your business, Danny. What if there was a massive 80% drawdown, right? Like my. I have a, I have a responsibility to Jack, Andrew, Rob, Julie, and most as important, my entire membership community to stay alive like there. So I'm not a trader, I'm a bitcoiner that has humbly a amazing job, an amazing platform to build and it needs to stay alive and it needs to continue to be durable.
- [19:45]
Danny
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- [22:09]
Rod
So the telehash. So I'm co founder of Bitcoin park but I also co founded the 256 foundation with my very good friend and Bitcoin econo Alchemist. That's a whole long story on how we started it, but it was basically us Trolling and we memed it alive, which is basically we want to dismantle the proprietary bitcoin mining empire because there is one like with Bitmain and Micro BT and all these centralized players from the pools and so on and just there's a massive opportunity, there's a massive community that, that wants to do this and we want to play a small role in supporting it. So Eco and I now Scott, the founder of the Bitx project, he's involved on our podcast called Pod256. We were just joking. One day we're like, you know those old school telethons where they call in and donate money? We should do a telehash where noobs, home miners or big big pubcos could point us hash rate and donate us hash rate. How cool would that be? So like anything we do, we memed it and then we did it. And so there's a. We did it at bitcoin park the day before the Nashville Energy and Mining summit this past year. And yeah, it was this past year and dude, we got, we got. Oh on average it was like 800 PETA hash almost. We, we clipped one extra hash because one from one big friend miner. But I mean our chances were one in a thousand. Danny.
- [23:42]
Danny
One in a thousand gave you the hash rate. Can you say? Or they're keeping it private?
- [23:46]
Rod
No. Marshall Long from what a legend.
- [23:49]
Danny
Yeah, a light Marshall.
- [23:50]
Rod
Yeah. And so he pointed us the hash rate. He was there, he was helping us out. Him and John Stephanopoulos. We were running our own node. You know, we had the. It was just like we were, we were a self sovereign miner, full stop. Eco sitting there on his computer. I mean you got to go look it up on. I don't know how you search Twitter well but you got to go look for this video. But I'll try and put the clip.
- [24:13]
Danny
In the, in here.
- [24:15]
Rod
Eco. When it pans to Eco when we hit the block, you can see through his glasses his realization that we hit a one out of a thousand chance to hit a block. And so for those folks that don't understand the significance of this, on average every 10 minutes a Bitcoin block is mined. Okay. On January 3rd, 2009 when the first block was mined, 50 Bitcoin was the reward. Then every four years there's a having where the, the coinbase reward is cut in half. And now we're at 3.125 bitcoin in terms of the reward. Oh my God, I can't believe I'm. Yeah. 881-423 is the block height because I got a T shirt right over there, and it just skipped out of my head. But at block height. 8, 8, 1, 4, 2, 3. We at Bitcoin park solo mined a bitcoin block on the bitcoin blockchain live on our livestream.
- [25:18]
Danny
That's insane.
- [25:20]
Rod
The people in the audience were going nuts. We were going nuts. I thought they were trolling me. Danny. I had just stepped out, to be honest with you, because, dude, I host these summits with, like, 150, 200 people each clip, you know, coming. So I had to go just to the FedEx to go get more lanyard tags. I come back in. Scott's like, we did it. I'm like, cool. We did what? Nothing. We've been here for eight hours and nothing's happened. He goes like, brother, we have done it. I'm like, no, you're lying to me. And it was. Danny. It was one of the. You know, you. You're. You're tall, so you probably played basketball in high school, and you're probably a really good basketball player.
- [26:03]
Danny
I'm from England. We don't play basketball.
- [26:05]
Rod
Yeah, you're probably a good footballer. But I joked that I, you know, in like, sixth or seventh grade is probably when I peaked in. In sports. My bitcoin career peaked at block height. 8, 8, 1, 4, 2, 3. Hitting that block, I mean, I mean, it's pretty cool working at bitcoin park and all this stuff, but I don't know if I'll ever, ever get by.
- [26:29]
Danny
Yeah, that's absolutely insane. So. But you get. I don't know what it was at the time. I don't know what the price was, but around 300k in Bitcoin.
- [26:35]
Rod
Some hundred thousand bucks. I mean, I think it was. Yeah, north of a hundred thousand at the time.
- [26:40]
Danny
What do you do with that money? Just have a request to pie.
- [26:44]
Rod
No, no. I mean, it's so funny, but no, again, a responsibility because we actually had an established foundation. So to kick it off, I got to give Foundry a lot of credit. They gave us 0.2 bitcoin just as a seed. They're like, you know what, Eco rod? Wait, you guys are going to go all these different projects you're going to start in support, like, from Scott and so on. Okay, here's 0.2 Bitcoin. And they're like. I'm like, you know, we're crazy, and we're going to try to dismantle your own business as well and make it more competitive. So there's not as much centralization in mining pools. They're like, do you. We want to support bitcoin. So. All right, cool. My Collier, Jay, Emily, Melissa, the entire Foundry team deserves a massive shout out. And then Heatbit albus, you know, shout out to you, man. He came in big time just to support us as well. And the list goes on hrf. And then we had. So we had a little bit of support. So Eco and Scott were getting the first grant and so on. And we had. We were literally announcing our projects. Danny. We had five projects that we wanted to fund and. And we're like, okay, well if we hit a block, we literally probably can fund all of them, which we funded four out of the five. And then we hit the block, honestly. And it was so crazy because it was like we were doing an eight hour telehash and almost every hour I was like, guys, let's just quit this. It's no point. Like we're not hitting this block one out of a thousand Eco's like, no, we stick to the plan. We're doing this. I'm just like, man, okay, whatever. And massive props to Rob Warren, Iko, Scott just sticking through it and all the people that were in the audience. It was just so rad.
- [28:32]
Danny
That's incredible. What's your take on. I've got my bit axe whirring away here. What's your take on like the state of mining? Because like it is the most centralized thing in bitcoin, our dog. But the. The stuff that square are doing or block are doing is really interesting.
- [28:49]
Rod
So I think we're at the beginning of a really cool renaissance as it relates to bitcoin mining. And I may go on a bit of a tangent here, but hear me out. So I think bitcoin mining is on a. The path to dismantle the proprietary bitcoin mining empire is happening in a number of different ways. So at the pleb or grassroots level, it's happening with a guy like Scott open sourcing the Bitax project so you can build your own home miner and just with whatever. 1, 2, 3, terahash. Just mine Bitcoin at home without your own electricity. You're. The probability of you hitting a block is zero basically.
- [29:34]
Danny
But you know, been found by some more in the last year maybe.
- [29:39]
Rod
Exactly. So it can happen. And you know what if enough crazy people get involved or get a future bit or just this is the. The best way to learn about bitcoin in my opinion, is just to mine bitcoin. You run a Full node. You'll learn about bitcoin. You learn about deposit addresses, you're learning about mining pools, you're learning about everything. And you're just like, wait, how does this work? Wait, why is there a firmware Wait, why is there a firmware that I can't really adjust or what, what does it, how does this make sense? And so you got folks like the Scots of the world. I mean this ember one that we're working on is going to be badass. And there's so many, I mean just the, the density number one.
- [30:16]
Danny
I've missed this so.
- [30:18]
Rod
Well, it's, it's one of the 2v6 foundation projects. It's like the next evolution in the, in the bit ax world. I mean there's a number of other bit axes as well, which is just freaking awesome. You got to bring Eco on. Yeah, I don't want to because he should go into each of the projects and, and really tell you the story. Because going to that like the state of the, the bitcoin mining industry still continues to be very centralized. However, you got a guy like Jack Dorsey. And I got to give Jack a lot of credit here, you know, as a CEO of a now Fortune 500 company for him to be like, you know what, Thomas Templeton and Team Max, guys, Jenny Perry, I mean the list goes on with that entire proto team. I'm going to give you the air coverage, I'm going to give you the funding and let's go and see if we can't build a better bitcoin miner. And by the way, let's not go and make it in the same form factor. Let's reinvent what this could be. And so they were kind enough by the way, to invite me out to their launch event. And so I got to talk with the team. I got to go actually see the product live. I got to like lift it. I got to do all of it with Scott Nico. And one of the things that struck me was like over this 12 year period of time in development, they're like, look, we went out to the field, we went out to the field and talked to miners on what they cared about. They're like, dude, we have to scrap an almost an entire miner because the, the, the hash board is just kaput or the fan just breaks or whatever. And so it was like, well, what if it wasn't? What if you could just replace the fan easily, Just like take it out, pop or back in.
- [32:03]
Danny
That's the thing that resonated with me so much Because I've been out to see gridless site in Kenya. I've seen a couple of them. And the big issue they have there is like, the fans just get full of bugs and flies and they grows like the ability just to like rip that out and replace it is a game changer for them.
- [32:20]
Rod
And here's the other cool thing, not to just, you know, boost, boost them up. They went out and talked to like, for me, I'd be too enterprising. I'd be like, okay, who are our customers? Who are our biggest customers? Oh, the enterprise customer, like CleanSpark, you know, Riot.
- [32:38]
Danny
The irons of the world.
- [32:40]
Rod
Let's just go talk to them. No, they brought some of those folks, but they brought like my boys from Cholla who are the West Texas miners. They brought the Wilson mining brothers, you know, that are out in, you know, the sticks in Iowa. They brought out all of these folks and then they brought like knuckleheads like us that are the home miners that have nothing to do with, with their world. But they're like, we want you guys to battle test this, that we want you to question this. We want you to question the firmware, the, the, the, the fleet management software that we've developed. And it was just so dang cool. So it was cool to see at the scale that they were building it out, it was cool to see the support for the grassroots bitcoin home mining community across the board. I mean, Jack was there, he was giddy about like just seeing it live. I mean, you could tell. And you've been around him enough and his team, like, when, when they, when he sees it live, I could just, I could just feel how proud he was of the team that they're at this moment in time and, and this is just a milestone, man. Everyone's like, oh, it's only 14 joules per terra hash, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, by the way, Bitmain announced, I think it was like nine joules per tera hash. But that's in 2026. They haven't shifted. Okay, that's one, two. How often do those come off? Even the rack and they're busted? Okay, how often are they, you know, DOA after three to six months. What's the cost of the downtime and the replacement cost? So what's your all in cost? Your, your investment in that? Or you get one that's basically super durable or more durable and it's more easily replaceable. So, you know, instead of 90% uptime or your capex needing to buy I don't know, I don't, I have no idea if this is the right strategy. But do you buy 10 to 20% you're already allotment because you need to have those miners, you know, on the shelf because you have 5% always every month that go down for, for fix and you need to just be running so you're ripping and replacing all the time. So I think bringing on Eco because he can even be more full throated than I am about this base. You know me, I'm build a bridge, I'm glass half full. I couldn't be more bullish on where we're going on all the fronts in bitcoin, just the people that are working in this space, even the haters, I mean even these freaking shell treasury companies bring it like everybody across the board. You know, bitcoin is anti fragile and the more and more people that have eyes on it, that attack it, that build on it, it's benefits bitcoin. It just, it truly does in my opinion.
- [35:19]
Danny
I think one of the cool things as well is I, I've, I've not seen this, this minor or anything but I've heard that there's like an AI agent on board that will tell you that like parts are going to, are like going to be retired in say three months like the fans, whatever it might be and that like integration of AI into these machines seems really cool, especially in terms of downtime. Like you can have the replacements ready to go, rip something out, put it in and like there's really no downtime. I know you guys have been doing a lot of AI stuff in Austin. What's going on there?
- [35:47]
Rod
So yeah, no, I mean for the, on the park side we incorporate AI as much as we can in terms of our operations and our workflow. We've been hosting at the Austin meetup Tony and Justin, who whenever they're in town or when they've been in town they've been hosting a weekly or bi weekly AI meetup and I want to do more of that to be honest with you Danny, because I do think there's a convergence happening between Bitcoin, AI energy and I want to always make sure there's a conversation happening within open source freedom tech because you know, and I'm guilty of this as well, I'll like, I like to experience, experiment with all of the AI tools from even chat, GBT to you know, Claude and so on and a lot of them are closed source and I, I'm still learning what are the trade offs in using These tools. Right. Versus an open source LLM and, and the tools around that. So always having that kind of a lens of. And by the way, every single week it feels like there's something new or something being launched. And I'm just like blown away by the productivity improvements, by what I, my, my simpleton brain can even imagine. What are the possibilities. I'm such the left side of the bell curve where I'm like, oh, well, this is our static process. And I'm like, okay, blow that whole thing up. And now what if we just concentrated on building like, let me give Marty a huge shout out, dude. Have you seen his videos that he's been producing?
- [37:21]
Danny
Yeah, they're incredible. They're really incredible. And, and, and Opportunity Cost is a very cool app that he's just completely vibe coded.
- [37:29]
Rod
Vibe coded. He got a small team together, he had an idea and he shipped it. I mean, how cool is that? And that's why. And I haven't read this post by Alan Farrington. He just emailed me something along like P E P doom equals zero, which I assume means like, you know, like, stop being a doomer. It's not happening. Like, be an optimist, dude. The stuff that we're going to build with having Bitcoin as the, as the monetary network in the apps, at the applications and the tooling that we create is going to be fundamentally so freaking amazing. And I do think it converges back onto Bitcoin and then I think it converges back onto energy, different energy sources. When everyone's like, oh, we need to focus on renewable. Bitcoin's the most renewable energy source, like demand outcome out there. And it's going to push the boundaries across nuclear fusion, all of them. It'll expose the crap renewables because it'll just say that doesn't work compared to these other areas. We want to buy it all up and we will be a economic actor within here. You want us to be the first buyer, the last buyer, whatever that may be. And so that's my long winded way of saying I'm just so freaking bullish about all of these different areas and continuing to explore these areas.
- [38:46]
Danny
I definitely want to get into that convergence. But before we do, I'm curious how you're using AI, because I remember last time we were hanging out in Nashville, we went and played golf and we were just talking for a while and you're like a productivity maxi. It's unreal. You've got about 18 assistants, you're doing a thousand things at once. How are you using AI? Because for me, it's definitely changed the way I work. I think it probably saves me at least half an employee, maybe a full employee in terms of what it will do for me. And if you go back even further a few years ago on what Bitcoin did, we were hiring people that were would just not be relevant in the business today. Like, we had a. She was amazing, but we had a lady who was doing all the transcriptions manually doing transcriptions for us. We had people pulling clips. There's now AI tools that pull clips and they've gone from being really shitty to being actually pretty good. And there's probably no reason to have that person like, how are you using it?
- [39:37]
Rod
Yeah. So I would say in our. The key is our systems, right. So it's not so much what's a role or what's something we want to go out. We have have basically each year or now this year as well as the years go forward, we have like probably three to four major goals that we want to go and accomplish. And then we go, okay, what are our systems to go and accomplish those goals? And then where can we incorporate any type of workflow such that the first answer is, can an AI agent, agentic agent do this or could some tool? So one for any small business owner out there what I would recommended. And it's worked well for us. I've empowered the team. Not annual, but monthly. You have an unlimited budget to go and spend 10 bucks, 20 bucks, even a hundred bucks a month on any new AI tool. You just have to use it and report back on how you're using it. So it's not an AI tool, but we use loom.com religiously and we loom each other videos all the time on how we're using it.
- [40:40]
Danny
What is that? I've not used that.
- [40:42]
Rod
So it's a screen recording tool that basically records your screen. So like, you know, before in other jobs, people would call me, hey, I need to grab you for 10 minutes and talk to you about this idea. Now when you're like, I'm on the golf course with you, I want to enjoy that round, that's four, maybe whatever, five hours, instead of worrying about calls that are coming in and so on. And so when somebody's like, hey, I need some help around, I don't know, feedback on this creative. Just before I send out this tweet, I wanted, there's a new style I wanted you to get your eyes on. Instead of sending me a static and a text or an Email. It's a loom with their context. And this is not an AI tool. It's more of a productivity tool of their thought process on it. Then I can comment within that video on exactly what I want to provide feedback to them. Or I say, great job, ship it. And we're rocking and rolling. And so asynchronous communication is a big thing. And culturally here that I want to install at the park or continue to install and lead by example is because, dude, Dan, we got, I got four kids, I got a six year old, a five year old, a three year old, a two year old. I coach, I think now two or three soccer teams. I like, I'm volunteering as like the cross country coach and I'm volunteering. My daughter wants me to go and volunteer for like lunch line because it's her first year being like the cafeteria lunch. And I'm like, auto, yes into all of that stuff. So, but, but I don't want to take away from any of the work that I'm, I'm doing. So it's like, all right, if this is unknown, how do I conform my life such that I want to prioritize this while excelling and maximizing in these other areas. So I just make sure to develop the tooling around that. I mean, there's no like secret to go on the AI side. There's no like, oh, this is the, the three tools and they're not really AI tools. The three tools that I was telling Jack this this morning, I'm like, if they went away, it would really hurt my productivity in general. One is whisper flow. The voice to text is unbelievable, especially on computer. Two is Raycast. It's like a spotlight on steroids. Just the clipboard history again. I'm the left side of the bell curve. I have so much of my clipboard history that is so much easier just to search for. And then paste in there. And then third is that loom, which for our team, Rob just welcomed the new baby girl. And he's working different hours right now, but we're continuing to ship especially for this. Imagine if which is now 25 days away. It's unbelievable.
- [43:19]
Danny
Voice to text is amazing. Unless you're trying to talk to Siri when it's fucking terrible.
- [43:23]
Rod
No, Siri's garbage. It's it. This is where, you know, this is me being.
- [43:27]
Danny
It's insane. That series actually got worse. So when I, when it did like this AI update, I, I was like really excited for it. I was like, this is what an iPhone needs. And it's got worse. It was better 10 years ago than it is today.
- [43:39]
Rod
It heads need to roll over there and then they need to. They. And they will. Look, this is what's going to happen. They're going to acquire Whisper Flow, like yesterday. That's going to happen and it's going to be integrated and then it's going to be the default. Okay, that's one, two. They're going to acquire Raycast. Their Spotlight still sucks. Raycast is the best, so I could see them easily acquiring both of those. Eladish or whatever it was, acquired Loom. I'm glad they're, like leaving Loom as a standalone product. But just those acquisitions make a ton of sense and they have a huge balance sheet. So leverage your balance sheet. You're not innovating at the workforce level. You're just not. Like, again, I'm a bitcoiner. I look at proof of work. I don't care. Credentials, I don't care. You got a product roadmap, I don't care. I look at the product that is in right now that I'm using and I'm saying it is garbage. So it's just. They. They just got it. I don't know other than acquisition is. Is the way.
- [44:40]
Danny
Yeah, they fucked it big time. It's funny, like, you're. You've obviously got four kids. You're a lunatic. I've got one under two. And like, one of the things that I can't figure out is what the world looks like for them when they're. I think about hitting adulthood because, like, Obviously my daughter's 2 now. I actually think that's in some ways a better age to be than being sort of 12, 13. Because I think knowing what's going to happen in five years is. Is literally impossible right now. At least there'll be some time for this to kind of mature before. My daughter's at the age where she has to worry about having a job. But, like, what. How do you see that? Like, how do you try and position this for your kids?
- [45:17]
Rod
So I think about this deeply and almost every single day. I don't try like, before it was okay, maybe learn computer science, which I should have doubled down on. And I was just too lazy and not smart, so I didn't do that. But, you know, oh, the safe route was go get an accounting degree or go get a, you know, XYZ degree.
- [45:40]
Danny
Gone.
- [45:41]
Rod
Gone. Well, gone in the sense that it's not a core. Like, we just got to rethink education across the Board, in my opinion, like, these Alpha schools and all these different schooling schools, that's the area. I'm not like that crazy active parent that's like, hey, tell me what you're teaching my kids. But I'm slowly creeping there to be like, all right, tell me.
- [46:03]
Danny
You'd be a nightmare to be a parent at school.
- [46:07]
Rod
I'm just. I'm more interested in the tools that they're using to help with the education process, because I do think each kid learns differently, and I think we're at a unique time where we can create unique learning plans for each and tailor them for each individual kid. But going back to that, it's. It's literally anything that is super creative. I just want them to do one other area, and I don't know if it's gonna be right. But being able to confidently dictate and enunciate your thoughts into a clear, thoughtful sentence, prompt engineering is going to be a must have. So my ability to go into chatgpt or whatever and prom it to do whatever you may say, hey, draw me a this cartoon. But if my daughter is like, draw me this elaborate, blah, blah, blah, and adds, like, you know, a million different adjectives and knows how to talk and make the AI dance her, that's a superpower for her. So one thing we do, we. I drive her to school every single morning is we call the AI thing on my phone a question mark. And it's like, what's a question we want to ask? Ask our friend today. And she's like, why are birds. Why do birds hang on electric poles? Or whatever? She asked. I was like, oh, great question, okay. And then she's just talking with the AI and then you can see when she tenses up, she's like, I don't know what to ask. I'm like, you just asked me that question. Just go ahead and ask it into the phone. And so you could see her confidence slowly just build up over time, and then she gets a little bit better. I mean, she's not, like, great at it, but she's just getting a little bit better, a little bit better. Then all of a sudden, you know, over time, when I don't know at what age they introduce computers and all this other stuff, she'll be like, well, why am I typing into this? Why don't I just talk into this? And by the way, why are we, you know, asking a search engine that's kind of static giving me the written form back? Why don't I talk to this? Why. Why isn't it talking back to me. And that's how I get my answer. And by the way, I can, can tell it to provide me the answer too. So there's just a number of different ways where I'm like, you know, everyone's like, oh, we shouldn't introduce AI in schools and, and all this other stuff that's insane.
- [48:24]
Danny
To me it seems like that's like banning an abacus or, or a calculator.
- [48:28]
Rod
Like, imagine banning the Internet. And you're like, hey man, I need you to do this by hand with the written pencil. That is not a world, real world use case even in the slightest. I don't care if you're in the Amazon, you're not calculating anything. If you're stuck in the Amazon, like, like just not. And so I would just say that that's where being an active parent, you know, it gives, you know, especially if you're a curious parent, which I am very curious about a number of different things. You can be more involved with your kids and you don't have to. It's not like bringing the devices in there where they're, you know, it's a bunch of screen time. You can make it more conversational and more family oriented.
- [49:10]
Danny
One of the things that I am a little bit doomer on, on AI is what it does to the Internet because I've seen like a few reports and like the number, the like amount of new content going on to the Internet. The reports vary, but it's like 40 to 75% of it is AI generated.
- [49:24]
Rod
Oh yeah.
- [49:25]
Danny
And you see all like the absolute AI slop that ends up on Twitter and it's just so uninteresting. Like, do you think it makes the Internet an unusable place?
- [49:34]
Rod
Well, for me it doesn't personally, because.
- [49:36]
Danny
But maybe in the future is what I'm really thinking here.
- [49:39]
Rod
I don't think so. I mean, I think think probably people made that same argument when the, you know.com era was born. It's like when Prodigy and AOL, they're like, wait a minute, why are they talking about. This is the dumbest things. This is just a bunch of slop and crap on the Internet and we can't even search for it really well or, or it's disorganized or, you know, even the AI clipping right at the beginning, it was really crap. Now it's pretty good. You still, I do think you need a human in the loop loop. And that's where I think there's two spectrums in terms of Hiring, to be honest with you, it's one is like if you're mediocre, you're dead. Like just straight up go find something you gotta be like, gives you so much energy and that you strive to be the best at. Because if you, if you don't find that you're pretty DOA in any of these things because over time an AI agent or something will, will just take your work. But if you're the best at at AI clips, for example, you're like, yeah, I know how to make Riverside to whatever dance better than anybody else out there. And I'm so energized. But I'll always be at the forefront of this space. I'm gonna go kill it. And you could literally write your own check because you'll be like, okay, for one clip for Danny, I could help him make an extra 50,000 bucks. What does that mean for his business? If I did 10 of those cool. Or a hundred of those great, would that justify a hundred thousand dollar contract with Danny? And then I could go do that with 10 other Dannys? Maybe. I have no idea. But that's how I would be looking at it if I was an entrepreneur. But going back to the kids side, this is why I think a parent that's an entrepreneur is so valuable is because I think the days of just being like, okay, I'm going to go to school, I'm going to work really hard, I'm going to go get a job at Google or I'm going to go get a job at this company. Those big tech companies are, there's, they're not, there's no safety net anymore. I think the safety net is going to be in the entrepreneurial journey and I think it's going to not force, but it's going to be an amazing renaissance of small business owners. I think it's going to be. And by the way, it does not even have to be in the a podcaster, to a techie or to an influencer. Absolutely not. You could go and take over a tire shop. And by the way, I'm very bullish on these freaking tire companies tangent because like every month one of my tires is flat and I'm just like spending 200 bucks every month fixing them. I'm like another life. If any of my kids just want to go to a trade school, I will be the first to support them and be like, okay, go be the best tire changer guy, whatever it may be. But I think there's AI tooling within that workflow. Just think about Those archaic systems and the archaic way they communicate with their customer base and you're introducing just new novel ways of working with them. New novel ways of working with your employee base. New novel ways of just selling your product or services. Man, it is so like it does not even scratch the surface of what what it. The future unfolds. So to your point, I couldn't agree more. A 12 year old or even a 16 year old, maybe in college I'd be a little bit more nervous and I'd always have my head on a swivel. Even at 40 plus years old that I am, I have my head on a big time swivel. But like my 6 year old, my 5 year old, my 3 year old and my 2 year old, I'm just always constantly looking at them and saying, okay, what are the things that they're passionate about and continue to support, whatever that may be. I am playing zero bias in that whole whole game.
- [53:14]
Danny
Yeah, I do think those kind of blue collar jobs are, they're going to be the ones that are last to go. And one of my friends recently moved career from being like a very traditional normal career to. He was like not enjoying it, fed up. I'm going to just become a plumber. And this wasn't because of AI but that's a genius move. Like AI will replace the job he was doing. But there's right now, until we get really good robotics, it's not going to replace your plumber.
- [53:37]
Rod
So, so can I. Okay, agreed. And then let me tell you about the convergence on something like plumbing or H vac that I think could happen. So and I got to give Tyler Stevens a shout out his company. You got, you should get him on the pod too. He's amazing. Just think about what if your home heating system was powered by bitcoin miners so you're monetizing it. What if the service folks knew that and knew how to service it and created an incentive model with you such that you didn't even pay for your unit? So a unit that I think I paid six grand to replace or maybe even ten grand to replace my unit bothered me to no end. What if the guy was like, Tyler was like hey man all, it's $0 for you today. But the, the rev share model is I take 80% of the SATs and you take 20% or whatever it is until I make my 10 grand back and then it flips back to 80. 20 and 20% is basically your, my monthly service fee and I'll. And by the way, now I have an incentive to come out to your home and going back to Proto Fleet. Proto Fleet is their fleet management software. So I think there is some AI tooling and you got to be careful about like throwing around AI all the time. Like AI does not need to be in every single freaking application. There's so many applications where I'm like, disallow the AI, disallow. You're just like, I do not need you in this application right now. But that's one where it could be proactive to sense like, oh the f. There's an irregularity with the fan speed. And we've, you know, looked at our entire data set and noticed that there's a common, common issue with that type of the way the fan is acting that we think in the next 32 days that that fan could go down. You may want to go look at it. So it's a yellow right now and then it becomes a red 10 days and it's like, holy smokes, let's go replace that. But imagine like Tyler then sees that data. You, all you care about is it's the winter. I want to freaking heat my home. Okay. The heat's got to be on. I don't need to call you up, you know, when it breaks and the heat, you know, I'm one or two days out of heat. And now Tyler has an incentive to make sure your home is functioning at like the highest possible usage as possible. So there's a really amazing convergence between bitcoin, AI, energy use, open source freedom tech tools. By the way, all these tooling that Tyler and Exergy could be using are all in these open source home mining tools. So like open source firmware to control the miner open there's on a number of different fronts there.
- [56:17]
Danny
Yeah. For anyone that doesn't know Tyler's doing heating with using bitcoin mining and I think he's now got it up and running at the space. He showed me his rig there when I was over there a few months ago. It's a very cool project, guys.
- [56:27]
Rod
Like there's like hundreds of Tyler's out there and we're going to discover, discover thousands of Tylers out there. I truly believe it. The more we can talk about it, the more we got great folks like you guys, you, Danny doing the what Bitcoin did podcast, other podcasts out there that, that shine a light on all the cool stuff that's happening in bitcoin and bitcoin mining. People be like, wait a minute, I own a duplex in western Mass. Hey, how do I do that with my place? I want to. I want to heat my. I don't screw paying the electricity bill. I already as a sun cost 400, 500, $100 a month, whatever that may be. And by the way, I have tenants in there that it's all in part of the rent, because my rent is tough to. You know, I got to provide extra incentives. I might as well just put a home mining, heat it with home miners so that even if they jack it up, at least I'm getting the sats from it.
- [57:22]
Danny
Yeah, it's very cool, but. So everything you've talked about here is that convergence between bitcoin, AI energy and you're doing Imagine if now in Nashville in. Is it less than a month ago?
- [57:32]
Rod
I think 25 days.
- [57:34]
Danny
Tell everyone about this. What's going on.
- [57:35]
Rod
Yeah, yeah. So imagine if has been this idea. Been thinking a lot about. Honestly, I've been really fortunate. I'm not a podcaster, but I. I don't know.
- [57:47]
Danny
So you've got three podcasts or something?
- [57:49]
Rod
Yeah, you just. I don't know. Matt's Matt and you are the podcasters, and you guys are crushing it. But I've been very fortunate to do one with Eco Pod 256, which is focused on on bitcoin, bitcoin and bitcoin mining. And then I do a monthly bitcoin podcast with Cathie Wood, who's the founder, CEO and CIO at Ark Invest, and that's called Bitcoin Brainstorm. So she's been very kind for the last almost two years now. She's been like, rod, you create and curate the audience. We will produce and distribute it across our platforms. And I'd like to be there for the podcast. I was like, heck, yeah, Kathy, let's rock. Honestly, I thought she would just do one episode. She's busy. Blah, blah, blah, lot. Dude, she has not missed one episode with me. It's been unbelievable. I mean, and I've had like, our bitcoin friends. They're. They range the spectrum. Right? You know, you know, I've brought Luke on, I've brought Rockstar on. I've brought like, everybody on. Not did not bat one eye. It's like, let's rock. Let's talk about this, let's talk about that. And, you know, I've had Eric Herman on, Harry on, Odell on, Mollish on everyone. It's been. Been so freaking cool. Anyways, so. And she's been like, kind of incepting this in me, and I'VE been thinking a lot about it because especially on the AI side, but really on the energy side because that's been a big focus at the park and, and I want to always bring the conversation back to the importance of free and open source software because sometimes it gets lost in the entire conversation. Like, hey, we're talking about treasury companies, this like next cycle, or we're talking about XYZ and it's like, wait a minute guys. Closed source, proprietary, highly regulated moats are not the way Bitcoin succeeds long term for 8 billion people. Let's continue to bring it back to make this attainable, to run a full node and the importance of that to custody own Bitcoin and to use Bitcoin the way you want to use it. And so with Imagineif I wanted to bring between 300 and 500 folks that are from capital allocators to policymakers to entrepreneurs, to energy producers and personally invite them to come and experience this. And it's a summit of summits and Kathy's in, Dr. Laffer's in, Adam Back's coming, Odell's coming. I mean just go look at the speaker list. There's going to be a number of speakers are going to be featured. There's going to be a number of speakers we don't even announce, we just announce them post facto. And that's I think what makes the park pretty special in terms of the experiences we create at the park. We have a no photos and no social media policy for this one. Probably on the stage level, we'll obviously have photos and video and we'll do video recording. But I think I'm cautiously optimistic that this will be a really special one and I hope this becomes like a more of like a based ted, if you're into that ted and if you know the all in Summit, which I think those guys do a really, really good job. This one is more focused on the Freedom Tech side. So if you're interested in bitcoin, AI energy and open source Freedom Tech, consider signing up and getting a spot.
- [61:04]
Danny
I think it's really cool because there's a million bitcoin conferences now, probably quite literally one every week all over the world. But a lot of them are kind of the same format. I think a few run for a year or two, have a load of hype and then end up dying down a little bit with cheat code. In Bedford, we try and do things a bit differently. We try and make that a really fun event. The football is a central part of it.
- [61:25]
Rod
It.
- [61:26]
Danny
So we Normally have, like, one day of conference. We might actually go to 2 this year, but we'll see. And then there's the football day, where everyone just drinks beer, hangs out, has a good time. And I think that is the day that everyone enjoys the most, because really, people want to go and see their favorite bitcoiners and hang out and just chat. What you've done is kind of lean into the other side, where this is just going to be education, like a very serious full day of content. I think that's the way these events are going to actually survive. There's obviously the big bitcoin conference, which you worked on back in the day, right? Yeah, that's obviously. That's here to stay. That's absolutely crushing. They get an insane amount of people, but otherwise, I think you have to differentiate yourself in some way. And I think this is a really interesting idea.
- [62:07]
Rod
Yeah, I would. I would break it down into two areas. Again, we have one. Or I'm kind of a mental model, which is, how do we make this the best bitcoin experience and best bitcoin and freedom tech experience you'll ever experience? Right. Full stop. Even compared to other bitcoin park experiences. How do we continue to make this the best experience? There's three currencies, in my opinion. Time, capital, and reputation. You're using arguably one of your most important currencies, which is your time to physically come to Bedford, to Nashville, to Austin, wherever. And I do not sleep on that in the slightest or take that for granted. So I'm like, all right, how do we make this the one day or two days the best possible experience? And I look at it into two kind of simple takeaways. One, is there specific knowledge? And specific is the keyword, specific knowledge that I otherwise would not have attained without being here physically. Right. And so it's like, okay, how do I get the best conversation going with Kathy and Dr. Laffer? Oh, Bitstein, for example. We're going to announce him as a speaker. I put Bitstein and Adam back together. That, you know, Biscein's only met Adam two times in his life. I'm like, are you serious? So we were doing some prep work and so on, and I'm like, bitstein, this. I think this is going to be one of the best just Fireside chats ever. Because your curiosity and your deep understanding of the philosophy, economics, and technical aspects of Bitcoin and the way you can probe and get that out of a guy like Adam, come back on stage, I think that could just Be magical. And so I'm trying to create all these different magical experiences, you know, such that people be like, okay, I just. Just that one panel was worth the price of admission, worth my time and my reputation. I always want to be around all these folks. And the second one is networking, like, is like getting. This is a weird thing, and it's probably not the best thing, but. But I'm gonna do it until, you know, I can't do it anymore. Which is. We curate the audience as well, because there is a price tag. Our summits are $500 per ticket. We've had the same price since we started it in 2023 NEMS, all the way up until every single summit we've done. And we've kept the price the same ticket. And there's only a finite number of tickets there for. Imagine if it's a summit of summits, I think four of these summits. So again, on the left side of the bell curve, I was like, four times five, minus one, that's $1,999. Great. That's the price of this ticket. And I'm like, all right, what does the value need to. Like, how can we justify this value in the audience seat? And that's why I want to make sure that you're. When you're investing that capital, that is the best possible experience. Now, with that said, 90 plus percent of our meetups and workshops are free and open to the public too, which is just. I love that because you get any person, whether you're a college student or a retiree grandparent that wants to learn about custody, that wants to learn, hey, I heard about this thing called Noster. Can you tell me a little bit more about this? Or. They just want to be around like minded people. And I think there's a responsibility. Going back to your Brisbane meetup, going back to the meetups in Austin, going back like. Like meetups in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I think there's a responsibility of bitcoiners that have the means and have the desire and energy to help to start a meetup and just to be that signal amongst their community. Because I do think, especially when you go down the YouTube rabbit holes, down the Twitter rabbit holes, you know, I like, Trump's doing a lot of really good things, in my opinion. One of which I can completely disagree with, which is these meme coins and then just putting out that grift. It's like when. When people are like, well, if the President's doing there, just a lot of different noise and different things going out there that as bitcoiners, again, more power to you. You can do, do, do you and do whatever you think is best. If you think what's best for bitcoin is educating the populace on how to use bitcoin, how to save in bitcoin, and all the great benefits of bitcoin, then I think, think, you know, playing a role in this, whether it's starting a conference, starting a meetup, being. Being an educator, I think is. Is. Is massive.
- [66:37]
Danny
Well, I think it's very cool. It's. I wish I could be there this year. I'm not gonna be able to make it, unfortunately, but next year, I will 100% be there.
- [66:44]
Rod
Heck, yeah, man.
- [66:45]
Danny
And I'm gonna be in Nashville in October, so I'm excited. We've got to try and play some golf again.
- [66:49]
Rod
We could absolutely do that, man.
- [66:51]
Danny
All right. Well, Rod, I really appreciate the time, and this has been a lot of fun.
- [66:55]
Rod
Fun, dude. Thank you so much. Danny. The pleasure was all mine.