Speaker 1: So we joined up with the Trump brothers. Eric Trump
Speaker 1: joined as a co founder, chief strategy officer. Donald Trum
Speaker 1: Junior came in as an investor and advisor to really
Speaker 1: create that distinct American brand in the bitcoin space.
Speaker 2: It's interesting sort of where we see bitcoin ad and
Speaker 2: why billionaire real estate developers seem to be abandoning the
Speaker 2: real estate and coming over to bitcoin.
Speaker 1: It's a heck of a lot less work to accumulate
Speaker 1: bitcoin than it is to build enormous hotels and golf
Speaker 1: course developments.
Speaker 2: You have President of the Free World, you know, Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: buying bitcoin and the Trump family buying bitcoin, and then
Speaker 2: you still have like your cousin down the street telling
Speaker 2: you it's like a scam.
Speaker 1: What bitcoin is offering is a much easier way to
Speaker 1: store value and store the efforts of your labor into
Speaker 1: a commodity that, over time is becoming more and more valuable.
Speaker 2: How do you approach thinking about building out the infrastructure.
Speaker 3: For America with bitcoin mining?
Speaker 1: There's really two kinds of infrastructure we're building out. There's
Speaker 1: the physical infrastructure of the mining, and then there's the
Speaker 1: financial system infrastructure that you might find with bitcoin treasuries.
Speaker 2: What's their experience, like trying to build this infrastructure out right.
Speaker 1: Now, this is something that unfortunately.
Speaker 2: All right, Matt, I'm excited to dig into this day.
Speaker 2: Thanks for taking the time to come and speak to me.
Speaker 1: Great to be here. Excited for the discussion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we were just talking about Texas and Austin,
Speaker 2: which obviously you're headquartered there. Sort of like the bitcoin
Speaker 2: mining capital of the world, I guess, but I want
Speaker 2: to I want to kind of get understanding from you,
Speaker 2: sort of how you're looking at the world right now.
Speaker 2: It's pretty interesting what's happening from a macro standpoint. JP
Speaker 2: Morgan is talking about this debasement trade golden bitcoin. Then
Speaker 2: we have this renewed interest in building the infrastructure of
Speaker 2: the United States with bitcoin mining obviously. Then there's this
Speaker 2: whole sort of new trend of companies buying bitcoin of
Speaker 2: the balance sheet and treasury. So there's a lot of
Speaker 2: fun stuff I want to cover with you. But let's
Speaker 2: just talk about for a second. Since we were just
Speaker 2: talking about Texas, why are you in Austin. Why are
Speaker 2: all the bitcoin miners in Austin or in Texas? What's
Speaker 2: going on there?
Speaker 1: It's a great question. So I've been in Austin now
Speaker 1: actually for five six years now, pre pre bitcoin mining.
Speaker 1: Actually I moved here initially I helped build COVID testing
Speaker 1: infrastructure for this state government. So we were doing at
Speaker 1: the time, my partners and I a bunch of COVID
Speaker 1: laboratory work, building big, heavy infrastructure to help support country
Speaker 1: and need. And yeah, I realized how much I love
Speaker 1: the dynamism here, the ability to build, the ability to grow,
Speaker 1: the responsiveness of the government to making sure that private
Speaker 1: enterprise can thrive. And so when the opportunity came to
Speaker 1: build large scale bitcoin infrastructure with at the time US
Speaker 1: Bitcoin Corp, it was a chance to seize the moment
Speaker 1: and repeat a lot of that same playbook that we'd
Speaker 1: crafted for a healthcare and apply that to heavy in
Speaker 1: for a four bitcoin so hut eight. Our sister company
Speaker 1: is actually headquartered in Miami. So in many ways, there
Speaker 1: are two crypto capitals in the United States. Of the
Speaker 1: New Cities, there's a there's a Miami style, a bit
Speaker 1: of the sizzle, and then of course you've got Texas which.
Speaker 3: Is as well. One is crypto and one's bitcoin.
Speaker 1: Are I think you're exactly right. I think I think
Speaker 1: Texas is the bigcoin.
Speaker 3: Help.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So you mentioned the sister company, HUT eight,
Speaker 2: so you're a spin off of HUT eight. I thought
Speaker 2: HUT eight was a Canadian company, right.
Speaker 1: So why don't we rewind the clock a little bit?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 1: US Bitcoin Corp. Was a company founded in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: I was the chief commercial officer there. With my partners
Speaker 1: Mike and Asher, we grew US Bitcoin Corp. To become
Speaker 1: one of the largest private bitcoin mining companies in the
Speaker 1: United States. Several years later, we decided to merge that
Speaker 1: company into HUT eight. It was a great partnership. The
Speaker 1: HUT eight team, which was Canadian, had a great bitcoin hoddle,
Speaker 1: which is over a billion dollars worth a bitcoin. Still
Speaker 1: have that on the balance sheet, great cabern markets, good
Speaker 1: brand name, and a really exciting partner for what we
Speaker 1: were able to bring operationally. So we merged with them
Speaker 1: and what at the time was one of the largest
Speaker 1: mergers in the history of cryptel And in that merger,
Speaker 1: we reflagged the company to an American company and moved
Speaker 1: the headquarters from up north in Toronto down to sunny Miami, Florida.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, okay, So I wondered about that. Was that
Speaker 2: right around the same time I believe I saw announcements,
Speaker 2: you got some of the one of the Trumps, I
Speaker 2: believe on board.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. So fast forward a bit. We'd already
Speaker 1: merged USBGC into hot Eate and created sort of a
Speaker 1: more key publicly traded bitcoin and energy infrastructure company. But
Speaker 1: as the old expression goes, there's really only two businesses
Speaker 1: in this world. There's bundling and there's unbundling. And the
Speaker 1: time had come to unbundle a lot of this bigcoin
Speaker 1: emphasis into a pure play brand that became American Bitcoin.
Speaker 1: So we joined up with the Trump brothers. Eric Trump
Speaker 1: joined as a co founder chief strategy officer. Donald Trum
Speaker 1: Junior came in as an investor and advisor to really
Speaker 1: create that distinct American brand in the bitcoin space.
Speaker 3: Got it? Got it?
Speaker 2: Do you still have the mining facilities up in Canada
Speaker 2: or have they all been also moved down to the
Speaker 2: United States.
Speaker 1: We have moved the majority of our hash rate to
Speaker 1: the United States. There's so much opportunity to grow here.
Speaker 1: I think that the Canadian enterprise, it's good. It's been
Speaker 1: a nice in many ways. They've joked that it's our
Speaker 1: fifty first state, so we appreciate that hash rate. But
Speaker 1: we've really been growing our operations here, especially in Texas
Speaker 1: as we chase great opportunities and sort of fresh builds
Speaker 1: for the American Bitcoin team.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now let's talk about sort of this environment, this
Speaker 2: macro environment that we're in right now with bitcoin. I
Speaker 2: kind of said earlier in the sort of that intro
Speaker 2: lead up that JP Morgan just sort of came out
Speaker 2: with what they're calling the debasement trade, and they're saying
Speaker 2: what sort of bitcoiners have been talking about for ten years,
Speaker 2: that governm's always going to debase the currency, so we
Speaker 2: should buy hard assets, gold and bitcoin. But I think
Speaker 2: it's interesting specifically for you because you've brought two of
Speaker 2: the Trump sons on to your company, and it's interesting
Speaker 2: sort of where we see bitcoin ad and why billionaire
Speaker 2: real estate developers seem to be abandoning the real estate
Speaker 2: and coming over to bitcoin, which I think is pretty interesting.
Speaker 3: I think people should be paying attention to.
Speaker 1: Oh, you're exactly right, So bitcoin is this really attractive
Speaker 1: store value. So a lot of folks are appealed. Real
Speaker 1: estate has a lot of appeal for folks if you
Speaker 1: think about storing value and it's their nest egg, and
Speaker 1: people are investing in their house and maybe some rental properties.
Speaker 1: What bitcoin is offering is a much easier way to
Speaker 1: store value and store the efforts of your labor into
Speaker 1: a commodity that over time is becoming more and more valuable.
Speaker 1: So as people get excited about buying real estate, a
Speaker 1: lot of them are realizing that whole on this might
Speaker 1: actually make more sense as of bitcoin trade. And so
Speaker 1: it's no surprise to me that a family that's so
Speaker 1: steep in real estate development would see dpeel of what
Speaker 1: we're doing. It's a heck of a lot less work
Speaker 1: to accumulate bitcoin that it is to build enormous hotels
Speaker 1: and golf course developments. Now, building a bitcoin mine is
Speaker 1: quite a lot of work. So we're still putting in
Speaker 1: the effort putting steel in the ground, but it's a
Speaker 1: different sort of mission with a different sort of output.
Speaker 2: Right. But they've been getting involved in all types of
Speaker 2: bitcoin businesses, so from bitcoin treasury companies, bitcoin mining companies,
Speaker 2: you know, bitcoin exchange, right, so almost like spreading their tentacles.
Speaker 2: And as I said, I think I think it's worth noting,
Speaker 2: and that's why I wanted to bring it up. You know,
Speaker 2: you still have interesting enough right where at this time
Speaker 2: where you have Larry Fink, head of black Rock, the
Speaker 2: largest asset manager in the world, saying to buy a bitcoin.
Speaker 2: Paul Tudor Jones has been all over the news for
Speaker 2: years and now this week again about buying bitcoin, and
Speaker 2: you have you know, President of the Free World, you know,
Speaker 2: Donald Trump buying bitcoin and the Trump family buying bitcoin.
Speaker 2: And then you still have like your cousin down the
Speaker 2: street telling you it's like a scam.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's an old quote where the Gibson about how
Speaker 1: the future is here. It's just not evenly distributed, and
Speaker 1: we're starting to see that happening in real time. I
Speaker 1: remember five, six, seventy to ten years ago trying to
Speaker 1: explain to folks about Bigcoin as an inflation hedge, but
Speaker 1: that was not really getting a lot of attraction. People
Speaker 1: would patiently tell me, you know, Matt, we don't really
Speaker 1: have that. Inflation's calibrated two percent a year. We've kind
Speaker 1: of solved for that here in the United States. What's
Speaker 1: really the appeal to any sort of inflation hedge and
Speaker 1: then now here you and I talking about debasement in
Speaker 1: real time, and it's suddenly that inflation hedge is looking
Speaker 1: pretty compelling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean, sure, what's wrong with two percent inflation? Well,
Speaker 2: other than losing ten percent of your wealth every five years,
Speaker 2: I mean, sure, nothing. I guess I would rather not
Speaker 2: lose ten percent of my purchasing power every five years.
Speaker 3: But maybe I'm just maybe I'm simple minded. I don't know.
Speaker 2: And of course it's not two percent. I look at
Speaker 2: inflation as the rate of that monetary debasement, right, And
Speaker 2: so you can look at the money supply. The USM
Speaker 2: two supply has increased by fifty percent in the last
Speaker 2: really forty percent in the last five years. And how
Speaker 2: much is gas up, and how much are homes up,
Speaker 2: and how much is stake up?
Speaker 3: And how much is gold up?
Speaker 2: And right, everything's up forty fifty percent, right, So I
Speaker 2: think that's the real number. But I think it's I
Speaker 2: think it's exciting not just for the debasement trade, the
Speaker 2: store value, but now all the businesses, all the industry
Speaker 2: being built out, and you talk about building infrastructure. So
Speaker 2: right now it seems like the Trump administration is really
Speaker 2: focused on making America great again, making America investable again,
Speaker 2: making America build again, and so building out the infrastructure
Speaker 2: is a big piece of that. How do you approach
Speaker 2: thinking about building out the infrastructure for America with bigcoin mining.
Speaker 1: In America, there's really two kinds of infrastructure we're building out.
Speaker 1: There's the physical infrastructure of the mining and then there's
Speaker 1: the financial system infrastructure that you might find with bigcoin treasuries.
Speaker 1: So the Trump administration has actually been fantastic for both
Speaker 1: of those. So to the mining side of the business,
Speaker 1: we have a pro energy government. We've got folks that
Speaker 1: understand that we need more energy and we need it now.
Speaker 1: We need generative capacity, we need better transmission lines, we
Speaker 1: need more sophisticated forms of off taking. We need to
Speaker 1: be able to trade around peaks. These are all things
Speaker 1: that bigcoiners and bigcoin miners have been swimming for years.
Speaker 1: So having an administration that's genuinely bullish on the electron
Speaker 1: it's good for us and good for what we want
Speaker 1: to deal on the power side. On the treasury side,
Speaker 1: there's a whole host of financial infrastructure that's also getting
Speaker 1: built out in real time. Earlier this year we saw
Speaker 1: the Genius Act get through the government. That was a
Speaker 1: fantastic piece of legislature. There's a few more market structure
Speaker 1: bills that are in the works. These to me are
Speaker 1: seminal texts. These are the sorts of laws that they're
Speaker 1: going to look back on the way that oftentimes securities
Speaker 1: lawyers look back on the nineteen thirties as the cornerstones
Speaker 1: of what created the American financial system. We're doing that over,
Speaker 1: but we're doing on a blockchain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some of the things I saw Trump doing in
Speaker 2: some of the executive orders that he put through in
Speaker 2: these initiatives that he started this year was also in
Speaker 2: part of trying to really kind of reindustrialize the United States,
Speaker 2: was to peel back a lot of the yellow tape,
Speaker 2: the red tape that sort of bogs all of this
Speaker 2: growth down. Experienced that I mean, as any of that
Speaker 2: helped you, what's their experience like trying to build this
Speaker 2: infrastructure out right now?
Speaker 1: So if you look at past administrations, we'd same as
Speaker 1: everyone else. We're dealing with the fairly hostile environment. And
Speaker 1: it came to opening things like bank accounts. You would
Speaker 1: be one day doing business, in the next day being
Speaker 1: told that you frankly weren't welcome and your money was stuck,
Speaker 1: and so we were somewhat victims of our own financial
Speaker 1: system as Americans. This is something that fortunately has really
Speaker 1: stopped that operation showpoint era is over, and we're better
Speaker 1: forward as a country. So those permittings and that chokehold
Speaker 1: that they had on the ins and out points of
Speaker 1: crypto were pretty serious and things that really slowed down
Speaker 1: the ability to build this industry here in the United States,
Speaker 1: And now that that's been rectified, we're obviously seeing so
Speaker 1: many of the jobs and so much of that energy
Speaker 1: coming back stateside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so when you think about I mean just a
Speaker 2: couple of things that we framed up already, I mean
Speaker 2: from the debasement, trade people waking up to that, the
Speaker 2: Trump administration, the Trump family getting into bitcoin, which is
Speaker 2: obviously a big signal. I think they probably know some
Speaker 2: things we don't have access to, so probably pretty bullish
Speaker 2: on its own. You look at the political headwinds that
Speaker 2: have turned into tailwinds now and are lifting this space up.
Speaker 2: So I'm curious from that macro standpoint, we look at
Speaker 2: a bunch of different factors, like what is your like,
Speaker 2: what are you looking at bitcoin. What do you sort
Speaker 2: of think is this bull case scenario. What are you
Speaker 2: expecting over the next five ten years?
Speaker 1: Bigcoing on for is the average American this off ramp
Speaker 1: from the FIAD debasement situation that really before there was
Speaker 1: no good outcome. Your options were other FIAD currencies, real estate,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed, you could buy some shiny rocks. You know,
Speaker 1: Gold's been on a bit of a tear itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's really nothing great about that is when it comes
Speaker 1: to a good store value in something that has a
Speaker 1: compelling use case or financial future for the country. I'm
Speaker 1: happy that the gold folks are feeling vindicated, but gold,
Speaker 1: to me is not an optimistic trade that is investing
Speaker 1: in this sort of pre monetary system as an escape
Speaker 1: from modern day society. And look, well, I'm glad folks
Speaker 1: have found a story value that works for them. Bitcoin
Speaker 1: offers all that and more and more and more people
Speaker 1: are seeing the value of having their money or their
Speaker 1: their hardware stored in something that has that fungibility, that
Speaker 1: ease of transferability, that verification on the blockchain. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of value add to bitcoin above and beyond what
Speaker 1: the goal or the gold premium would be for stoare value,
Speaker 1: and that's something that I only think is going to increase.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when you think about, you know, mining bitcoin,
Speaker 2: how do you approach the actual bitcoin that have been mined.
Speaker 2: So I'm just curious like what your strategy is. Is
Speaker 2: it like we're selling this for revenue cover our costs
Speaker 2: or do you have some sort of strategy maybe with
Speaker 2: your shareholders a capital that you've raised that allows you
Speaker 2: to hold it for the long term or are you
Speaker 2: sort of more like opportunistic and maybe you'll sort of
Speaker 2: like buy and hold around cycles. I'm just kind of
Speaker 2: curious what your viewpoint is on that.
Speaker 1: American Bitcoin benefits from having that mining business pretty big
Speaker 1: twenty five eggs as today, scaling from there, and also
Speaker 1: a treasury component. So we haven't sold a single satoshi
Speaker 1: since we all this to the company in April. To
Speaker 1: your point around financial structure, we actually have access to
Speaker 1: a multi billion dollar at the market offering vehicle that
Speaker 1: we're able to use strategically to raise money to buy
Speaker 1: more bitcoin to cover some of these expenses. So we
Speaker 1: really haven't dipped into the till when it comes towards
Speaker 1: liquidating satosis and paying for things, and that's not something
Speaker 1: that we foresee doing for us. Bitcoin is the end
Speaker 1: all bl is what we're really geared towards accumulating, and
Speaker 1: as we think about our north star of bitcoin per share,
Speaker 1: I'm not really interested in things that would reduce the
Speaker 1: bitcoin per share that I can then offer my shareholders.
Speaker 2: So then your publicly traded a bitcoin mining company is
Speaker 2: quite a bit different than what you might see with
Speaker 2: others Mara or Riot or something like that. Whereas they're
Speaker 2: mining bitcoin, they're selling the bitcoin. Maybe some of it
Speaker 2: they keep, but your policy is to get more bitcoin,
Speaker 2: whether you mine it or you buy it.
Speaker 1: Our attitude is that investors in a bitcoin mining or
Speaker 1: a bitcoin treasury company really want one thing, which is
Speaker 1: maximum bitcoin. So oftentimes I really refer to American Bitcoin
Speaker 1: as a bitcoin accumulator for that reason, we're accumulating bitcoin.
Speaker 1: It's that sym well, some of our they may want
Speaker 1: to sell, or they're trying to be strategic and trade
Speaker 1: around it. My version of strategy is dollar cost averaging
Speaker 1: into the hors asset on Earth. I'm not really interested
Speaker 1: in selling. I think that the energy arbitrage aspect is interesting,
Speaker 1: but for me, that's just one part of the operational
Speaker 1: discipline to grow your stack. So I'm very mindful of
Speaker 1: things like s and a very mindful of the cost
Speaker 1: of power per month, curtailment, trading energy, things like that,
Speaker 1: but really only in so far as it allows me
Speaker 1: to hoddle as much bitcoin as possible.
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Speaker 2: I mean, that's pretty interesting because as far as I'm aware,
Speaker 2: I mean, all of the public trade bitcoin miners are
Speaker 2: more like gold mining producers, if you will, right, So
Speaker 2: they get in the raw asset, they kind of do
Speaker 2: what they do, you know, do with it and then
Speaker 2: and then they sell it back into the market. So
Speaker 2: the bitcoin miners bring it in, they bring the bitcoin
Speaker 2: in existence, they sell the bitcoin back into the market.
Speaker 2: But your bitcoin mining company is not that your bitcoin
Speaker 2: mining is your Your bitcoin mining is part of a
Speaker 2: bigger strategy correc of a bitcoin accumulation engine and the bitcoin.
Speaker 2: The bitcoin mining is one component of that business, but
Speaker 2: the overall strategy of the over riding business is to
Speaker 2: accumulate bitcoin.
Speaker 1: Well put, for us, the bitcoin mining is a way
Speaker 1: to accumulate at a discount. I want as much bitcoin
Speaker 1: as possible, as fast as possible. If there's a means
Speaker 1: for me to get it at a fifty percent discount,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do that as long as I can,
Speaker 1: as fast as I can. And that's what mining represents
Speaker 1: to us. It's this way for us to turn energy
Speaker 1: a bitcoin we can go buy spot. So the things
Speaker 1: the treasury companies are doing, preferreds and converts and atfs,
Speaker 1: these are all great financial instruments and each has its
Speaker 1: own place. But to my knowledge, the only way to
Speaker 1: accumulate any bitcoin at a structural discount is to mine.
Speaker 1: So we struck the ground and we've been building big minds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting. Now what are you seeing right now
Speaker 2: in the performance of of the discount I should say
Speaker 2: the discount to mining bitcoin because a lot of people
Speaker 2: would look at some of these bitcoin mining companies, the
Speaker 2: public ones, and I mean actually the last couple of months,
Speaker 2: the stock's been doing pretty well on most of these
Speaker 2: publicly traded bitcoin minors. But for the most part, you know,
Speaker 2: last couple of years that hasn't really been performing that well.
Speaker 2: It looks like their costs are so high it's not
Speaker 2: that profitable for the mining bitcoin. What is the profitability
Speaker 2: like to mine bitcoin right now?
Speaker 1: So when it comes to the profitability of mining bitcoin,
Speaker 1: I would really pull American Bitcoin out from our peer group.
Speaker 1: And here's why. If you were starting a brand new
Speaker 1: bitcoin company today, a new bitcoin mine specifically, you're really
Speaker 1: wanting to really buy only one thing, which is the machines, substations, transformers,
Speaker 1: electrical gear, concrete, all of that. The return of capital,
Speaker 1: a return on invested capital, I should say, is not
Speaker 1: that compelling. It's really going to come down to the
Speaker 1: machines and being asset light and then also having as
Speaker 1: few staff as possible that are pulling away from that
Speaker 1: expenditure onto the eggsash. So when we were putting together
Speaker 1: the American Bitcoin model to begin this year, we thought
Speaker 1: we were almost reimagining what a successful bitcoin mining company
Speaker 1: would look like. So for a peers to your point,
Speaker 1: there's somewhat of a net drag. They have a lot
Speaker 1: of full time employees, there's very high overhead costs. They're
Speaker 1: not really watching construction costs the way we had but
Speaker 1: we were able to divide our core competency into the
Speaker 1: mining side, where we own the machines that's American Bitcoin,
Speaker 1: and then the building and development, which HUT does. And
Speaker 1: unlike other miners where they either need to vertically integrate
Speaker 1: fully in their own business and then they're paying all
Speaker 1: the costs of everything all the time, or they're working
Speaker 1: with the hosting provider, in which case someone else is
Speaker 1: trying to charge the margin. We've got a nicely aligned relationship.
Speaker 1: It's not antagonistic, it's cooperative. HUT wants us to grow
Speaker 1: where their customer first resort when it comes to bitcoin.
Speaker 1: They would love to see us take one, three, five,
Speaker 1: ten gigawatts of bitcoin mining off take. And for us,
Speaker 1: we see HUT as a great partner. That's a team
Speaker 1: that's already proven that that they can build these massive facilities.
Speaker 1: And HUT eight is not really looking to get bitcoin returns.
Speaker 1: They want energy development returns, they want energy infrastructure returns,
Speaker 1: and that suits us just fine on the bitcoin side.
Speaker 3: Got it.
Speaker 2: So you're leveraging HUT to then sort of host and
Speaker 2: run that for you, so then you don't have all
Speaker 2: that initial capex investment. That to your point creates that
Speaker 2: drag and it's so hard to get back to a
Speaker 2: profitable state from you can buy the machines, deploy the machines,
Speaker 2: have them running without having to invest that, and then
Speaker 2: just give a small percentage of the revenue back towards
Speaker 2: HUT to help them offset their capex investment.
Speaker 1: Precisely, My goal here is what they call lemonade, stand
Speaker 1: economics energy and has your go in bigcoin comes out.
Speaker 1: We hold a bitcoin. Not really interested in complicating that
Speaker 1: with a lot of other construction calls and things like that.
Speaker 1: It should be very streamlined, and that's just the way
Speaker 1: I like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just I just recorded a video. It hasn't
Speaker 2: hit my YouTube channel yet, but talking about Trump's one
Speaker 2: big beautiful bill and the bonus and accelerated depreciation that
Speaker 2: got renewed thankfully, and how you can take one hundred
Speaker 2: percent deppreciation in year one, and how a bitcoin minor.
Speaker 3: Is a computer equipment that depreciates.
Speaker 2: Over a five year period and so you can buy
Speaker 2: that bitcoin minor excel the depreciation for year one and
Speaker 2: it works out pretty amazing to write off that taxable income.
Speaker 2: And of course I talked about doing that and through
Speaker 2: like a hosted minor. Most people, I mean, especially be
Speaker 2: in California. I can't run a minor at my house.
Speaker 2: My power is way too expensive for that. But from
Speaker 2: a personal standpoint, when I do the math, I mean,
Speaker 2: it looks very attractive. I'm assuming you're just doing the
Speaker 2: same at massive scale.
Speaker 1: That's well point for us. The bonus appreciation is one
Speaker 1: technique or one allowance from the government among a host
Speaker 1: of changes that we've seen we hope to see that
Speaker 1: make our industry much much happier here in the United States.
Speaker 1: The bonus depreciation for us, it's good. I'm pro any
Speaker 1: policy recommendation that's going to bring the jobs and hash
Speaker 1: rate here to the United States. The depreciation, whether it's
Speaker 1: for a hosted peer of ours or for ourselves. To me,
Speaker 1: this is fantastic. I'd just much rather a hash rate
Speaker 1: be here in this jurisdiction than overseas in some autocratic country.
Speaker 1: And yeah, the bonus appreciation is a good part of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, when I think about bitcoin treasury companies, we talked
Speaker 2: already about the goal of trying to get more bitcoin, right,
Speaker 2: increase the bitcoin per share that they have. You mentioned
Speaker 2: that mining bitcoin's only a way to get discounted bitcoin,
Speaker 2: especially compared to like doing preferreds or something like that.
Speaker 2: Maybe I mean they're they're going to pay out of
Speaker 2: ten percent of that they keep they keep the spread.
Speaker 3: I guess they ARBA charge on that.
Speaker 2: But I'm I guess I'm curious, Like when I think
Speaker 2: about bitcoin treasury companies running a business alongside of it.
Speaker 2: Typically I think of that that treasury company deploying capital
Speaker 2: into a working business as a less efficient way to
Speaker 2: spend the capital.
Speaker 3: Most businesses don't.
Speaker 2: Do a fifty percent profit margin, and so to beat
Speaker 2: the hurdle rate of just buying bitcoin, it seems like
Speaker 2: I'm destroying capital by putting in any business, not just
Speaker 2: a bitcoin mining business, but any business.
Speaker 3: I mean, no business is doing a fifty percent profit margin.
Speaker 2: So I'm curious how you look at that, Like, I
Speaker 2: have money came in, Should I buy bitcoin or should
Speaker 2: I buy more bitcoin miners? And which one is actually
Speaker 2: more creative to my business?
Speaker 1: This is something that we think about every day in
Speaker 1: America bitcoin. Where to put that dollar for the marginal
Speaker 1: boost in hoddle. Sometimes it will be miners and sometimes
Speaker 1: it will be spot. It's really going to depend on
Speaker 1: quarter to quarter, week to week, where's hash price at today?
Speaker 1: Where our energy costs today? If I spend Fiat dollars
Speaker 1: to buy those miners, am I going to earn back
Speaker 1: or mind back more bitcoin relative to what I could
Speaker 1: buy today. It's actually a dynamic calculation. So there have
Speaker 1: been periods where we bought Spot. So we did a
Speaker 1: large minor purchase earlier this year. That was we believe
Speaker 1: in net a creative and strategy to us, but we'd
Speaker 1: also explore Spot buying. We've participated in the markets in
Speaker 1: that front as well. It is certainly a quarter to
Speaker 1: quarter thing, and you'll actually see as we grow involve
Speaker 1: as a company, you'll see us doing one or the
Speaker 1: other and that will give you some sort of indicators
Speaker 1: to where we see the pub going. For us, the
Speaker 1: key thing on buying machines is to not get you fork,
Speaker 1: don't chase. That applies to buy Spot and applies to
Speaker 1: buying machines. We want to make sure that we're not
Speaker 1: putting money into large orders when we believe there's going
Speaker 1: to be a cheaper machine opportunity on the horizon, better
Speaker 1: hash rate, etc. You saw a market increase in efficiency
Speaker 1: over the past two years we kept our powder dry
Speaker 1: at us Biccoin Corporate and Hot eight, and then now
Speaker 1: with American Bitcoin, we've put the machines into play here
Speaker 1: that are really future proofd for that next having. And
Speaker 1: so if we're gonna think about the having, and by
Speaker 1: the way, it's maybe in two and a half, you know,
Speaker 1: three years or so, I'm already still thinking about how
Speaker 1: are we going to make sure that our mining business
Speaker 1: can weather that storm. You really do have to be
Speaker 1: very thoughtful about where you'rechoosing to deploy capital. One thing
Speaker 1: that you mentioned is putting money into other businesses. I
Speaker 1: would stress that at American Bitcoin, we're really only interested
Speaker 1: in companies that are on the Bitcoin standard. I don't
Speaker 1: know how to run those other kinds of companies. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are aspects of them that I think could be
Speaker 1: net a creative. I would certainly look at any deal
Speaker 1: that would bring more bitcoin to our balance sheet, but
Speaker 1: it really needs to be part of our core thesis.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to limit myself, but I also want
Speaker 1: to make sure that I'm not spending a lot of time,
Speaker 1: in a lot of brain calories on something that is
Speaker 1: not really related to over core competency. When I was a
Speaker 1: consultant banded company. It was a line you'd always use
Speaker 1: about the importance of profiting from the core. And for us,
Speaker 1: the core is bitcoin, whether that's bitcoin mining, whether it's
Speaker 1: the treasury strategy work, and some harnsing that volatility. Let's
Speaker 1: let's stick to what we're good at and be very
Speaker 1: thoughtful about expansion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it say, you know, stay within your
Speaker 2: core competency is what Warren Buffett would call his deal box,
Speaker 2: right swinging at the ones I know that are going
Speaker 2: to have a high chance of completion.
Speaker 3: That makes sense.
Speaker 2: And I was just saying in general, just in business
Speaker 2: in general, is very rare to find any business, whether
Speaker 2: I'm a Bitcoin standard or not, that's going to have
Speaker 2: a fifty percent return.
Speaker 3: Agree, So that that's kind of where I put the
Speaker 3: hurdle rate for bitcoin.
Speaker 2: So it's like, huh, if it can't get And even
Speaker 2: if you bought a business that's twenty five percent, I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess technically that's still a creative, it's just less accretive.
Speaker 2: And so I guess is what you're saying, if I'm
Speaker 2: repeating it back to you, is that every time you
Speaker 2: look to deploy new capital, you're just sort of looking
Speaker 2: at those and deciding which one is gonna be the
Speaker 2: most accretive for the business, and you make your decision
Speaker 2: and based off of that.
Speaker 1: Correct, we are looking for things that are the most
Speaker 1: recreative in bitcoin terms. Again, for us, the north start
Speaker 1: here is bitcoin per share. So if I look at
Speaker 1: these deals and I think, hey, this is going to
Speaker 1: result more bitcoin, then we started out with I'm interested.
Speaker 1: But to your point, that's a very high hurdle. There's
Speaker 1: not a lot of businesses that have that bitcoin trajectory.
Speaker 1: And you know what if that means that we stick
Speaker 1: to bitcoin, I'm cool with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So you're acquiring bitcoin, you're building bitcoin, you're mining bitcoin,
Speaker 2: you're build up that bitcoin base. What is then the
Speaker 2: next stage of the business. So you build up your
Speaker 2: bitcoin base and then what you mentioned, some of the
Speaker 2: bigcoin treasury companies are doing preferreds or some other types
Speaker 2: of securitized instruments on top of the bitcoin sort of
Speaker 2: what's the strategy that you have or you see forward.
Speaker 1: There is a layer in fact beyond that one. So
Speaker 1: our business actually has three layers. Layer one is the
Speaker 1: bitcoin mining. That's our core competency. That's effectively accumulating bitcoin
Speaker 1: into fifty percent gross margin. Layer two, that's the treasury strategy.
Speaker 1: You've seen some of our peers using all sorts of
Speaker 1: financial techniques. We're aware of them. We are strategically doing
Speaker 1: what we want to do grow a bitcoin stack through
Speaker 1: the capital market side as well. But there's actually a
Speaker 1: third layer of this business, which is what we call
Speaker 1: ecosystem amplification. And there's really two ways I would position
Speaker 1: us for that. One is the American Bitcoin brand and
Speaker 1: getting out there and getting known as a brand that
Speaker 1: is geared towards pure play Bitcoin accumulation is somewhat of
Speaker 1: a joke. Someone was telling me that when you search stocks,
Speaker 1: they can be alphabetical, and there are times where we
Speaker 1: search bitcoin and ABTC is above BTC, which sounds great
Speaker 1: to me. But we are offering folks that that bitcoin
Speaker 1: accumulation product that the market doesn't really have in the
Speaker 1: way that we offer are. There are ETFs that have
Speaker 1: one to once and that's that's going well for the
Speaker 1: black Rocks of the world, et cetera. There are financial
Speaker 1: strategy companies. I mean, obviously micro strategy or not just
Speaker 1: strategy has pioneered a lot of those techniques. There are
Speaker 1: the miners, but for us, it's about taking the best
Speaker 1: parts of each. We want to be asset light like
Speaker 1: we believe the best miners are. We also want to
Speaker 1: be thoughtful about liquidity and volume like the best treasury companies.
Speaker 1: But this third level, this ecosystem play. That is where
Speaker 1: over the coming quarters I would like to spend more
Speaker 1: of my time. That is, what does an ecosystem on
Speaker 1: the Bitcoin standard look like? Because bitcoin is to our
Speaker 1: earlier conversation, it's not gold. It's better than gold, it's
Speaker 1: different than gold. There is a lot of capital tied
Speaker 1: up in bitcoin. What are the things that we can
Speaker 1: be doing as a Bitcoin Standard company to support that growth?
Speaker 1: Is it financial services? Is it consumer facing products? Is
Speaker 1: it related to putting things at to bitcoin l twos
Speaker 1: or do we want to start getting into swaps? What
Speaker 1: are the things we can do to get people using
Speaker 1: the bitcoin ecosystem Because all of that activity is net
Speaker 1: a creative to bitcoin, both in the abstract sense but
Speaker 1: also in terms of transaction fees, which routes right back
Speaker 1: to our mining business. So we're really trying to build
Speaker 1: a virtuous cycle here of mining and then treasury and
Speaker 1: then ecosystem, and collectively you've got a pretty unique accumulator
Speaker 1: among all these bitcoin companies.
Speaker 2: Governments will never stop printing money, So inflation it's not
Speaker 2: going away. Now. If your money is not earning at
Speaker 2: least ten percent the year, you're losing purchasing power. Now,
Speaker 2: that's why I talk about bitcoin. It's the number one
Speaker 2: way to beat inflation and secure your future. And the
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Speaker 2: you buy your bitcoin?
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Speaker 2: own your money, and your money starts with bitcoin. When
Speaker 2: you think about the ecosystem part, is that like is
Speaker 2: that like, you know, maybe like a venture capital hold,
Speaker 2: old company private equity play where you're investing in supporting
Speaker 2: in scaling your said earlier, bundling unbundling businesses that support
Speaker 2: the bigcoin ecosystem. Or is it more like you said
Speaker 2: financial services, where it's like, well, now we have this
Speaker 2: bitcoin on our balance sheet, how can we mobilize the
Speaker 2: bitcoin the balance sheet to get it to create yield?
Speaker 1: Is it both or is it one or the other?
Speaker 1: I would argue the best of both. Right now, we're
Speaker 1: not looking at venture investments per se. I am, however,
Speaker 1: looking at things that could create operational streams of bitcoin.
Speaker 1: So if there are opportunities for us to advance bitcoin
Speaker 1: to a group, or work with a group, or take
Speaker 1: a stake in a group and build their base, and
Speaker 1: that brings a stream of Satoshi's back to us, ideally
Speaker 1: there are already a bitcoin native business, or they're a
Speaker 1: business where I can quickly get them onto the Bitcoin
Speaker 1: standard that to me is really exciting has not yet
Speaker 1: been tried. What can we do to get more copanies
Speaker 1: in the bitcoin universe working together collaboratively. Folks basically were
Speaker 1: building these products, and they say that first time founders
Speaker 1: are very obsessed with product and second time founders are
Speaker 1: obsessed with distribution. After US Bitcoin Corp. Now I've got
Speaker 1: American Bitcoin into American Bitcoin, I'm very very interested in distribution,
Speaker 1: which is, how do we get all of these cool technologies,
Speaker 1: all of these interesting layer one, layer two solutions or
Speaker 1: bigcoin of products. How do we get those in the
Speaker 1: hands of the users? Because that's something that, frankly, if
Speaker 1: you look at the wider crypto ecosystem, was always a complaint.
Speaker 1: There were two questions I would get at these conferences.
Speaker 1: One is where the institutions and then the other, more
Speaker 1: perfect question is where exactly are the users of all
Speaker 1: of this stuff that's being built. My attitude is that
Speaker 1: American Bitcoin is that the next of both the institutions
Speaker 1: are coming. They want bitcoin exposure. We're starting to see it,
Speaker 1: whether it's sovereign wealth funds, family offices, the big wealth managements,
Speaker 1: the ras. They are getting onto a bitcoin trade. Though,
Speaker 1: whether it's spot or through an ETF for working with
Speaker 1: an accumulator like us. The institutions are coming, the users
Speaker 1: are also starting income. They might not even know with
Speaker 1: stable coins and things like that that they're using a blockchain,
Speaker 1: but the users are starting to appear as well. And
Speaker 1: so if we can find a way to take the
Speaker 1: benefits of both of these two incoming secular trends to
Speaker 1: the bitcoin world, it's going to be very beneficial to
Speaker 1: American bitcoin.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been deploying venture capital into the bitcoin space
Speaker 2: now five six years. I'm a partner at the Bitcoin
Speaker 2: Opportunity Fund, and so we invest through the entire bitcoin
Speaker 2: ecosystem and.
Speaker 3: We've we've had some really good, really good plays.
Speaker 2: We tend to typically do things that are a little
Speaker 2: bit further stage, not early venture, but a little bit
Speaker 2: further along already kind of prove it out. But I
Speaker 2: kind of got to this point, you know, the last
Speaker 2: couple of years, where it's like we need less bitcoin
Speaker 2: products and more bitcoin in everyday products, right to like
Speaker 2: really really push that use case right and one to
Speaker 2: the point that you just made one. I think it
Speaker 2: was just yesterday, Morgan Stanley sent out messages to their
Speaker 2: clients telling them they're going to start bringing in I
Speaker 2: think both bitcoin and ethereum for people in their in
Speaker 2: their Morgan stand account. So the rias the financial advisors,
Speaker 2: they're pushing that down.
Speaker 3: That's pretty that's pretty powerful.
Speaker 2: And then I think it just us last week, right,
Speaker 2: we've seen Jack Dorsey announce with Square quite a few
Speaker 2: things that they've integrated right into Square for the merchants
Speaker 2: to start putting some of accept bitcoin at no fee,
Speaker 2: be able to take a percentage of whatever they bring in,
Speaker 2: and whatever they want to set to go directly into bitcoin.
Speaker 2: And so we're seeing those things play out in real time.
Speaker 2: It's it's pretty exciting.
Speaker 1: I think it's tremendously exciting. Timing is everything, right. We're
Speaker 1: hitting a point where the public not only is interested
Speaker 1: in bitcoin, but they're getting off of zero and they're
Speaker 1: showing up, and we need to make sure that there's
Speaker 1: the infrastructure to support them, whether that is financial products.
Speaker 1: Like you're describing more of this consumer work. I think
Speaker 1: the way you put it is so eloquent that we
Speaker 1: need we need more Bitcoin in everyday products or products
Speaker 1: that day day users have. I think we're about to
Speaker 1: see that shift coming the coming quarters, and American bitcoin
Speaker 1: is going to be.
Speaker 3: Part of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now you mentioned earlier like when you think about
Speaker 2: buying the bitcoin minors and making sure that the machines
Speaker 2: will last long.
Speaker 3: Enough to get to the next halving.
Speaker 2: So the bitcoin having cycle is something that in the
Speaker 2: bitcoin space we've talked about consistently about every four years,
Speaker 2: or not even really about like almost like clockwork. It
Speaker 2: seems like we have, you know, a peak and then
Speaker 2: a trial, and at that time the amount of new
Speaker 2: bitcoin be in mind every day gets cut in half.
Speaker 2: And a lot of people have said that that supply
Speaker 2: demand imbalance or shock or shift is sort of what
Speaker 2: creates these highs and lows in that bitcoin space or
Speaker 2: in that cycle. There's a growing narrative that I tend
Speaker 2: to agree with that the four year cycle is basically
Speaker 2: dead and maybe the four year cycle was always a
Speaker 2: meme and it wasn't really about the four year cycle.
Speaker 3: What's your take on that?
Speaker 1: Well, Look, I think doing four year cycles on an
Speaker 1: asset that's not even twenty years old is a little
Speaker 1: bit aggressive, and certainly they don't have enough data points correct.
Speaker 1: There have not been enough four year cycles to declare
Speaker 1: a four year cycle with any degree of empirical certainty,
Speaker 1: if I could be so humble as to say that,
Speaker 1: you know, there's something called hyperstition, which is when people
Speaker 1: believe something new existing, and the four year cycle is
Speaker 1: one of those phenomenon that where when you think about
Speaker 1: emission schedules and you think about the role that miners
Speaker 1: playing the ecosystem, et cetera. There has been a grain
Speaker 1: of truth to it historically, and folks believing in the
Speaker 1: four year cycle likely precipitated more of a four year cycle.
Speaker 1: That being said, Bitcoin has had so many new adoptees
Speaker 1: and new investors and fresh eyes on it these days
Speaker 1: that I'm not sure people are as immersed in the
Speaker 1: lore of things like the four year cycle the way
Speaker 1: they would have been in past bitcoin bull runs. So
Speaker 1: when you lose that shared belief among the new investors,
Speaker 1: coupled with the fact that miners now are only accounting
Speaker 1: for four hundred and fifty bitcoin per day at the
Speaker 1: current emission schedule, it does take a little bit of
Speaker 1: the machine off the four year hypothesis. So I'm inclined
Speaker 1: to agree with you that while it was perhaps a
Speaker 1: helpful heuristic historically, while we are on a run. I
Speaker 1: think that part of the industry maturing is that we
Speaker 1: may be moving into a ten year supercycle. We don't
Speaker 1: know yet, it's too early to tell, but the composition
Speaker 1: of investors is certainly changing in a way that's probably
Speaker 1: making it a little less predictable than it used to be.
Speaker 2: I think to the point you made, I think is
Speaker 2: very accurate, where people believing it to be so sort
Speaker 2: of almost then reinforces it to be so. And I
Speaker 2: see it all over people ask me all the time.
Speaker 2: I see it online. A lot of people think that
Speaker 2: they should not be buying right now, or they should
Speaker 2: even start selling right now because we're at the peak
Speaker 2: of the cycle, as if like it's just going to
Speaker 2: happen on that day. And so to your point, that's
Speaker 2: sort of like this self fulfilling prophecy, like they're not
Speaker 2: buying or they're actually selling right now because November is
Speaker 2: always the peak every year, November, eighteen months after the having,
Speaker 2: and that could sort of force a sell off even
Speaker 2: if the sell off wasn't coming right. So that's certainly
Speaker 2: there now when the HAVING supply gets cut in half
Speaker 2: to your point, four um and fifty, it's not that much.
Speaker 3: The supply demand and balance is.
Speaker 2: So great, you know, between ETFs and treasury companies, institutions,
Speaker 2: it's somewhere it ranges five and ten times more demand
Speaker 2: than the new supply is being created. So you cut
Speaker 2: the supply in half, it's inconsequential. So for the average
Speaker 2: hoddler who's thinking about the price of bitcoin, maybe that
Speaker 2: kind of goes away. And I would argue that it's
Speaker 2: the global liquidity cycle that's in the driver's seat here,
Speaker 2: that's the dog wagging the tail. And obviously, when we
Speaker 2: had the last peak of November twenty twenty one, we
Speaker 2: were in a different world. We had just seen record inflation.
Speaker 2: Jerome Powell came out in November announced he was going
Speaker 2: to start hiking rates, and the hike rates at the
Speaker 2: fastest rate hiking cycle in history. And today he's not
Speaker 2: hiking rates. He just announced he's just start cutting rates.
Speaker 2: So it's like we're completely different. And so for the
Speaker 2: average hoddler, maybe the price stays up the same. But
Speaker 2: from a bitcoin minor perspective, you do have to be
Speaker 2: prepared for the for the emission as you call it,
Speaker 2: or the new inflation rate to be cut in half.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, so it's interesting that you bring an M
Speaker 1: two in Monteary supply as well as the FED rates.
Speaker 1: The FED rates are interesting from minders because again we
Speaker 1: build heavy infrastructure, so of course we're very mindful of
Speaker 1: debt and things like that. We we do pay some
Speaker 1: of our bills obviously in FIAT, and so we're very
Speaker 1: codis where FIAT is trading in what direction it's it's heading.
Speaker 1: The market is already a wash in capital, and so
Speaker 1: adding ray cuts is going to exacerbate that. Realistically, it's
Speaker 1: this seems to be consensus. We'll see where that capital goes.
Speaker 1: It's been an interesting time because you've seen almost this
Speaker 1: U shape where I can't recall a period of time
Speaker 1: where gold is hitting all time highs and so is quantum.
Speaker 1: You know, this is an interesting bar Barbelle. You're you're
Speaker 1: you're seeing these flight quasi flight to safety ideas that
Speaker 1: are that are going to all time highs. You're seeing
Speaker 1: bitcoin here in ALTIMEI goldenre in all time high, silver,
Speaker 1: all time high, et cetera. But then you're seeing quantum up,
Speaker 1: seeing flying cars absolutely ripping. You know, the the the
Speaker 1: the fringe risk on tech and the risk off assets
Speaker 1: everything is rising, which makes you wonder, to the point
Speaker 1: you've been making, if in it's just the dollar falling
Speaker 1: and we're really just seeing the impact of the basement.
Speaker 1: Because although bitcoin is an all time highs in dollar terms,
Speaker 1: bitcoin is not yet an ult time high in gold terms.
Speaker 1: And I remember going on some media tours maybe three
Speaker 1: or four months ago, and some interviewers were new to
Speaker 1: bitcoin would ask me, you know, Matt, where where do
Speaker 1: you see this going? And I like using gold as
Speaker 1: a metric. I think bitcoin I can extoll the values
Speaker 1: of bigcoin is being far more useful than that gold is.
Speaker 1: But it's a nice benchmark. Gold at the time was
Speaker 1: at twenty one trillion and we were at two trillion,
Speaker 1: and it seemed like a nice ten x. Gold today
Speaker 1: is around twenty seven trillion. Yeah, so we keep chasing
Speaker 1: this this high. So I guess that creates more of
Speaker 1: a headroom for for for bigger there's more, there's more
Speaker 1: room to advance to compare to the big brother of gold.
Speaker 1: Is that trad store value there. But time will tell
Speaker 1: to your point, if these if these cuts precipitate more
Speaker 1: of an uptick, or if people start realizing to your
Speaker 1: point that maybe we have at a peak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but how are you, as a bitcoin minor planning
Speaker 2: for the new supply of bitcoin being cut in half?
Speaker 2: I mean does I mean theoretically, I would just think
Speaker 2: back of the n appt in math that the price
Speaker 2: of bitcoin has to double if the supply gets cut
Speaker 2: in half for you to stay at the same profit margin.
Speaker 1: There's no proverb that you can't control the win, but
Speaker 1: you can adjust your sales. So as we look at
Speaker 1: the having coming up in two and a half, three years, right,
Speaker 1: still always out, it's still always out. We'll be here
Speaker 1: before you know it. But we're already being cognitive. How
Speaker 1: do you adjust your sales? So, as we think about
Speaker 1: where we would choose to deploy capital, knowing that it
Speaker 1: would take some time to get the sites up and running,
Speaker 1: shorten the runway pre having, we need to be very
Speaker 1: thoughtful about those expenses even today. These decisions made today
Speaker 1: will have decisions for quarters to come. So we're very
Speaker 1: aware of that and I already factor that into some
Speaker 1: of our CAPEX discussions. We have a roadmap to get
Speaker 1: to fifty plus eggs ASH if we so choose. That
Speaker 1: being said, as we look at the opportunity to just
Speaker 1: buy spot that could be compelling as well, so we're
Speaker 1: constantly balancing the buying spot versus buying minor trade. The
Speaker 1: other bit of the why buy miner's trade that I
Speaker 1: think is relevant to your question is the last having,
Speaker 1: the literal day of the Having, by the way, was
Speaker 1: our best ever revenue day, for my best ever, we
Speaker 1: had transaction fees five six seven times what we were
Speaker 1: making in terms of the block subsidy. That to me
Speaker 1: was a four shock. So as they think about the
Speaker 1: next HAVING, I don't know yet what that transaction fee
Speaker 1: volume will look like. But not only do I anticipate
Speaker 1: that Bitcoin will have doubled by the next having, even
Speaker 1: if we go through some sort of mini winter, I
Speaker 1: think the next HAVING is a pretty appropriate time for
Speaker 1: that doubling effect. You're also going to hopefully see an
Speaker 1: uptake in that transaction fee volume as well, so there'd
Speaker 1: be a double whaman. There's the need to get simply
Speaker 1: appreciation on the underlying asset, but if we can get
Speaker 1: any kind of increased velocity in the usage or the
Speaker 1: utility of bitcoin itself, that actually rewrates the model. So
Speaker 1: rather than us sitting here and conjecturing about a four
Speaker 1: to fifty decline mathematically to two twenty five, just constantly
Speaker 1: getting machetied every four years. We start to wonder about
Speaker 1: what does it mean to own the future of what's
Speaker 1: effectively the swift network on Bitcoin, and what is the
Speaker 1: value accrule that a bitcoin minor or someone with massive
Speaker 1: amounts of hash rate would get from that network.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of fees from the network, I believe today, well,
Speaker 2: I don't know when this recording is going to go out,
Speaker 2: So at the time of this recording, we had the
Speaker 2: V thirty get pushed through from bitcoin Core. Great, and
Speaker 2: that increases the well at you know, the op size
Speaker 2: got put in as a template standard default, I should say,
Speaker 2: which has a lot of people on both sides of
Speaker 2: the aisle. It seems like one of the reasons they
Speaker 2: did that would pete to help miners create more fees.
Speaker 2: What's your view on that whole debate.
Speaker 1: You're making this stute observation, which is that with the
Speaker 1: adoption of this upgrade, miners do win. There is a
Speaker 1: likelihood that the transaction fear just the the amount of
Speaker 1: things that are described on the blockchain will increase. As
Speaker 1: miners we are almost a service provider or infrastructure. People
Speaker 1: want to go on the toll road. It's not my
Speaker 1: business to ask where they're coming, where they're going. It's
Speaker 1: my job to process those transactions and really keep the
Speaker 1: toll road or that works safe so for us and
Speaker 1: secure so for us. I take a macro view that
Speaker 1: there are lots of developers on both sides of this situation.
Speaker 1: I see the merits to wanting to really restrict what
Speaker 1: bigcoin is for. But at the same time, I think
Speaker 1: a big part of the crypto libertarian ethos is letting
Speaker 1: people do what they want to do if they're willing
Speaker 1: to pay for it. And so if people want to
Speaker 1: really take advantage of these adjustments that have just been
Speaker 1: made by the upgrade, we're going to support. Where the
Speaker 1: community is is indicating that it wants to go again. Miners,
Speaker 1: you need to remember, are very conservative. So for us,
Speaker 1: the most important thing is that the blockchain stays up,
Speaker 1: stay secure, is defensible against any sort of fifty one
Speaker 1: percent attack. We think while we think spam is a problem,
Speaker 1: I think an even greater problem would be anything that
Speaker 1: we kind of jeopardize the blockchain itself. And unless we
Speaker 1: see increased transaction fee volume over the long term, that
Speaker 1: security budget is going to get a little bit tricky.
Speaker 1: So Net I'm open to the increase that we've just seen. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean unless it unless it hurts it long term.
Speaker 1: But you know, I do think that knots coming out.
Speaker 1: Although I'm not really.
Speaker 3: A fan of either.
Speaker 2: I wish we could sort of stay where we were,
Speaker 2: but I think it is a healthy free market action.
Speaker 3: Well, let's try an alternative.
Speaker 2: It is you.
Speaker 1: You remind me of something, which is that you know,
Speaker 1: governments hate competing. They hate it when you go when
Speaker 1: you get a driver's license in California and I live
Speaker 1: and get a driver's license in Texas, those departments and
Speaker 1: motor vehicles are not are not competing really, which is
Speaker 1: why the experience is not always the best. The only
Speaker 1: place where governments historically have competed or the economics, and
Speaker 1: then their defense budget and their defense industrial complex. And
Speaker 1: so what's been interesting about this from a bitcoin perspective
Speaker 1: is that your point, a little bit of competition in jets,
Speaker 1: a bit of rigor. So I'm glad that these discussions
Speaker 1: are being had. I'm glad that there's a debate back
Speaker 1: and forth. To your point, changes can be made they
Speaker 1: could be reversed or retracted if it was being seen
Speaker 1: as jeopardizing the ecosystem. You really want to avoid a monoculture.
Speaker 1: That is somewhat of what we're trying to escape is
Speaker 1: this hegemony right, of this inability to get out of
Speaker 1: the Fiata basement situation. And so part of that is
Speaker 1: offering a competitive alternative, and for things like knots as
Speaker 1: an example, if they're willing to present an alternative, if
Speaker 1: people want to vote with their feet, we'll channel er
Speaker 1: inner cryptolibertarian and we'll see.
Speaker 3: What they do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've heard of a third one trying to get
Speaker 2: some legs under it, being run by a nonprofit that
Speaker 2: would run a third option that'd be more of like
Speaker 2: an ossified code base, and it would only implement extremely
Speaker 2: urgent critical patches and it would not do any improvements.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm all for the competition. That seems to
Speaker 2: be where I would lean like, let's not try to
Speaker 2: make things better. That's what Sailor has been talking about
Speaker 2: the best way to ruin something to try to improve it.
Speaker 2: So how about we just if there's a critical patch,
Speaker 2: we can put that in. Otherwise, let's just leave it
Speaker 2: as is. I think layer two should figure out how
Speaker 2: to move around Layer one, not the other way around.
Speaker 3: I like that. I like that a lot.
Speaker 2: Man, we covered a lot of good ground. I think
Speaker 2: that's a pretty good spot for us to stop. Do
Speaker 2: you have any big announcement you want to make anything
Speaker 2: people should be watching out for, paying attention to what's
Speaker 2: happening this year.
Speaker 1: Sure. So, look, it's a big year for American Bitcoin.
Speaker 1: We launched April first, we went public September third. That
Speaker 1: was a splash, but it was just the beginning for us.
Speaker 1: We're going to put in some really exciting quarters here
Speaker 1: now of growth. That was not a finish line, it
Speaker 1: was a starter pistol. So now we're out there. We're
Speaker 1: growing our layer one that's the mining, We're growing our
Speaker 1: layer two that's the treasury, and soon we'll be announcing
Speaker 1: how we're growing our layer three, that's our ecosystem. So
Speaker 1: there is a lot to come. So I advise folks
Speaker 1: to keep an eye for the American Bitcoin story because
Speaker 1: there's quite a lot ahead.
Speaker 3: Got it.
Speaker 2: We'll make sure to link all that down on the
Speaker 2: show notes down below so everyone can follow along on
Speaker 2: Twitter and on their website. Now, with that we'll ahead
Speaker 2: and wrap it up. Thanks so much, up, thank you, Mark,