Anywhere there's stranded energy or waste energy that's not able to make it to the market,
I bring the market to the molecule.
What you're saying is that in practical reality,
the way this actually works is you need a lot more flexibility
than anyone pretends or probably even just realizes.
It's like a normal Bitcoin like myself, it doesn't work in this space.
Verified, sir.
Okay.
100%.
You know, Bitcoin mining was never about guarantees.
It was always about risk, you know?
There's no guarantee you're heading block.
The clients you work with, are these folks like orange pill,
they're mining and then stacking those sats?
Or is this like an expedience thing where they're like,
hey, we've got this stranded energy.
Like, who are these people?
I'm already world leader in off-grid Bitcoin mining.
Ha!
Hey, everyone. Michael here with the Bitcoin Way podcast. Thank you for tuning in. Today on the
show, I have Hoddle Tarantula. This guy is building off-grid Bitcoin mining rigs using
stranded energy, flair, all the things you've heard about, but he's actually doing it,
decentralizing it. Very fascinating. So he gets a little bit technical about some of what it is
that they do, how it all works. Try to zoom out, understand the bigger picture. We also get into
more interesting topics at the end beyond just the operations of what he does. We talk about
his business for Sovereign Hybrid Compute, where you can go host your files, your photos,
whatever it is that you have, your, you know, an AI, instead of using something centralized like
Amazon Web Services or any of those spyware applications that so many people use and rely
on. And he has a great hot take at the end that I think will make all of you mad. So stay tuned
for that as well. You will really enjoy this conversation. Hey, everyone, like I said in the
intro, I've got Hall Tarantula here. Tarantula, how you doing, my man?
Doing well. Thank you for asking, sir. I hope you're having a blessed day.
Thank you so much for joining the Bitcoin Way podcast. Let's jump right into it. So you're out
in the field. I was going to ask you this offline and I thought we'd just jump into the recording.
Tell me a little bit about your background and I want you to explain what's going on around you.
Sure. So before I got into Bitcoin mining, I did automation, robotics, maintenance and deployments with companies that do logistics and distribution.
Mainly, I was involved with the food side of things.
So it's like Amazon Dry Storage Facilities, Kiva with the robotics and Kroger Logistics.
And so I have a firm understanding of three phase power distribution, load balancing, chemicals and also application of firmware to hardware and basically the associated languages that are required to teach these pieces of equipment what to do,
tell them what to do how to do it and when to do it and so when i discovered bitcoin and was getting
further down that rabbit hole i came to realize that this is something i can build like from an
infrastructure standpoint uh and and it wouldn't be difficult for me to do so considering the
education i had up until that point and so it's just pretty much a easy fit for me when it came to
Bitcoin mining, it was just obvious to me that there's something I can do, no problems,
barrier to entry in regards to education for myself was pretty much minimal to zero, none,
because I already understood all the fundamental principles of the mechanisms of action required
to make a Bitcoin mining operation work from the ground up successfully.
So was there a learning curve on A6, sort of the hardware when it came to Bitcoin specifically?
Or was that something you'd kind of been tinkering with in the background before you went full-time?
Well, so I've always been an individual who's self-taught.
I ended up unenrolling myself from high school via forged signatures and then re-enrolled myself
in a correspondence school and graduated a year and a half ahead of my class. And so that being
the case, I kind of run that way with everything in life. I don't ask permission. I just find out
what needs to be done and I go and do it. And so essentially, when it comes to Bitcoin mining,
I just like with my introduction to automation and all that, I started purchasing hardware and equipment that was broken online and bringing it to myself and basically figuring out how to fix it from a zero state.
And that, you know, kind of gives me an edge when it comes to the learning curve.
You might think that it would make that learning curve a steeper or more of an arduous journey.
But contrary to that belief, having the ability to recognize patterns and acquire the knowledge on your own gives you the ability to kind of see things that are happening and recognize them.
and attain the fix or solution quicker than you might otherwise having to go back and forth
from a book or a PDF somewhere or a source online.
Although, you know, it is the shoulders of giants, which we stand upon today.
And so that knowledge that was out there, I always try to touch base with first,
because if you don't have a plan, you plan to fail, right?
But in that, you know, keep that in the back of my mind and then just go apply it.
Just go do the work. And doing that gave me the ability to learn much faster than I would have if I just kind of sat in the classroom and then later on tried to go put theory to, you know, bring that into fruition.
so the learning curve
you know it varies for every person
but for myself it wasn't too bad
because I had exposure to a lot of the actual
hardware itself
before I got into a position
where I was kind of building out at any scale
it gave me a little bit of an edge on it
yeah that makes sense
so tell me a little bit about
what it is that you do
tell me where you are
how this is different than most
sort of mining operations that people tend to think of in their minds when they imagine,
you know, hosted mining or self-mining or anything like that, solo mining?
Sure. Sure. Well, what we'll start with is where we are and where I am at any given point could be
anywhere. And that means that anywhere there's stranded energy or waste energy that's not able
to make it to the market, I bring the market to the molecule. And so currently, I'm building out
in the Permian Basin. A few years back, I was building in the Bakken Reserve. And before that,
out in Pennsylvania over by Marcella Shale over that way. And what the mining operations
in regards to what most people think of is big giant data center,
you know, football field-sized buildings,
and like a row of 50 transformers.
Well, that's all great and good, but that's all very centralized too.
And it's all very much, you know,
dependent upon grid infrastructure and provisioning.
And then you continuing to ask for permission
in regards to having rates that allow you to operate on the network or negotiate those rates.
And while where we are is off grid, we are mining Bitcoin on currently, our focus is on flare gas
and abandoned wells. Reason being is not just that we can create, you know, vertical integration
behind the meter for you know control costs but it's also the environment the environmental impact
that uh uh occurs is is much greater as well so well no pun intended guess well so what we have
here is a deployment style that is mobile and modular in nature um we get 20 foot connex or
40 foot connex or even a 10 foot box depends on the size of the gas well and what the production
is there but the mining operation is nimble and small and easily deployable and easily movable
anywhere from 250 kilowatts up to 1.2 megawatts and even maybe up to two if it's a hydro setup
there's more density in that and one of the reasons why this is so beneficial is because
when a gas well is flaring or you have anything like an abandoned resource like this from the
date of production in regards to its initial um you know day that they poke that hole in the ground
you have ip and that initial production it only lasts for about 24 to 36 months and then you hit
what's called a decline curve and well what happens is you're gonna either end up with a facility that
is let's say if you want to do uh start out initial production you might say that you have
five megawatts of power available based on the capacity of the wellhead and its flow rate
but that's not forever guaranteed to stay five megawatts and if your operation is built out
in a modular fashion where you might have let's say four or five hundred kilowatt containers if
let's say your maximum capacity is two megawatts on the wellhead site and you're uh you now run
that with let's say eight to eight 300 kilowatt generators as the well declines and your production
rate falls you can literally just peel off one of those containers and two of those generators
send it down to the next wellhead and get that going and at the same time you're not losing
production on the current uh wellhead um because uh normally what people try to do is they'll try
to set one massive generator or turbine that will take up the whole two and a half megawatt
requirements for the project site and those come with limitations now you have to either have x
amount of gas or more to run or else you have nothing at all it's basically an all or nothing
operation at that point. And the way that I build and design in the off-grid world, it's very modular
and nimble and scales down just as well as it scales up, which is more important than most
people care to admit because everybody just wants to talk about growth and scaling up.
But what are you going to do in the meantime when you run into the decline on all the rest of your
assets out there? Because if you've been doing this long enough, you know how the field works
And you can kind of guide these people into deployment methods that will be successful long term versus watching them get cut off at the knees because now all of a sudden their production doesn't support the power generation requirements, etc.
If that makes sense.
That was a lot for that question about off-grid and data center size and why.
But, I mean, we call it the devil's in the details here.
And that's why it works.
So you're chasing clients in the oil and gas industry.
Well, I don't chase clients anymore.
They come to me and tell me what they want to build.
And then I tell them whether or not it's a good idea.
Maybe we should build it this way instead of that way,
considering available resources, assets, locations, and everything else.
Yeah.
So they've got operations probably in disparate places.
You can spin up this modular rig in one place, scale it down as you lose that capacity.
Or up if they want to punch a hole in the ground later on somewhere else and gather system it up into a pipeline.
And we can increase the size of the system too.
That's the other benefit.
Yeah.
But then you can sort of take, if you're scaling down, you can take that excess, the hardware, everything that you need to the next site and start building there.
Okay. So is this...
Got to be like water.
Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense.
So when it comes to, like in Bitcoin, like one of the early narratives I remember hearing about was the, you know, flare, like these off-grid opportunities for mining Bitcoin.
And in my mind, it was like, oh, this is just a forever source of power that, you know, you could just build this jet to your point.
you could build like this giant infrastructure and it would just kind of work forever.
What you're saying is that in practical reality, the way this actually works is you need a lot
more flexibility than anyone pretends or probably even just realize it's like a normal Bitcoin
like myself. It doesn't work in this space. Verified, sir. Okay. It's interesting. And so
ultimately, like to me, it feels like what you're doing is you're doing like the, I don't know,
the mining equivalent of purchasing the components to build your own node,
to build your own self custody setup. It's like, um,
well, yeah, um, you are essentially because in order to do this out here,
it's not like a traditional mining operation where, you know,
it all wrapped up in a little pretty package and you just stat your ASICs and forget it and walk away You have to deal with everything yourself from the provisioning of the chemical energy or the gas
to the power generation, to network engineering on the ASICs, low distribution, three-phase power
in the containers for putting it on with. And then you have to deal with managing the ASICs
everything else on site uh a lot of people don't realize this but you're out in the oil field
you're in the elements it's it's raw out here and it ain't fun when it comes to computers and
it's dusty you got heavy iron content in the dust so as soon as you get too much moisture in the air
on the if uh if the ambient environment and the container itself isn't right you might end up
sorting your circuit boards just because they got too dusty and they got moist and now you got
you know conductive dust on your pcbs and so it requires daily boots on the ground
commitment to actually make one of these operations be successful because you think
about it you are you're having let's say four different major trades that all have to operate
perfectly together synchronously to uh in synchronization to to achieve one goal which is
mind the bitcoin right so you have to have oil and gas stuff going your way right flow everything
else has to be operating properly outside of that and you have to have power generation you know
electrical uh generation and distribution is it's not easy that comes with its own set of problems
and then so then also with that you have to be a mechanic too to deal with the generators and
everything else that happens on that end and you got the asics themselves and the network engineering
right and dealing with all that that's its own set of problems and also don't forget hvac because
if you're gonna keep them puppies purring and hashing cool you got to make sure you're moving
the hot air out properly and know how to deal with high low pressure environments and what
that's all about. So literally you got five major professional skill trades that have to all happen
in one place all at the same time constantly in order for it to be successful or else if any one
of those things doesn't happen or has a problem operation doesn't work. So on average are any one
of those disciplines where you tend to find the most have the most problems like the most
troubleshooting or is it just a mixed bag so um and depending on this problem it's like what are
the typical problems you're troubleshooting okay so it depends on the scale of the operation first
is where you're going to see uh a lot of these issues pop up right so if i have uh for an example
a smaller deployment is probably going to have less networking issues and more generator power
generation issues if the uh like depending on how the they acquire the equipment versus a larger
deployment that already has let's say a bunch of tested out gens so example is um i got a guy who
has a large deployment and he got all his power generation uh contracted and so it's clean load
tested no issues you throw all the asics out there and everything well there's thousands of asics and
well the guy was you know he's not a genius network engineer or anything he had issues with getting
them all to a pole right so we had to go in and we had to build his ip range and essentially you
to configure all the switch gear to kind of outsmart old Mr. Elon Musk and Starlink so we
could kind of sneak all that stuff up on in there and onto the network. Um, and then a smaller
deployment, uh, let's say it's 250 ASICs on like a, uh, you know, something under a megawatt.
And, uh, well, that gentleman, uh, he went, uh, the, the, tried to cut corners on power
generation costs in the beginning but some used generators that people told them they're in great
condition and um well we got them going but then essentially we didn't have any issues networking
all the a6 the ip range was perfectly fine we didn't have to do any magic there to make that
happen because we didn't have more than what what we could handle and range and everything else so
that was pretty straightforward plug and play but we ended up having power generation issues over the
course of a couple weeks because these gens they hadn't been you know uh load tested properly or
else like they they got rode hard and put away wet and sat for years and then you know they said
they were fine when they got put away but downtime causes issues for generators they don't like it
the generators like to stay running and so you know with that operation that was a you know one
the potential issues now i mean somebody who plans all this out has been doing this for a long time
can mitigate all these issues out the gate before they even happen in a lot of cases um but
unfortunately a lot of the guys that i end up working for they have already purchased all their
equipment because they had an engineering team or some group of guys put it all together on paper
and it looks great on paper and it's like a go and they get the approval and then they go start
buying all the equipment and then all of a sudden they realize like we got all this stuff now it's
time to put it out in the field and make it operate well there's not a whole lot of guys
out there like myself that actually do the physical operations building and deployment aspect of it
and so what happens is i come in at that point and i'm like okay well this is all great in theory
it works wonderfully on paper but considering what the you know this this and this about the site
and the gas chromatography analysis and flow rates and that like these aren't even the right
generators sometimes or it's like this is better suited for like a pipeline operation and this is
better suited for a flare gas operation and so what i end up having to do is kind of like
help them as best as i absolutely can with operational support and guiding them back
into a place of you know operational um let's call it feasibility right um because it's easier
to say go and you know get a gas chromatography report and then source your generator for that gas
than it is to just go buy cheap generators from somewhere and then force them to run on whatever
gas you can manage to obtain and so like more oftentimes than not i've run into issues where
you know, that's, those are the challenges in, in regards to the field and the people actually
building. Um, they, they just, unfortunately, and it's like this for everybody. So I don't,
I don't get upset. I don't, you know, point fingers. I don't dismiss anybody or think less
of anybody. I try to stay humble and just know that, you know, everybody is trying to do the
best they can with the knowledge they have, but understand that they don't know what they don't
know. And by that, I mean, things in the field, you will never see in a book or on paper,
just because that's not how it works out here are going to happen. And until you see that,
you can't know. And so that's where I try to shine and be the best I can be for my clients is
by trying to head off things before they happen and say, yeah, well, you know, I dealt with this before over here.
I dealt with this over there.
And this is, you know, what we're going to see if we don't get a handle on it now.
And so essentially.
It's, you know, preferable if I can get brought on from the beginning of the project, you know, and line things out.
But, you know, a lot of times it's, you know, guys are already building something and they're at the sticking point or they're wanting to make sure that it goes together as best as it possibly can.
And, well, fortunately for me, I've been smart enough to protect my reputation in this industry.
And, you know, I'm the guy they call when they want to put on.
So, yeah, that's where it is.
That's awesome.
uh are the besides the asics are the component parts to create any of these operations
relatively generic like that you're not having to like get a lot of custom
like the generators are generators you can buy you know off the shelf so to speak any
really anything else it's just a matter of configuring it properly according to
manufacturer specifications yeah yeah so you're you're uh that's a very astute observation
in regards to the you know overall requirements in regards to specialty equipment
um the only real specialty piece of equipment is the asic itself i mean unless you have a hybrid
system where you need a special type of transformer to protect certain things on your
electrical system a lot of times it's it's generic you know they got uh the transformers are are um
nothing special it's just like a a step down transformer might be a 480 277 delta needs to be
step down configuration to 415 240 y and uh then those are you know already in production standard
for industrial equipment all over the world. Conductors and cabling, that's pretty standard.
It's just sizing the service to the current that's going to be passing through, right?
And then generators are generators, right? It's just that I advise people to get your gas
chromatography report and match your generator to that. Because in regards to specialty equipment,
I would say that yes your generator for out here should be continuous duty prime uh which and should
be on the fuel system rated for the btu and gas so like if you got let's say 1300 btu gas
you're probably going to want to run something that's a rich burn low rpm like a waukesha or
Or even like if you have to go a higher RPM, like a PSI engine, go, you know, get like a high power or something like that.
They have a fuel system that can handle the raw wellhead gas in real time and make the adjustments on the timing of the engine to keep it going instead of causing the problems.
Whereas and in that case, that would be a generator specially for wellhead gas.
Right. Whereas if you were to take like a standby, like a coal.
solar 400 standby generator and try to put it out here like that and you're running raw wellhead
gas into it you're probably going to have detonation issues cylinder heads are going to get hot the
thing is it's not going to like it and you're going to end up spending a lot more money on
maintenance and having downtime dealing with the generator because you're trying to push gas through
it that it just wasn't built to run whereas something like that is going to be better suited
for clean pipeline gas because usually places where standby generators are operating like that
it's either diesel or they have a pipeline available that they can supplement the fuel
to the generator on and in that those generators are tuned to run that clean low btu 950 000 btu
gas and they just can't take the other stuff that we bring from out here in the oil field
And so little tiny things like that, you might say can be specialty oriented. Right. But I mean, technically, I mean, it is kind of generic in regards to a lot of the other parts.
okay that makes sense so let's zoom out for a minute so the clients you work with are these
folks like orange pill they're mining and then stacking those sats taking self-custody or is
this like an expedience thing where they're like hey we've got this stranded energy i've heard i
have a friend who started mining bitcoin just to make some extra cash on the side and he has this
guy you know tarantula who can come in and help us get this set up like who are these people
So, first of all, who these people are really isn't anybody's business
One
I don't mean literally, I mean like what's the nature of their
Two, what they're doing with their Bitcoin or stacking or wherever it's going is also nobody's business
And three, the average person that reaches out to me is private equity
okay yeah because like i've made it quite clear that i i don't build for pubcos they do not have
the best interest of the bitcoin ethos and like network in mind i don't believe i think all they
care about is wall street keeping wall street happy and and what is good for wall street and
their shareholder stock price and i think that if a decision came across the table that said like
we going to do this it will send our share price to the moon but it not good for Bitcoin I don think that they would give a rat backside about Bitcoin They would take the option that just puts their shareholders price to the moon And so I seen things like that happen already
Just like example is we had a pub co try to do.
Oh,
fat compliant blocks only.
And they were going to set a standard for that.
And then what now I was going to have to conform to you because you
cucked up and went you know all fed soy boy and like got soft and decided that you're gonna
just bend the knee and play this game well you can piss off with that i will never build for
anybody like that ever and i advise them to walk away from me because it's like bitcoin doesn't
care it's gonna keep going with or without you whatever these people writing the policies say
or do it's gonna keep going it doesn't matter and that's how we're gonna build it too
and so the guys who approach me to build and i'm building for they're of the like mindset
they're freedom maximalists sovereign maximalists you know they they understand the future what it's
hitting for they know how to be successful it comes with controlling your cost behind the meter
and being in a position to just build build build and not get stuck in the lane when you're dealing
with bureaucratic bullshit nightmares and red tape and everything else because we don't have none of
that out here we operate in a lean mean hard-hitting fighting machine fashion and so those are the guys
that they reach out to me to build it's it's guys that can do you know let's say a couple megawatts
and and they're ready to do more or else it's a producer who has an idea he's heard about this
He wants to supply gas. And then now it's up to me to maybe go find some equipment and put it on and make it happen. Right. And, you know, that's basically the majority of my clients.
And I also do consulting work with people as well.
So, I mean, there's an army of Bitcoin mining plebs out there that are my guys, that those are the guys I love and support, that they're trying everything they can to make things happen and operationally for themselves.
I was like, you know, I love the homies out there.
We see them with their mining setups at home where they're offsetting the cost of heating their house with the A6.
Like, man, I was doing that back in 2018 myself, you know, heating the house with miners, rebuilding my HVAC system and ducting in A6 and stuff.
And then now we got guys running hot water heaters and heating their driveways in the winter and doing all kinds of other stuff with A6 through hydro and other systems.
It's absolutely amazing, but it's so hard for those guys because they are, you know, they're bleeding orange themselves trying to make it happen and fighting the meter itself, you know, the power bill from the grid.
And so they're doing everything they can.
You know, I get consults with guys like that where I try to help them understand how they can do supplemental, renewable to offset their power cost.
Maybe they got some space on the roof for some solar.
Maybe they're in a good area to toss up little five kilowatt wind turbine or something.
Or maybe they have access to a nice water feature on a property where we can develop some drop and fall.
And now we can have a little micro mini hydro turbine set up.
Just anything I can do to help my guys offset the cost at the meter and keep them hashing at home.
That is like one of my most favorite things to do.
um and so like that's pretty much the range of the clients that i deal with is like all the guys
private equity trying to just break off and do it wild horse sovereign style or just like the
plug miners who are right at the precipice of am i going to be able to do this at any scale or is it
like is this where i'm at with this and how can i make this operation better in long term right
that's awesome yeah i think you you answered the question i was trying to ask i mean the people
you're working with are are bitcoiners they're sovereign maxis those types of folks yeah they're
hard yeah i have a little bit of a vetting process like i ask guys you're gonna come out in the field
with me right and we're gonna look at some stuff because uh if you think that this is just
plug in this and turn on that and walk away well sir you're in for a rude awakening like don't even
try to put your head down on that pillow at night because we're gonna fight so i don't know like if
you're looking if your goal is for you to scale this into like the bit you know the like you're
the world leader in off-grid bitcoin mining or if this is just like hey i've got my sort of lane
that I swim in and I'm really good at it and I focus on this and that or explain something to
you about that sir I'm already world leader in off-grid bitcoin mining okay so do you think do
you think though your operation do you like you view it as something scaling to like that tens of
thousands more sites or do you think that there's that it's going to be the way that this operates
Yes. So for me personally, and my corporation that my team, my co-founder, Dimi, and my guys, Logan, Jose, and Umar, we are together, we have a business called Sovereign Hybrid Compute, right?
And that business, I am personally looking to see scale indefinitely because what it does is not only does it decentralize the mining from the grid and keep it pushing forward in new frontiers off grid, but also we're operating hybrid compute systems.
So we're also doing data storage, cloud compute infrastructure that's privacy focused and oriented, paid for in Bitcoin, VPN, VPS services, etc.
We're also working on building out a division that can support essentially unchained artificial intelligence.
You'll be able to run your own instances and just kind of have no training wheels to worry about dealing with.
And now that is so important.
I can't even begin to explain to you how important it is that people have data sovereignty.
They're not locked into vendors like AWS, Google, Azure, and all those guys.
And what we're doing at Sovereign Hybrid Compute that gives people control of their data again
in regards to cloud compute solutions, VPS, VPN services, and other things that I've just mentioned.
it's it's a little different than the way things are kind of going right now like when when us one
east amazon aws has a hiccup and a third of the entire internet is like fucking gone off the face
of the earth that's a problem sir like that's a huge problem that is centralization to its core
and more and them guys though at the same time data scrape and steal everything they can from
you and sell it to somebody else to spite you and make money off you at the same time while they're
doing it we're gonna allow that to continue my man the sovereign hybrid compute we're taking all of
their solutions spinning it back on them allowing people to own them outright if they choose to or
we'll provide the infrastructure for them and run it and they can pay for it in bitcoin and as long
as they want and in regards to setting up their account i don't care if they type in daffy duck
or Mickey Mouse because I don't have to worry about chasing them. Our settlements happen in
Bitcoin. It's final. And so we don't have to deal with the fraud, which means we can offer these
services for cheaper, better, quicker, more efficiently, and provide better services because
it's decentralized as well. We'll have hub and spoke build outs in a fashion that creates
safety failovers that are basically equivalent to a RAV5. It's auto backup, baby. Let's go.
no role just just go so like a company like start nine you know you can buy one of their devices
one of the people that we're working with so like you can have your own node connected to your
router at home and if you lose internet access or something like that not the end of the world
or maybe you've got you know a backup or something but what you're suggesting here is
you have the ability like because of the nature of the way you structure this you have high
availability for like the critical resources that you need access to access to file storage if you
want like a private you know llm that you want to run if you've got other resources that you want to
run instead of an us go to someone like you is that a good way of framing it a hundred percent
my guy okay very well said and this is this is already live and operational yes okay so how do
you uh don't i don't want you to divulge anything not that you would but anything that you don't
want to share how do you think about redundancy it like is it multiple sites different geographical
locations energy sources all above okay okay yep we're we're we're breaking off into other
continents now at this point um we're yeah there's uh we have already uh
it's already beyond the point of conversation now uh a university over in the continent of africa
I'm not going to say exactly which, but they want us to build their infrastructure and provide them with data sovereignty in regards to the educational institution itself.
They want to mine Bitcoin and are going to allow us to build out, manage and run the operations themselves and ourselves, as well as train them to have guys to do it on site so that it can, you know, long term be viable for them indefinitely.
And they want us to build out the sovereign hybrid compute style system at the same time.
So, yeah, in regards to what you were just saying about redundancies, we just broke into another continent on locations geographically to now.
Do you have like a white glove service where if someone came to you and was like, hey, I want to start, you know, migrate.
I want this level of sovereignty over my data, over, you know, any sort of new thing that I spin up that you guys have someone who's like, hey.
But they're like, I don't know how to do this, what to do.
Like, can you guys like walk me through this?
Or is it kind of more of a, you know, hey, we we spin up the infrastructure and you've got to make use of it.
So we have the ability to help clients and guide them and, you know, do that.
But basically, our infrastructure is set up so that you go to the website and you scroll through, you pick your services that you want.
And then it's already built automatically and deployed on the back end.
and then you just get an access point. Um, and then from that point going forward, you know,
if it's, uh, like they just need to migrate their data over from another place or something like
that. Um, you know, we have the ability to assist and to provide them with, you know, help to make
sure that they don't get totally wrecked in the process. Okay. Dude, that's awesome. Yeah. We
haven't actually put out like a um an official uh what do you call it um point of sale tab where
you know like buy six hours of you know white gloves the services like this but i mean we want
to provide you with the best customer service and and experience when you utilize our services so
you know you go through you run through and you buy everything you know if you're having a hard
time using it, you know, we are happy to help you because, you know, your success is our success.
Awesome. Okay, let's briefly zoom out on mining. I think you've talked before,
at least online, about mining pool centralization, some concerns. I'd love to hear your thoughts on
that. And then to what degree then you advise clients toward particular pools or are that,
You know, do you advise solo mining?
Like, what do you, how do you approach that with clients?
So with my clients in regards to recommendations for the pool or, you know, telling them what
to do, I really am not a fan of anybody ever trying to tell me what to do ever.
And so what I do is I educate my clients on every aspect of what's going on here.
and then help them to make an educated decision on what's going to be the best for them operationally.
So if I have a client who, you know, has millions of dollars of infrastructure deployed
and they have people that are, you know, on the payroll and everything else,
they're going to need consistent payouts, right?
And so I might advise them to start at an FPPS pool so that they can have that consistent payout from the pool to be able to manage the operation and everything.
Right now, if it's a client that is, say, has done a deployment that's like a little bit on the smaller side, might still be a million and a half to two million dollar deployment, but it might not have the same amount of overhead.
They might be able it might be financed directly by them and not have any debt servicing requirements And so they may be in a better position to keep the lights on temporarily while they mine to a pool like Ocean where the payout
comes per share based on when the block reward is hit, right? And so it's more or less based on
the operational structure of the site and how the client needs to disperse the funds, you know,
in general to keep things going like what are the risks here you know we have to weigh all these
things out uh then you know say that whether or not doing it this way is going to be better than
that way necessarily um i can't say uh the data is there and it's proven that you know the guys
who are mining fpps are they're getting shafted i mean you look at the numbers bob burnett that's
one of my favorite guys out there he always puts pen to paper and runs the numbers before he does
anything he literally did the test and ran the same asic sets on an fbps pool and ocean and the
rewards paid out better from ocean every time and so i mean i i advise people that if you can
if you can afford to do it go that way and mine to a pool like ocean or build your own you know
mining node and and launch and like if you have enough hash rate literally you have enough hash
rate to hit the block, run your own solo pool. Let's go. This is what this is about.
Bitcoin mining was never about guarantees. It was always about risk. There's no guarantee you're
hitting the block. Pools give people the advantage of having that security. But at the same time,
it comes at the cost of decentralization is from what we're seeing now. Right. And so,
you know, until we can get more people who are out there that are able to get in a position to
take the risk, you know, a lot of them are going to have to stick with certain types of situations
that aren't necessarily favorable or the best long-term for our network. But I, I believe in
like what the guys at ocean are doing and, and, you know, I appreciate stuff like that. I know
that there's going to be more in the future.
More people are going to build out,
we call it implementations
that give people the ability to,
you know, build their own block templates
and do things like that.
And so long-term,
I feel like that as long as people
keep making strides and moving forward,
that, you know,
we will get away from all this madness
that we're seeing with these proxy pools
and everything.
But it's going to take some time,
you know.
And it's not going to be an overnight thing. But the network itself, interestingly enough, we've seen it in the past where a pool acquires anywhere more than 49, 50 percent of the hash rate.
The actual miners on that pool themselves, we've seen make mass exoduses from those pool and that pool and go to another one.
Literally, they did it without being prompted or told to by anybody because they knew that it was going to be a problem if it did happen.
And so that's one of the things that is beautiful about this network.
You know, it kind of self-corrects sometimes when it comes to course.
You know, even the people can surprise you occasionally.
The thing that would concern me, because I've heard that before,
there was a different cohort, though, historically who was mining,
and they felt that conviction to go move to another pool.
What would concern me is that we have actors in the space moving forward, you know, big public companies, for example, who don't have maybe don't have quite the incentive or maybe there's a an effort to centralize the mining at the pool level.
Is that something you think about or they're not concerned?
so i don't have concern about it from the perspective of like a necessary like necessarily
a direct network attack because you have to think that you have to understand that
if you're gonna do that you're basically foot gunning yourself you know you do this you just
compromise the value of this asset now for your own gain. And at the same time doing that, it's
going to drive the value of that asset down, you know? And so you want to shoot yourself in the
foot now or later is the question. It still requires that outlay of capital up front.
Correct. Yeah, I think that makes sense. So here's the other thing. The other thing,
aside from the capital expenditure requirements or how long could they necessarily like control
that because how much is it going to cost to run hash like that right the other so that's that's
that's one of the reasons why for me kind of it's like a non-starter but what is concerning is that
these are in my opinion the bottleneck and achilles heel when it comes to legislation
for the network like if you have let's say multiple major entities that are controlling
x amount of the hash rate in the pools right or hold this x amount of percentage in the pool
what is the um likelihood you know that the other pools are proxies for them and now if they get
you know if it's boot on neck time from a legislation standpoint they roll the proxy
pools are rolling right along with them and so that's where it's more concerning for myself is
like from a legislation standpoint that's where they i feel like would try to hit the hammer like
drop the hammer and so that's the other reason why i like building off grid and uh running you know
infrastructure that is separated from the main the mainstream so we have pools like ocean and
other guys like myself that will be willing to spin up a mining node and try to accumulate hacks
and just mine the bitcoin directly from the coinbase itself off the network instead of trying
to go through a pool and that's where legislation doesn't matter like they can they can pull whatever
legislation they want a pool operator but if you're an anonymous pool running behind tor and
and you're operating in a circ bitcoin a circular bitcoin economy well good luck with your
paperwork and your documents homie because bitcoin don't give a fuck yeah i love that man well hey in
the interest of letting you get back to your day i know you got a lot of work to get done let's let's
just head to the last question here uh do you have any more in between well i you talked about
i mean one of the things i wanted to hear about was the sovereign hybrid compute i think that's
an incredible service and i think you did a really good job of framing that i'm gonna i'm gonna look
into that personally uh for some great purposes so yeah i may maybe in touch with you on that as
well but uh no i think you you covered a lot we i mean i could talk to someone like you all day but
maybe we just need to have you back on at another point in time
and we could spend more time on Sovereign
Hybrid Compute in the future.
I'm excited
to hear your unpopular opinion
and you get bonus points if you offend some
big ones with it.
Unpopular opinion
here.
When it comes...
Let's
put it towards the
the whole core knots thing.
How's that?
I'm sure
ruffle some feathers or short
some skirts out there.
So
the people that are
screaming core
no more
and the people
that are over there screaming
the knots or Nazis, etc.
that really need to go look in the mirror
and stop screaming at each other
because they're kind of just screaming at themselves.
Because this Bitcoin itself,
what it is, the code, and how it's operating,
it is operating exactly as it was intended to operate.
Open sourced and in a manner where anybody can take it,
do whatever they want to it,
and then redeploy their own and build off of it right and that's exactly what's happening in both
sides and the thing is is just one side is saying that you're not building it the way you're supposed
to be building it and the other side saying the same thing back and it's like you know you guys
are both saying the same thing to each other it's just the message is different on the other end
and that thing that they're saying is that we don't like freedom of speech and code because
otherwise we wouldn't be saying nothing to you about what you're building we just let you build
and let bygones be bygones but that's not what's happening people are at each other's necks crying
about this and that and their morals and their ideology and their principles and and like you're
not letting me do this and like i don't want to do that well dude nobody's gonna stop your stupid
jpegs from getting into a block you know there's other people out there that are mind a block
there's other nodes that aren't not nodes like i think there's a lot of it and unpopular opinion
here's the unpopular opinion part a lot of the people out there right now yelling and screaming
about it don't necessarily even understand any of the mechanisms of action behind how it works
they're literally just doing it because it it gets them attention yeah try it puts eyes on them
puts eyes on them validates whatever their thoughts or beliefs are and everything else
because the guys who are running and trying the gun
and use it as a data file storage situation,
they can still do that right now.
And the guys who don't want it to operate like that,
well, they can operate in Otsnode if they want to and do that.
So it's like it's working just as it's intended to.
And it's not going to stop.
and I'm going to keep building the mining infrastructure.
They're going to keep crying about he said this, she said that.
This ain't what it's supposed to be.
That's what it's supposed to be.
And I think that they're all just looking for attention.
Otherwise, they'd be doing it behind closed doors somewhere else
or in an email thread back and forth, you know.
So I think this is a risky follow-up then.
What implementation are you running on your node?
so i got a uh i have an updated past v version 29 on my core um i also have not snows too so
so yeah you're you're yeah you can you can you can claim that position because you you are truly
uh impartial on this one but uh i am and like i'm gonna build the supporting infrastructure
sure no matter what so yeah i just like have fun watching all my little nerd fun homie dev homies
you know beat the brakes off each other verbally because i like seeing man i beat the brakes off
of them physically out here in the field awesome tarantula man you're awesome really appreciate
you taking some time hey tell people where they can find you learn more about sovereign hybrid
compute and anything else you want to share with them yeah man thank you i appreciate the opportunity
to shamelessly plug my stuff although you know when it's an integrity built operation that's
driven from straight source and truth ain't no shame necessary so anyone wants to find me i'll
be building and sharing what i build on twitter at huddle tarantula and then uh sovereign hybrid
Sovereignhybridcompute.com is a site, all one big fancy word.
If you don't want to type all that in, though, to your URL,
you can always find a link to Sovereign Hybrid Compute on my Twitter profile.
Perfect. Awesome. Tarangelo, thanks so much for the time, man.
We'll stay in touch.
Appreciate you, Michael. Thanks for your patience and everything from before.
Like I said, when we first started going down this path,
I'm not an easy guy to nail down, and you found that out.
So I appreciate your patience.
All good, man.
Glad we found the time, brother.
Take care.
Right on, man.
Stay hard, brother.
Cheers.
And that's a wrap again.
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Hoddle Tarantula.
I know I did.
Love that guy.
And really, really, truly appreciate what he's doing.
So much more for the Bitcoin network than all the suit coiners and people you hear way,
way, way too much about.
Go check out his business.
Go follow him on X.
He's such a funny and fascinating guy to pay attention to, follow along with.
And of course, if you need help taking your Bitcoin into proper 100% self-custody, go to thebitcoinway.com slash podcast.
You can schedule a free 30-minute consult with a member of our team.
We also help with online privacy, setting up privacy phones.
We can help you with a plan B residency option in Panama.
Such an awesome opportunity.
And as the world descends into chaos and tyranny, you're going to want that.
Again, it's thebitcoinway.com slash podcast.
Do me a favor.
If you're enjoying the channel, give us a like, subscribe, comment, something to feed the algorithm.
them share with a friend family member loved one who you think might be interested in in it we'd
really appreciate anything you can do to support us and until next time stay safe stay sovereign
and remember the yield on bitcoin is freedom