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Rod Rudy, the de facto mayor of Nashville. Welcome.
Danny, it's a pleasure. It's all mine, man. Thank you so much.
How are things in Nashville? You've been busy. How are things in Nashville and in Austin?
Yeah, both places are great. I mean, the mayor down in Austin, Parker Lewis, is crushing it with ZapRite, and he's doing well. Austin's commute, man, you've 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 something special in that regard.
Obviously, for anyone listening, you took over the commons.
It's now Bitcoin Park, Austin.
um parker's obviously working on zap right now he's he's podcasting he's actually crushing that
podcast it's really good killing it give it a shout out to him on his podcast but i i just i
can never figure out who won in that deal whether whether nashville won or austin won uh i think
he did a very good chess move and uh my 4d chess move is gonna make him i'm gonna get it to the
point where he has to actually run for mayor of austin i'm gonna i'm gonna help build up the
Bitcoin community with his help, with Will Cole's help and everybody's help, Ben Karman, everybody.
I mean, we got a Lit Devs on Monday, Tuesdays with Paul Miller and Sahil, the Design Club meetup.
We got the Austin Bitcoin Club meetup 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? I'm like, no, no, it's like actual time to run for
mayor and you're doing it and he'll be like damn it i'm bullish on on the bitcoiners becoming mayor
we need you as mayor of nashville parker as mayor of austin pete as mayor of bedford that that's how
we change the world pete i think he's gonna do it i think he's gonna actually run i see i thought
for a long time he was um 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 he did on the old what bitcoin did and pete was talking there
like he was really gonna run and and for a long time i thought he was but i've spoken to him
recently i had him on the show and obviously spoke speak to him privately pretty regularly
um 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 uh
if that is behind him now the idea of actually running for mayor 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 was 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 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 uh the traditional like politician route
he's instead just trying to make change with hiring his private security guard having his uh
his little army in bedford and and i like i think he's doing some cool stuff but honestly the uk is
a mess it's uh 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 um he's pretty bearish
on the uk yeah yeah you just spent some of that right i did yeah i'll give 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 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. Two, 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 gliders and all
this stuff. It was the kids who 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 zombying around. I don't know. There's just, it was a weird vibe.
We've definitely got you on culture too, though. Like an old building in Nashville is like 17
years old or something. Come on, come on. We've got you on the culture side.
Yeah, for a number of reasons. But I'll say this, Nashville is the best place, in my opinion, and I'm biased, to raise a family. It's just 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.
yeah no i like nashville i've said for a long time if it was somewhere in the us i was going
to move it probably be nashville um 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 there's a don't get
me wrong there's a great crew of bitcoiners they uh they're like committed good bitcoiners they
have a meetup 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 in Nashville.
Like, what are the challenges of building that?
Yeah.
So I'll say this.
It wasn't like something Matt and I set out and like, well, we're going to build a physical space.
I mean, it kind of just happened 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, if you have not been to a Bitcoin meetup, I would just Google or chat, whatever it is, just local Bitcoin meetup, insert your city 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.
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, 15, 20 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's just talks to his internet friends about Bitcoin.
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 COVID did help for sure.
But I would just say, 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 was 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
potentially rearrange your schedule or plan around it, plan to be there. I would just make a point.
But it's super hard. I mean, unless you got like so and we'll 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
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 being 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 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 meetup 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 and adoption globally.
You may not think of it, 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 yeah well is it like with great power comes great responsibility or
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
a 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.
Yeah, I think it's funny because like, I don't know if you guys were first or
I think Austin was first, right? But there's now the park in Austin,
Park in Nashville, PubKey, 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.
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 when everyone's just talking about treasury companies, and I'm guilty of this, I've done
a ton of shows on treasury companies.
Is it frustrating to you that people are not talking about the grassroots Bitcoin adoption
enough?
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 sliced spread.
I'm like, whoever was in Bitcoin around 2017, 2018, I don't know.
At least for me, it feels like that time frame.
But I think this is actually a unique opportunity to help continue to differentiate and expand
on the value of Bitcoin.
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're accepting Bitcoin, 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 15 K.
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 a hundred some thousand dollars
and we look like geniuses.
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 um push them away or anything i just say hey uh we talk about bitcoin the capital b the
monetary network here also the bitcoin the lowercase b what we don't talk about is altcoins
nfts lfts crypto shit coins 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 a Bitcoin park. Awesome Bitcoin educators like yourself,
Sessions, others to really double down to say, okay, here's the differentiation.
Like here another quick thing We going to introduce a simple custody white paper as part of our custody and treasury summit And it not meant for I mean it meant for our attendees but it meant for the attendees customers and 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.
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.
Like I, when I invoice people, there's always an option to pay in Bitcoin.
Surprisingly few people take that option.
Interesting.
But like when you say that you ran this with Bitcoin only at first, price went down, that was a bad treasury decision.
Obviously, price is way up from there.
Do you still do that?
Or have you changed the strategy?
Do you take some in fiat?
Well, it's not so much take it.
Like if we, let's say it was 100% in Bitcoin.
And by the way, we do, ZapRite makes it super easy.
I'm not sure who you're using, but.
ZapRite's great.
I use them.
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 fiat side, I 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 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 of 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 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 I have a responsibility to Jack, Andrew, Rob, Julie
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i want to talk about like all the stuff that you guys are doing i know in austin ai is becoming
like a bigger and bigger part of the the park down there but before we do that i i know you did the
telehash thing i want to hear the story because all i ever saw was the clip of you guys actually
finding that block but i want to hear the story behind what happened there
So the tele hash, so I'm co-founder of Bitcoin Park, but I also co-founded the 256 Foundation with my very good friend in Bitcoin, EconoAlchemist.
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 MicroBT and all these centralized players from the pools and so on.
And just there's a massive opportunity.
There's a massive community that wants to do this.
And we want to play a small role in supporting it.
So Ico and I, now Scott, the founder of the Bidex 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, uh, we did it at
Bitcoin park the day before the Nashville energy and mining summit this past year. And, uh,
yeah, it was this past year. And, uh, dude, we got, we got, Oh, on average, it was like 800,
petahash. We clipped one X a hash from one big friend miner. But I mean, our chances were one
in a thousand, Danny. One in a thousand. Who gave you the hash rate? Can you say,
or are they keeping it private? No, Marshall Long from- Oh, what a legend.
Yeah. A white Marshall. 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's 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'm trying to put the clip in here. 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 is a halving where 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. 881423 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 881423, we at Bitcoin Park
solo mind a Bitcoin block on the Bitcoin blockchain live on our live stream.
That's insane.
I mean, 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. It's 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, uh, lanyard tags. I come back in. Scott's like, we did it. I'm like, cool. We did
what? Nothing. We're 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, uh, it was Danny. It was one of the,
you know, uh, you you're, you're tall. So you probably played basketball in high school and
you're probably a really good basketball player. I'm from England. We don't play basketball.
Yeah, you're probably a good footballer. But I joke that in sixth or seventh grade is probably
when I peaked in sports. My Bitcoin career peaked at block height 881423. Hitting that block,
I mean, it's pretty cool working at Bitcoin Park and all this stuff, but I don't know if I'll ever
get by it. Yeah, that's absolutely insane. 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.
It was some 100,000 bucks.
I mean, I think it was, yeah, north of 100,000 at the time.
What do you do with that money?
Just having a massive party?
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 and 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.
That's cool.
Mike 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 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, it was so crazy
because 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.
And I'm just like, man, okay, whatever.
And massive props to Rob Warren, Eco, Scott,
just sticking through it
and all the people that were in the audience.
It was just so rad.
That's incredible.
What's your take on, I've got my bit axe whirring away here.
What's your take on the state of mining?
Because it is the most centralized thing in Bitcoin, I would argue.
But the stuff that Square are doing or Block are doing is really interesting.
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 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, one, two, three terahash, just mine Bitcoin at home
with your own electricity.
The probability of you hitting a block
is zero, basically.
But it happens.
Have two blocks been found by a BitX
or more in the last year, maybe?
Exactly.
So it can happen.
And you know what?
If enough crazy people get involved
or get a future bit or just...
The best way to learn about Bitcoin,
in my opinion,
is just to mine Bitcoin.
You're running a full node.
You're learning about Bitcoin.
You're learning 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 other things i mean just the the density one i've missed
this so well it's it's one of the 256 foundation projects it's like the next evolution in the in
in the Bidax world.
I mean, there's a number of other Bidaxes as well,
which is just freaking awesome.
You gotta bring Eco on.
I don't wanna-
Yeah, I'd like to.
Because he should go into each of the projects
and really tell you the story
because going to that,
like the state of 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, Genia, 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 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 and Nico.
And one of the things that struck me was like over this one, two 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 almost an entire miner because the hashboard 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 it back in.
That's the thing that resonated with me so much because I've been out to see Gridless's 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 that
they grows like the ability just to like rip that out and replace it is a game changer for them
and here's the other cool thing not to just you know boost boost them up um 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
biggest customers oh the enterprise customer like clean spark you know riot uh the irons of the
world. 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
like with their world. But they're like, we want you guys to battle test this. We want you to
question this we want you to question the firmware 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 been around him enough and his team like when they when he sees it live i could just i could just feel how proud he was of the team that they at this moment in time And this is just a milestone man Everyone like oh it only 14 joules per terahash blah blah blah
I'm like, by the way, Bitmain announced,
I think it was like nine joules per terahash,
but that's in 2026.
They haven't shipped it.
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 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 a 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%
over your 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 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 space. You know me, I'm build the bridge, I'm glass half full.
I couldn't be more bullish on where we're going on all the fronts in Bitcoin. There's the people
that are working in this space, even the haters. I mean, like 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's just, it truly does, in my opinion.
I think one of the cool things as well is I've not seen 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 like going to be retired in say three months, like the fans wearing out, 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? So, yeah, no, I mean, for the, on the park side, we incorporate
at 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, whenever they're in town or when they've been in town,
they've been hosting a weekly or biweekly 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 that 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
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'm still learning what are the trade-offs in using these
tools, right? Versus an open source LLM 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? Yeah, they're incredible. They're
really cool. And, and, and, um, opportunity cost is a very cool app that he's just completely
vibe coded. 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, uh, and I haven't read this post by Alan Farrington.
And he just emailed me something along like 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, 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 out there.
And it's gonna 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 wanna 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.
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.
Like, 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, like a few years ago on what Bitcoin did, we were hiring people that 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.
And like, how are you using it?
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 a something we want to go out.
We 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 do this or could some tool?
So for any small business owner out there,
what I would recommend 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.
Why is that? I've not used that.
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 just 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 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, we got I have 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 our first year
being like the cafeteria lunch.
And I'm like auto yes into all of that stuff.
So but I don't want to take away from any of the work that I'm doing.
So it's like, all right, if this is a known, 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 three tools
and they're not really AI tools.
The three like tools that I was telling Jack this morning,
I'm like, if they went away,
it would really hurt my productivity in general.
One is Whisperflow.
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.
It is so much easier just to search for and paste in there.
And then third is that loom, which for our team, you know, 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 like, it's unbelievable.
Voice to text is amazing,
unless you're trying to talk to Siri when it's fucking terrible.
No, Siri's garbage.
This is where, you know, this is me being...
It's insane that Siri's actually got worse.
So when I did like this AI update,
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.
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 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 elation 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've 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 the way. Yeah. They've fucked it big time. Um, it's like you're,
you've obviously got four kids. You're a lunatic. Um, 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 hitting adulthood.
Um, cause like, obviously my daughter's two 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
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? 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
of double 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.
Gone.
Gone. Well, gone in the sense that it's not a core, like, well, you 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 about-
I think you'd be a nightmare to be a parent at this school.
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 going to 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 prompt it to do whatever.
You may say, hey, draw me 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, that's a superpower for her.
So one thing we do, 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 our friend today?
And she's like, 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 isn't it talking back to me? And that's how I get my
answer. And by the way, I 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 to me. It seems like that's like banning an abacus or
a calculator. Imagine banning the internet and you're like, hey, man, I need you to do this by
hand with a written pencil. That is not a 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
just not. And so, um, 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. Um, 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, uh, family oriented. One of the things that I am a little bit
Doomer 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 the internet, the reports vary, but it's like
40 to 75% of it is AI generated. And you see all like that 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?
Well, for me, it doesn't personally because... But maybe in the future is what I'm really
thinking here? I don't think so. I mean, I think probably people made that same argument when the
dot-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 thing. This is just a bunch of slop and crap on the internet.
And we can't even search for it really well, or it's disorganized or, you know, even the AI
clipping, right? At the beginning, it was really crap. Now it's pretty good. I do think you need
a human in the 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 got to be like gives you so much energy and that you strive to be the best at Because if you if you don find that you pretty DOA in any of these things because over time an AI agent or something will just take your work
But if you're the best 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 can literally write your own check
because you'd 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 100 of those, great.
Would that justify a $100,000 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 kid's 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, 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, 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. Uh, 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 would 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 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 six-year-old, my five-year-old,
my three-year-old and my two-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 game.
Yeah, I do think those kind of blue collar jobs,
they're going to be the ones that are the 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 right now until we get really good robotics,
it's not going to replace your plumber.
So can I, okay, agreed.
And then let me tell you about the convergence on something like plumbing or HVAC that I think could happen.
So, and I got to give Tyler Stevens a shout out.
His company.
I love Tyler.
Yeah, he's great.
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 10 grand to replace my unit bothered me to no end.
What if the guy was like, Tyler was like, hey, man, it's zero dollars for you today.
but 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 my monthly service fee.
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 gotta 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, 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
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.
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 of 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. There's just on a number of different fronts there.
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 out of the space. He showed me his rig there when I was over there
a few months ago. It's a very cool project. Guys, there's like hundreds of Tylers out there,
and we're going to 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 shine a light on all the cool stuff that's happening in
Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining, people will 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, it's a sunk cost, 400, 500, a hundred dollars 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.
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,
I think? 25 days. Tell everyone about this. What's going on? Yeah. So Imagine If has been this idea
I've been thinking a lot about.
Honestly, I've been really fortunate.
I'm not a podcaster, but I don't know.
But you've got three podcasts or something.
Yeah, I don't know.
Matt and you are the podcasters.
And you guys are crushing it.
But I've been very fortunate to do one with Eco,
Pot256, which is focused on Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining.
And then I do a monthly Bitcoin podcast with Kathy 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.
Dude, she has not missed one episode with me.
It's been unbelievable.
I mean, and I've had like our Bitcoin friends there, 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, uh, you know, I've had Eric Hurstman on Harry on Odell on Maulers on everyone.
It's 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 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 your own Bitcoin
and to use Bitcoin the way you want to use it. And so with Imagine If, I wanted to bring,
you know, between 300 or 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 the it's a summit of summits and kathy's in dr laffer's in adam back's coming
odell's coming i mean they'll just go look at the speaker list there's going 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 you know post facto um and that's i think what makes the park pretty special in terms
of the uh 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're 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.
I think it's really cool because like there's a million Bitcoin conferences now.
There's 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 like a year or two, have a load of hype and then end up dying down a little bit.
Like 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 um so we normally
have like one day of conference we might actually go to two this year but we'll see um and then
there's the football date 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 um 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 um 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 yeah i would i would break it
down into two areas again we have one or i have a 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 parking 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 their specific
knowledge and specific is the key word, 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 one of the speaker. I put Bitstein and Adam back together. You know, Bitstein'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, 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 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. This is a weird thing and it's probably not the best thing, but I'm going to do it until 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, I'm 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 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 like,
hey, I heard about this thing called Noster.
Can you tell me a little bit more about this?
Or they just wanna 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 meetups in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
I think there's a responsibility of Bitcoiners
that have the means and have the desire and energy
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 completely disagree with,
which is these meme coins
and then just putting out that grift.
It's like when people are like,
well, if the president's doing,
there's just a lot of different noise
and different things going out there
that as Bitcoiners,
again, more power to you. You can 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 playing a role in this, whether it's starting
a conference, starting a meetup, being an educator, I think is massive. Well, I think it's very cool.
I wish I could be there this year
I'm not going to be able to make it unfortunately
but next year I will 100% be there
and I'm going to be in Nashville in October
so I'm excited
we've got to try and play some golf again
we could absolutely do that man
alright well Rod
I really appreciate the time
this has been a lot of fun
dude thank you so much Danny
the pleasure was all mine
Thank you.