How Bitcoin Mining Can Solve Climate Change

William Szamosszegi: Energy use in and of itself isn't bad. And the big question is, is, okay, well what's this energy coming from and what are the emissions profile? 'cause at the end of the day, the real contributor to global warming is the emissions profile of whatever activities going on. And so when you look at something like Bitcoin mining, it's one of the most renewable carbon negative industries out there. The entire network at this point in time is almost carbon negative. That means that there's a certain amount of emissions happening. From the entire network. Yes, there are still emissions. There's pretty much emissions in everything, but when you start introducing carbon negative activities like capturing pollution or even renewable energy, then you start looking at net carbon negative activity for the environment.

Sean Weisbrot: the Wheel Live podcast. I'm here today with William. Sam Lasi, I'm probably butchering that I've tried many times off air. That's the best I can do. He is CEO and founder of SaaS Mining, which allows customers to mine Bitcoin using renewable energy sources. He's also the host of the Everything Bitcoin Mining Podcast and has been featured in Business Insider, Yahoo Finance, market Watch, and nasdaq. He's also a regular contributor for Bitcoin Magazine, coin Telegraph and CoinDesk. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about, uh, psychology in entrepreneurship as well as coffee. Its usefulness for entrepreneurs and things of that nature. So thank you for taking the time to talk with me. William w always tell everyone a little bit more about how you got involved with, uh, Bitcoin and how you came up with SaaS mining and when you became addicted with coffee to coffee.

William Szamosszegi: I got addicted to coffee back in college. Um, I, it was weird 'cause when I was growing up, my parents didn't let me, uh, drink any caffeine. They were like ultra strict with it. And then once I, I got to college and I started drinking it, I think I started drinking too much coffee. And as an entrepreneur, as you can probably expect you drink a lot of coffee, uh, when you're building a company. But a little bit more about my background. I've been an entrepreneur, uh, through and through ever since I was a kid. If you name business that you think a kid would try and start, uh, I probably tried starting it. Like, you know, I even at one point I was even ba baking, like monkey bread, um, like selling baked goods and stuff. So I did that up until I went to college. I went to Bucknell University, uh, freshman year there I played tennis and then afterwards I knew that I wanted to go and build a company. And so this was before SaaS mining, but it was also a tech company. So. Imagine that you are a student on campus. You could go onto the app and you can see the events happening on your college campus. So we had some traction on at Bucknell, and then we started launching at some other college campuses. And around the time, it was actually not too long after I started that company, I had first started getting introduced and learning about. Blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies, but I never really took the leap until a couple of my buddies, they were really, really deep into it and they started telling me more about how it worked, told me to look into it. And I just, it, it's kinda weird. I feel like everyone's had this type of a moment in their life where your brain is logically telling you to do one thing, but you're being pulled to do something else. And that was one of these times in my life where I was being pulled. To go and start something that was in this new industry. And the logical decision with everything that we had been through up until that point was to continue the company I had been building. So long story short, I went and I ended up starting SaaS mining in January of 2018. And you know, we've been on quite the ride since then up until today. But for everyone who hasn't heard of SaaS mining, uh, who's listening to this SaaS mining, we make it easy for you to begin mining Bitcoin with renewable energy. So one of the big things that we saw was that, you know, I'm assuming your listeners know what Coinbase is. If you want to go and buy Bitcoin today, it's very easy. There are tons of exchanges you can go into Coinbase, Kraken, Binance, name an exchange. It's very easy for you to buy Bitcoin. If you think about how do you begin mining bitcoin today? If you ask anyone that question, there's no clear answer. And so that was what we set out to go and solve. We wanted to make it easy for anyone to begin mining Bitcoin. And, and the final thought that I'll leave you with on that is we're still very early in this technology with Bitcoin. Uh, I mean, I like to say it's like we're in chapter one of this industry. It really is so, so early and with Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin miners are like one layer deeper, so you could own Bitcoin, but if you own a Bitcoin miner, you're even more invested in the Bitcoin network because you are actually supporting the network at a base layer. And so one of our goals at SaaS Mining is to help make it easy for people to begin supporting Bitcoin's base layer. Help build the social network of the Bitcoin network. And finally, just our focus is renewable energy. So try and help people begin mining Bitcoin in a sustainable, renewable way. Uh, and that might be a topic that we might touch on at some point, but the implications for the energy sector are enormous. With Bitcoin mining,

Sean Weisbrot: the key thing this year is sustainability. And I think a lot of people have been really excited about Ethereum's. Migration from, uh, proof of work to a proof of stake, uh, system where the energy consumption literally dropped by 99%, like overnight, which was quite shocking,

William Szamosszegi: um, in a good way. I think that that's one of the biggest misconceptions that, uh, that our been facing as a Bitcoin miner and as someone who works in the energy sector, a lot of people were looking at these headlines saying that. Ethereum, moving from proof of work to proof of stake was great. And honestly, I think that this is one of the worst things that we could have possibly done, not just for Bitcoin or not just for Ethereum versus Bitcoin head to head as a digital asset, but in terms of the environmental app, uh, ramifications in the long run. When you remove proof of work from Ethereum and move it to proof of stake, not only are you making it more centralized, but you're actually. Taking away all the beneficial properties that proof of work can have for the environment and the energy sector. So like for example, like let's say that you're an energy executive and you have a well that's leaking methane. Well, you've got a couple of options. You could let it continue to leak. Methane is 84 times worse for the environment than carbon dioxide. So you can let that continue to leak or you can pay over a hundred thousand dollars to plug that. Well. So stop that pollution. Both of these are a huge liability to you. They both, these options suck. Now, let's say that you introduce Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin miners, because of the economics, can go and capture that pollution on site and turn it into Bitcoin. And this is very, not a lot of people in the mainstream know this, but. Aside from just the positives for renewables, this is one of the strongest levers that we have to actually fix the methane problem. You hear all these environmentalists talking about how methane is so bad for the environment, and right now there is no solution to that problem, aside from having to pay over a hundred thousand dollars to plug that well. So Bitcoin mining and proof of work, uh, is a good way to think about it. Proof of work is the strongest capitalist incentive that we have in the economy to fix the methane problem, and Ethereum just got rid of that. Why can't you say I.

Sean Weisbrot: Ethereum helped to solve part of the problem, or at least it removed itself from the problem at whole at large by

William Szamosszegi: getting rid of that. Yeah, so this is a another big common misconception about how proof of work actually works. A lot of people will make these comparisons talking about the energy use. Of proof of worker of Bitcoin mining and they'll try and compare, oh, it's this energy use compared to, um, like they'll compare it to some type of country. At the end of the day, with this energy use, energy use in and of itself isn't bad. And the big question is, is, okay, well what's this energy coming from and what are the emissions profile? 'cause at the end of the day. The real contributor to global warming is the emissions profile of whatever activities going on. And so when you look at something like Bitcoin mining, it's one of the most renewable carbon negative industries out there. The entire network at this point in time is almost carbon negative. That means that there's a certain amount of emissions happening from the entire network. There are still emissions. There's pretty much emissions in everything, but when you start introducing carbon negative activities like capturing pollution or even renewable energy, then you start looking at net carbon negative activity for the environment. Now, when you look at Bitcoin mining and proof of work in particular, you're seeing more and more miners moving towards renewable net neutral or carbon negative mining activity. Now, as this continues to increase. Many experts such as Daniel Baton, they've had, they have a lot of research showing that it, within the next couple of years, it's very likely that Bitcoin mining will be carbon negative. But past those next couple of years, you're going to see an enormous amount of pollution taken outta the air and help and a, a huge positive for fighting global warming through proof of work, through capturing all these, this pollution and methane. And this is unfortunate because. The mainstream isn't necessarily covering this because the people covering this aren't experts in energy. They're not experts in Bitcoin mining and they're just people that are, are out there talking out their ass that dunno what they're talking about.

Sean Weisbrot: Caffeine is absolutely one of the most addictive things in the world, I would say. Um. What is it that you think draws people to caffeine and why they continue to take it even though they know, as you said earlier, that it's not great for you?

William Szamosszegi: I have a couple theories on this. Not saying that I can reference a bunch of studies, uh, but I think that with, especially in, in today's world, there's just so much going on and, and this ties into social media and all these other aspects, but I. The people who are working today, uh, there's, it's such a competitive environment that really, if you're going to outcompete another company, another team, it helps if you have more hours. And a lot of times it's very difficult for people to plan. Uh, you'll see people staying up late and trying to get back to work, get back to it when they haven't necessarily gotten enough sleep. And it's caffeine's like a, a. Easy bandaid that you can put on a lot of these things, because with caffeine it really just inhibits, uh, it, it makes it so you're not necessarily feeling the true effect of how your body feels naturally, and you just feel very, very okay when you should probably be sleeping. And so, I mean, we were talking about this off air. I'm not by any means a caffeine expert, but I do drink a ton of coffee and I, I just find myself, especially in building a company, there are times when just things need to get done. You can't necessarily control every little piece. You can do your best to plan around it. And, and, and that's important because you gotta make good decisions. But sometimes it just, you're sleep deprived, there's work that has to be done, and then you just go and I. For yourself, another cup. So, uh, I mean that's pretty much the extent of how I look at it. There are times where I do try and cut down my consumption, uh, especially on weekends. I'll try and drink a lot less or just try and avoid it all together. And I do notice that there is a difference from that. But, uh, I am by no means someone who is off of caffeine right now. I was just talking with you. I've had, uh, quite a few cups today even. So you said you got.

Sean Weisbrot: Introduced to caffeine in college. I didn't start drinking coffee until like two and a half, three years ago, and that was because I was staying in a hotel in my ex-wife's hometown while we were dealing with our divorce. I was there for about two months, and in the hotel they had a buffet, you know, for every morning. So I would go to the buffet and there was coffee there and it was Vietnamese coffee, which is like the strongest coffee in the world. And I'd have a little espresso basically, of these, this Vietnamese coffee. And because I, I wanted to get my money's worth of the buffet, you know, I was like, oh, you know, coffee. And, uh, I got addicted to it. I didn't realize I was what I was doing. I'd never been addicted to tobacco or. Or anything else that's addictive? Um, never been an alcohol drinker, never been a smoker or nothing. Got addicted to caffeine and, you know, I realized later on like how bad it was. Like for example, um, I will refuse to have a second cup in the day because I don't wanna have more. I have a single espresso in the morning around 8, 8 39, and it carries me for the day. There's some like places that I'll get coffee where I will crash at 4:00 PM There's some days where it'll carry me to seven, but almost inevitably I crash at the end of the night. Now it makes for going to sleep pretty easily because I crashing. But it's also not healthy because let's say it's like 6, 7, 8 o'clock, I'm out with friends somewhere and I start to feel really sluggish. That's annoying because like they're energetic and, and nobody else has a problem with me. I also find that it requires me to drink a lot more throughout the day, and I find that I wake up really dehydrated in the morning and I end up feeling really tired in the morning. It's like I don't really see many of the benefits of the caffeine. Except for like the first hour or two, and even then it's like, I'm not sure it's worth it. And yet, every single time I've tried to quit, I can go for two or three days. I've gone for two or three weeks, you know, two or three times. But inevitably I end up back with the damn coffee I. For no reason. There is no benefit to me whatsoever, and yet I still go back to it.

William Szamosszegi: I know that there have been studies out there that show that alcohol affects different people differently, and I think it's, it's about 8% of the population that when they drink alcohol, they don't, they have a different type of effect where their, their body releases more dopamine than a lot of, than the rest of the population. And these people tend to be massive, massive drinkers. So in terms of coffee, I don't know if there's necessarily something similar where it affects certain people of the population in a much better way. Um, I can speak from personal experience though in the fact that, uh, I have tried quitting coffee before and I didn't necessarily see as larger benefits as some other people did when they completely quit. But then again, I'm also like a massive coffee drinker. Uh, I mean, I drink more coffee than almost anyone I know. And that's probably why that when, when I go off, I don't necessarily see the benefits. I mean, I'm drinking five plus cups a day. Uh, and I mean, there are days where I Dr. I'll drink like over 10 cups of coffee. So I'm drinking just a ridiculous, ridiculous amount of coffee. And it doesn't really affect me that much. Like some other people, they'll drink a ton of coffee and they will get all jittery and shaky and they can't operate like with me. I've gotten to that point before, and I mean, actually now that I'm thinking about it, this is the most I've ever thought about coffee. But, uh, the, when I, when that happened to me before, it was actually after I had quit for a while and I got back on it, and then it was a lot, but I also think it has something to do just naturally. I have a very low resting heart rate. I think the average is somewhere like 60 to like, I don't know, like 90 for average heart rate, and mine is around like 40. So maybe that's why it doesn't affect me as much. Uh, I just. I'm not, I'm not necessarily sure. I think that we're, we're reaching the bounds of my coffee knowledge.

Sean Weisbrot: I think the average resting heart rate for human, I mean maybe American, I probably couldn't generalize to the rest of the world. And it's also gender based and age based and these kinds of things. Um, it's probably closer to 70 something. 70, 75 unless you meditate or you're an athlete. And then it gets into like the fifties. So like I meditate every day. I've done so for about 19 years now, and my resting heart rate's about 50, 55. I do meditate as well, one espresso from flying. I'm also very sensitive to anything that changes the chemistry of your brain as you're, you're pointing out there. I'm very sensitive to everything. When I have a little bit of alcohol, I'm tipsy very fast. I get drunk very fast. It lasts hours and hours and hours. If I smoke weed or you know, eat, eat, uh, eat something with weed in it, which I, I don't do anymore. I, it's been a few years, but when I did a little tiny puff and I would be really high for 3, 4, 5 hours, where other people would be like 20 minutes later, I'm ready for another hit. You know, and I'm very, very, very sensitive to these things. Call me a cheap date, but

William Szamosszegi: you know. Yeah, I, I think I'm a little, not a little bit, I think I'm a far bit on the, uh, opposite end. Like a lot of those things like coffee for, I, I think you got the example with coffee, but like, even with like drinking and stuff like that, I feel like it takes, takes a lot for me to like truly, truly get the type of effects that some other people might get. And, you know, a, a couple of drinks.

Sean Weisbrot: You said before that you've quit. How long did you quit for?

William Szamosszegi: I would say I probably quit about like three times or something. Since, since starting. Do you know how long you quit for, it's like a, like a couple weeks or something?

Sean Weisbrot: I think it's around that time that you start to see the benefits, especially if you're a heavy drinker. You have to quit for like a month or a month or so to be able to see those. Like almost immediately you'll see benefits in sleep. And like I, I think as well, there's an anxiety epidemic around the world and I think that one of the reasons that, um, so many people experience anxiety is probably from consuming too much caffeine.

William Szamosszegi: It's possible. I mean, the caffeine raises your heart rate and a higher heart rate, that's physiologically what's happening. When you're getting very anxious, your heart starts pounding and it almost mimics that. So I. You could definitely see the coffee contributing to anxiety. I mean, I personally

Sean Weisbrot: felt when I quit, I felt a lot more like mentally stable, honestly, when I wasn't on it. Although I, I've been able to find in every, you can say whatever you want, but I find that Starbucks espresso, single shot espresso, no milk, cream, sugar, anything like that, just a black espresso like gives me a good amount of energy for a long period of the day. With none of the jittery parts. And so it, it actually doesn't make my anxiety worse. Um, but then again, if you tip, you know, I'm tipping 50 cents, it's like $3 and 12 cents every day for a fucking espresso. You know, you're paying like close to a thousand dollars a year, or $1,200 a year for, you know, to get high pretty much.

William Szamosszegi: Yeah, I don't wanna see what my bill is yearly for coffee. So there was a point in time where I was, I was just doing hot coffee, like the pots, I had the grounds, there's easy, you get a ton of ton of coffee per pot. So I just have like a couple of pots and good. But now I have, I. Uh, like I, I don't have a pot anymore, and so I've been just drinking, uh, you know, iced coffee where you're just buying the bottles and I mean, I just run through those. So, uh, yeah, the total bill for coffee, you gotta be spending at least, at least a few hundred dollars a month. I mean, it's a lot, but, so this is the other thing too. I'm not sure if you wanna dive into this, but I'm, ever since I was young, I was super obsessed with fitness, always into playing sports and stuff. And so my diet now is actually, uh, in large part during the day is coffee. So during the day, I don't eat food. I eat all my food in, uh, in like a few hour window. And then the rest of the day I'm just drinking a ton of water and drinking coffee. And, you know, I'll get my, like, you know, roughly like 3000 calories in, in like that short period of time. And that's kind of just how I've been operating. I, I played around with intermittent fasting a lot. Uh, lots of studies have shown a lot of different health benefits of it, and a lot of people, like, let's say that you, you wanna start intermittent fasting, you definitely don't want to go as extreme as, you know, one meal a day or, or like, you know, a four hour window even. A lot of people start with an eight hour window. But, uh, I do definitely see the benefits of doing intermittent fasting. There have been times where I've stopped intermittent fasting and it is actually severely, like, negatively impacted my just quality of life. Uh, just like it makes me so sluggish, which obviously you're sluggish when you eat, like everything. All in one meal, but then it's just that short period of time. And I mean, my daily routine, I wake up, I will work all day, work out, and then I'll eat at the very end of the day when I'm like done with work I'll, so it'll be like May anywhere starting at the earliest at like 5:00 PM when I'll eat. Uh, and then at the latest, like, or actually earliest is like 4:00 PM and then the latest will be like, like 7:00 PM

Sean Weisbrot: I find it a lot easier to eat throughout the day where like 4:00 PM is my last meal. So I'll eat from like 7:38 AM but like it's just little snacks throughout the day. Mostly with like, maybe a, a meal that's like a little bit more of a Maine, uh, Maine dish just because I don't eat meat. So like, I'm constantly hungry, you know, like I, I don't really eat much in the way of carbs and I, my protein is all plant-based, so I'm pretty much hungry all day long.

William Szamosszegi: My sister's actually a vegan, she's been a vegan for like six years or something like, like hardcore, like super committed. Doesn't cheat at all. Uh, but I, I eat a lot of meat, so I kind of balance it out.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. I haven't had any meat or fish or anything in three and a half years. Three and a half years.

William Szamosszegi: Do you drink like protein shakes or anything?

Sean Weisbrot: I do at times. I know way protein has like meat products in it. I'm not quite sure of those details. I do try to stick to like the pea protein and all of that. Um, they're quite expensive and don't taste very good, honestly.

William Szamosszegi: Oh, yeah. I hate pea protein. I think it tastes very bad. I, but granted there are some non, maybe there are some very good tasting ones and I just haven't found them. But yeah, my sister, her protein powder tastes like dirt. It's, it's really bad. I

Sean Weisbrot: try my best to stick to like. Um, tofu and, uh, like nuts, you know, like, uh, almonds, cashews, uh, peanuts. Those are all high in protein. I also will have like, um, uh, this high protein yogurt, um, from Kos. It has, um, dairy, which I don't like. I, I try really hard not to have dairy, but it's the only yogurt I know of. That has high protein and low sugar, so I kind of just deal with it, although I'd rather not, but like when you go for the, the ones that use almond milk or soy milk or something, that's an alternative. It's usually high in sugar and low in protein, so I kind of tolerate that one.

William Szamosszegi: Yeah, yogurt's great. I, I mean, I eat a lot of Greek yogurt to try and get like additional protein in. I'll just toss it in like a smoothie or something. You should look at Kos. I eat Kos. Um, I like Chobani like, like bge, if I'm saying that right. I think Chobani has a lot of sugar in it. Not if you get the Greek yogurt, the, the Greek yogurt, I mean all these different brands, they have different kinds of yogurts and a lot of them do have sugar. But if you're going for the Greek, you normally wanna look for. Something that has like, I think it's, it's 10 grams of protein for every, I believe, 150 calories or a hundred calories. That's normally like the average for the different yogurts. With the oil, it's

Sean Weisbrot: like 18 grams of protein in 150 gram cup, and there's like seven, it's like seven grams of sugar or five grams of sugar.

William Szamosszegi: Yeah. I actually have some in my fridge right now. I, I'm gonna double check the, uh, nutrition label after this. I do too. I, I

Sean Weisbrot: am, I look at this stuff very carefully because I don't like to eat something that's packaged or because it's processed. And the more processed food you have, the less healthy of a diet you actually have. So I try really hard to stick to whole food ingredients, you know, single item. But unfortunately it's, it's difficult when you wanna get plant-based protein, um, which is why I like the nuts because they're whole, whole foods. Um, but yeah, I, I just, I have to find protein any way I can.

William Szamosszegi: Have you ever fasted before? Like, like fasted, I mean like multiple day, like, like 24 or 48 hours, anything like that?

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. About a year ago I was doing, um, like 18 hours a day, and then one day a week I would do a 24 hour. Then every other week I would do like a 44 to 48 hour, and then I went to Europe, right? So last May, 2022, I went to Europe and it all went to shit because now I was like with people. Off like before I was in America with my parents for like 10 months 'cause of COVID. And when it all stopped and, and I went over to Europe, I was traveling a lot, I was around friends and like in Europe, they eat meals at 8, 9, 10 o'clock. Like my entire routine got absolutely destroyed. I. And I gained like 15 pounds in Europe and I, I since lost a good bit of it, but, um, but in the process, my ability to tolerate those long-term like fasts, I lost it and I would like to get back into it. Um, I've been unable to, I just spent 10 days in Atlanta with some family, and it was just pure carbs. Everything they ate was carbs. I was like sick to my stomach the whole time. Because of how much food I was eating, and I just was powerless to like, control any of that unfortunately.

William Szamosszegi: Yeah. No, it's, it's funny how much the diet affects your, like, quality of life, for lack of a better term. I just, what I'm eating healthy, I just trickles into everything. And like, working out too, like if I don't go to the gym for like three, four days, like I notice it like psychologically and, and energy levels. It's so weird and counterintuitive. 'cause if you haven't gone for like three, four days and then you feel tired and then you don't want to go to the gym, then you just, it, it, it's very easy not to. But then after you go, you, it's just incredible. Like the energy difference I. I mean, it, it's huge. And so that's one of the things too, like when, when I get really busy with work, I'll think, okay, well I don't have time to go to the gym and I'll stop prioritizing it. So I'll think, okay, well I got an hour and a half in between these meetings, I'll just go hit the gym and come, come right back. But sometimes you just don't have like a long enough window to be able to go during the day and then you, you won't go that day. Then you might eat a little bit more unhealthy that day and then the next day you might miss it. And it's just, it's kind of crazy how important it is. And you just don't really realize it until you start missing it.

Sean Weisbrot: I definitely noticed that in Europe I wasn't working out. I mean, I, I will walk, I walk every day, 10 20,000 steps, so, you know, two, three hours a day of walking. Yeah, but in Europe, I wasn't going to a gym, so I wasn't building muscle, and I definitely felt a lot more anxious and a lot, you know, less energy and, and all of that. When I got back to the states a few months ago, I said, a hundred percent I'm getting a gym membership right now. I'm gonna spend the next two months in the gym. And I did five, six days a week and I felt so much better. And, um, so yeah, I, I totally get that as well. So when I, I'm going back to Europe, well. This episode's coming out in like June, but we're recording in March. I'm going back to Europe in a week and uh, I'm like a hundred percent getting a membership there. And

William Szamosszegi: random side question, but um, in terms of people that you've spoken with on this show in the past, are a lot of them, like have you spoken with many people who are in like the digital asset industry or is the majority of like the people you speak with outside? I speak

Sean Weisbrot: with people from a lot of different industries, I would say. So this is like 1 45, 1 46. This episode, I would say I've probably had five or six conversations recorded with people that are in the blockchain industry.

William Szamosszegi: Okay. Very cool. I I was just wondering if you've noticed like a difference between like the people who are in like tech or blockchain or Bitcoin versus the entrepreneurs who are building outside of it. Yeah, of course

Sean Weisbrot: there's a difference.

William Szamosszegi: There's a huge difference.

Sean Weisbrot: A lot of the people, I mean, mining in itself is a profitable business, but there's a number of people in the blockchain industry or in the the asset industry that are building things that may not be profitable because they don't understand what profitability means. That's not to say my guests are like that, because I. Or no? Yeah, I, I, I do, uh, I can't tell you how many people I've said no to. Like I, 'cause I, I'll get, um, PR agents coming to me telling me about their clients, um, which I think is one of the ways that we met as well. And I get a number of people in the blockchain industry that I say no to because I look at their profile, look what they're doing, and I'm like, that's not gonna be a real business. Right. Um, as I mentioned to you off air generally, and I think I've said this on air a few times, generally, um, I have very few requirements, um, from a guest other than your business is generating a million dollars or more, you, or you've raised a million dollars or more. Or you're an expert in your field, or you've done business before in the seven or eight figure or nine figure range, and you're talking about a previous experience or you're an investor in a field and, and all that. So. It's, it's not very, it's not very restricted, but there are a number of people that, that come to me looking to be guests, and I'm like, no. And, and the highest percentage of the rejections that I give are people in the blockchain industry specifically because I just don't want to deal with the conversation on air if, like, I think your model's bullshit. Sorry.

William Szamosszegi: You know? Yeah. Well, I agree with that. I think a lot of the models in blockchain in particular RBS. I think that a lot of people, especially when you saw all these valuations of all these random tokens just going crazy, they're just implementing PON Genomics, and that's one of the big reasons why, I mean, I'm not even sure if your listeners know this, but we're, we're not a crypto focused company. I don't label us a crypto company at all. I mean, we're more energy focused as well as Bitcoin mining, and we're dealing with hard assets. I mean, Bitcoin mining. You have a physical asset that is consuming energy supporting the Bitcoin network, which I'm not sure if you wanted to have that whole conversation around Bitcoin, but then like generating real value and it's a cash flow type of business, cash flow and Bitcoin, but then you just can liquidate that into, into dollars. Um, but yeah, I agree. I think that a lot of these guys, I think that you're, the majority of the blockchain projects out there in these cryptos are gonna end up going to zero. And it's unfortunate 'cause by the time that a lot of these people end up. Coming in, like a lot of investors for the first time go and start investing in these random crypto coins. They have no idea what they're buying. There's no real value prop. They'll buy into this thing, what I mentioned before. It's like, oh, the community portion, like that's like some of these guys' business models and it, there isn't real value there. So. In terms of value for the people listening right now, I would really tell them to be wary of, of crypto projects in general. Yeah. So I was looking at your website

Sean Weisbrot: a little bit ago, and I see you have this, uh, Bitcoin mining profitability calculator, and it asks from one to 10 how many mining rigs. You want to mine with and, uh, it, you're talking about ant miner S 19. So it's the 19th generation ant miner. I know that they change like every six months or a year. Um, most of the mining rigs that I am familiar with only really last, um, like a year or maybe a year and a half, if you're lucky, based on, um, the difficulty of the Bitcoin hashing algorithm. In order to solve problems, again, that we're starting to get deep into the technical aspects of it, um, which I'm sorry for, but basically, if I were to choose 10 rigs, you're telling me it would cost me 20 grand. The revenue would be about $2,400 a month, but the cost is about 1800 a month. So really the profit's only 5 88. Um, and therefore my annual profit. After a year would be about $7,000 on a $20,000 initial investment, but it would take a year and a half to pay off. Um, so it seems like a, a lot of money for a, a slow return.

William Szamosszegi: Yeah. So I, I guess to start, and you covered a lot there, um, there are some things I agree with and then there are some things that I think that I disagree with, but, uh, we can flush out here. So. Um, first off, what you're talking about is the product on the website, which is what we talked about earlier. We make it easy for people to mine Bitcoin. So normally if you wanted to start mining, you would have to get the hardware, you would have to set up the infrastructure, you would have to negotiate the power rate, and you would have to service that equipment over time. In simplest forms, there's a lot more to it, but in simplest forms, that's what you would have to do to mine. What we've done is because we've been in the industry for a while, we know a lot of the big players. We said, Hey, the everyday person isn't going to be able to mine unless they have expertise in all those things we just mentioned. So what our product does is you can go onto the website, SaaS mining.com, and you can choose however many mining rigs you want. Each mining rig. Right now, as you mentioned, it's $2,000. So if you buy 10, that's $20,000, then you actually own that mining rig. We're running it in the facility on a hundred percent hydropower. And so what that means is every single month there's a certain amount of electricity costs that your machine's consuming and servicing. And then that machine that you own is going to generate Bitcoin. So the Bitcoin that's generated is being deposited into your wallet directly. Um, now there are a couple things that you mentioned in terms of difficulty. Um, time to payback, all these types of things. At the end of the day, it's your decision. You, you just created Bitcoin from your Bitcoin liner. You can decide to sell it right away. You can decide to hold it. And so what that calculator's based on is it's based on the price of Bitcoin, based on historical averages, uh, over the past six months. And so. Right now there's the mining landscape and how it looks, and you can make an assumption of how difficult it's gonna get to mine. You can make an assumption of what the price is gonna be, but we're just trying to give you an idea with that calculator of what you could potentially earn, um, based on the historical data. Now, if you dive into more depth and you assume a much higher difficulty, you assume a higher, lower price of Bitcoin, your, your payoff can change. Just like how you can go onto Coinbase, for example, and buy Bitcoin. You could buy Bitcoin at 20,000 and it could go to a hundred thousand. You also saw a lot of people buy Bitcoin at almost 70,000, and now they're sitting on it just over 20,000. So at the end of the day, we're giving an on-ramp and a vehicle for people to be able to mine Bitcoin. I. If you're looking at historical data, the best time to mine Bitcoin is when the hardware's cheaper. Because like if your Bitcoin, if your machine only produces a certain amount of Bitcoin, you wanna buy things when it's on a discount. So these machines that are on our website right now, uh, right now they're $2,000 per machine, these exact same machines, uh, back in, in the, like about 10 months ago, where you were looking at over $10,000 a machine. So there's a big difference in terms of the amount of potential return based on when you buy that machine. And right now we're in a part of the cycle when the machine price is a lot lower.

Sean Weisbrot: So if the person, let's say for me, for example, let's say I were to buy 10 rigs. You should, you should buy more. Well, your, your, your website only lets me buy 10. So let's go with that number. So if I were to buy 10 rigs. Do. Is there a way for you to sell those rigs at the end of their lifecycle to someone else and I get that money back, whatever it sells for,

William Szamosszegi: or like

Sean Weisbrot: how does that work?

William Szamosszegi: Yeah. The way that we've done it is right now you're getting the one year warranty on those rigs, the manufacturer warranty. I. But you're locked into the three year hosting contract. And so that's basically saying, Hey, no matter what happens with the price of the electricity, like you saw a lot of miners there, electricity, price shoot up because electricity around the world got more expensive. You, you still have your price locked in. So like unlike those other miners where, um, we saw a lot of them, their electricity prices go up because it was a floating contract. We're fixing in that price for three years and then. In terms of the other part of your question, in terms of the liquidation, that's one thing that, to be quite frank, we're still figuring out what the customers, what we think would be best for them. Uh, we recently just launched, uh, this mining for one product, even though we've been in, since in the industry since 2018. And so, uh, actually one of my big jobs has been going and speaking with a lot of our customers and figuring out, okay, how can we continue to improve the product? What do you guys like about it at what are the solutions that we can do to make sure that we make the journey for mining for everyone who participates as enjoyable as possible?

Sean Weisbrot: Okay. Well, I am definitely going to look into this more myself because I am currently looking for more ways to, uh, generate a passive ish income on a monthly basis.

William Szamosszegi: Yeah. Well this, this is one of the things too that we'veseen, I mean. And when you look at the macro environment and everything happening around the world, it, it's, it's crazy. There are so many things we could talk for the next 10 hours about all that, but one of the things that we found really interesting is in today's environment, there are a lot of investors that don't necessarily know about Bitcoin mining yet, that I believe are going to get into it in a big way in the future. So one of the people, um, there are two groups that I was kind of surprised that were big advocates for our product, but now I see why they are like, one of them is just a real estate investor. Because a real estate investor, you understand how you own a hard asset and then you're generating cash flow. Through, you know, your monthly rent or however you decide to, to monetize that in real estate. Whereas this is like the real estate for the Bitcoin network or the digital world, however you wanna look at it, where you own a hard asset and you're generating Bitcoin over time. And so a lot of those people who see all the craziness happening around the world in the traditional monetary system, they're like, screw this. I want to get out of it. And you see a lot of these people going and trying to protect their wealth by going into a new type of, you know, structure that they're comfortable with, which in this case is. Hard asset, like a Bitcoin miner that is generating and printing Bitcoin. Well, is there anything we haven't touched upon that you wanted to mention briefly? As we come to the end here, we've seen some of our customers who really like what it, what it is that we're doing on the mining side. And we've partnered with, uh, StartEngine to allow, uh, customers or anyone else to actually own a piece of SaaS mining. So like you can own and invest in SaaS mining. I, I'm not gonna go through any of the details here, but if you do wanna check that out. Uh, you can go to startengine.com/saas mining, uh, and SaaS Mining, S-A-Z-M-I-N-I-N-G. I also host, uh, a podcast called Everything Bitcoin Mining Podcast, which you mentioned at the beginning of the episode. So if people are interested, like, want to hear a continuation of the energy conversation we had earlier, I speak with a lot of CEOs, energy executives. Uh, thought leaders on that, on that podcast, but it's, it's super Bitcoin focused, so we don't get to talk about the fun effects of coffee or any of the exciting things that we got to discuss here. Unfortunately, it's, it's pretty dense.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. If you're interested in more of the technical aspects of all this stuff, definitely check out is podcast. I'll have a link, uh, in the show notes below. This episode, and don't forget that entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint. So take care every day. Thank you, William.