Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Mark mass Show,
Speaker 1: where we talk about the decentralized revolution. Of course, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the way the world is changing as of
Speaker 1: course we look at it through the lens of politics, finance,
Speaker 1: and technology, and of course that technology is bitcoin that
Speaker 1: is changing the world. Of course in so many ways.
Speaker 1: It's always technology to changes the world, you know.
Speaker 2: I try to bring to.
Speaker 1: You some you know, education so you can see things differently,
Speaker 1: some late breaking news, and of course some interesting guests.
Speaker 1: And that's what I have today. I'm joined in studio
Speaker 1: with Lisa Howe.
Speaker 2: Did I say that right?
Speaker 1: Huff huff, Oh tough, Okay, spelled differently, Lisa Huff.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 1: And she is somewhat of an energy expert, energy and
Speaker 1: bitcoin expert, so I'm excited again. Anyway, Lisa, thanks for
Speaker 1: joining me today.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me Marks.
Speaker 2: Sorry I got the name wrong.
Speaker 1: It looks like everyone does. Yeah, not spelled that way.
Speaker 1: So you know, we were talking earlier about, you know,
Speaker 1: some of my run ins in the energy market, and
Speaker 1: I know you're in the energy capital of I guess America,
Speaker 1: least at least Texas of the world.
Speaker 2: You would call it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Houston energy capital of the world. Okay, bitcoin mining capital.
Speaker 2: Of the world more than Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 3: According to me, it's Houston.
Speaker 2: Okay, according to you? Got it? That works?
Speaker 1: That works, you know, Lisa, I want to dig in
Speaker 1: a little bit. Obviously, I want to talk about bitcoin
Speaker 1: mining for sure, But if we start from like a
Speaker 1: little bit zoomed out location, I mean, you started your
Speaker 1: career as a natural gas trader, is.
Speaker 2: That right, that's right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So do you have some views on what's going
Speaker 1: on with natural gas like in the United States and
Speaker 1: globally and how those markets are kind of working, because
Speaker 1: it seems like obviously we see like massive problems in
Speaker 1: Europe with natural gas, you know, and then we can
Speaker 1: see how the US natural gas market is seeming to
Speaker 1: be completely disconnected from the global natural gas markets. So
Speaker 1: as a trader, I'm curious if you have any views
Speaker 1: on that. Potentially, you know, what will happen with the
Speaker 1: US being able to export enough natural gas to get
Speaker 1: into like a more of a global price in regards
Speaker 1: to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I wouldn't consider myself an energy expert anymore.
Speaker 3: I traded natural gas a very long time ago. I
Speaker 3: worked for run PGNE Southern Company, so a lot of
Speaker 3: utilities as well as you know, spectrating shops. And learned
Speaker 3: a lot about the energy business, so hard assets such
Speaker 3: as salt and storage, generation assets, pipeline capacity, how all
Speaker 3: that works. And I loosely follow energy, especially during COVID
Speaker 3: when oil went to negative thirty. Of course I was
Speaker 3: deep in study of what was actually going on. And
Speaker 3: it was quite simple, as you know, more supply than demand,
Speaker 3: so you had that people had to pay to have
Speaker 3: their production taken by somebody in Cushing, Oklahoma. So anyway,
Speaker 3: where do I see energy globally? I think that we
Speaker 3: are really at a place of struggle. And I say
Speaker 3: that because I believe that we're fighting domestically with each
Speaker 3: other over the ESG narrative. And yet the global demand
Speaker 3: for energy continues to rise, coupled with Russia eliminating supply
Speaker 3: for parts of Europe Ukraine, coupled with Saudi Arabia and
Speaker 3: the Arab nations lowering OPEK supply. I attended a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks ago, I attended a conference at University of Texas.
Speaker 3: It was an energy conference, and every speaker and everyone
Speaker 3: there was really of the belief that Jeff Curry at
Speaker 3: Goldman Sachs called for two years ago, probably higher energy prices,
Speaker 3: more geopolitical risk on the horizon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you some did up really well when you talked
Speaker 1: about you know, oil dropping to negative thirty and really
Speaker 1: boiled it down. As complex as these things can seem,
Speaker 1: they're actually very simple and it boils down to supply
Speaker 1: and demand. So that's that's what I was price.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does, and most people don't have a feel
Speaker 3: for what physical commodity transfer looks like. You know, they
Speaker 3: don't exactly know. They know that maybe natural gas is
Speaker 3: required for them to turn their light switch on at home,
Speaker 3: but they're they're not aware that. You know, it gets
Speaker 3: produced out in the Gulf of Mexico, it gets brought
Speaker 3: on shore, put into you know, one of many pipelines
Speaker 3: in the Gulf coast, and depending on the demand at
Speaker 3: delivery points, so deliver you know, depending on how much gas. Calpine,
Speaker 3: for example, one of the largest power producers in the country,
Speaker 3: also based here in Houston. Depending on what they need,
Speaker 3: supply either goes to them or others like them, or
Speaker 3: it goes into storage. And the arbitge around those activities
Speaker 3: is what makes markets and it's what makes markets strong.
Speaker 3: So I'm a huge advocate for free markets. Again, I
Speaker 3: think this is, you know, one piece of why I'm
Speaker 3: so heavily vocal about the ESG narrative. I think that
Speaker 3: it's dangerous in so many ways, you know, largely because
Speaker 3: if we don't have on shore energy, we don't have
Speaker 3: on shore national security. And if people don't understand that
Speaker 3: after the Russia Ukraine battle and what that really has
Speaker 3: looked like throughout Europe and how that energy bleed has
Speaker 3: affected all of Europe, I mean, I guess you're not
Speaker 3: I guess you're not smart because it's it's really pretty obvious.
Speaker 3: I don't think you have to be an energy expert
Speaker 3: to go you know, probably better off if I made
Speaker 3: this here at home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think people aren't smart. I mean they haven't ever.
Speaker 1: Most people haven't stopped to actually think through past a second, third, fourth,
Speaker 1: fifth order.
Speaker 2: Thinking.
Speaker 1: And so they go, oh, well, I guess we got
Speaker 1: to save the climate cut down on natural gas. They
Speaker 1: don't really understand what that means. It's like the fish
Speaker 1: doesn't know it's in water, so to speak. Right, But
Speaker 1: if you would just take time to think through this
Speaker 1: a little bit to the kind of point you're making,
Speaker 1: like if we don't have if you don't have savings
Speaker 1: and something bad happens to you, you have no reserves,
Speaker 1: like you're a slave. You can't quit your job. If
Speaker 1: the US doesn't have reserves of energy like our oil reserves,
Speaker 1: that could.
Speaker 2: Be a problem in time of need.
Speaker 1: In California where I'm at, which you can brek me
Speaker 1: later on, that we have seen a big push to
Speaker 1: get rid of all natural gas in the state. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm working with someone to add an addition into my house.
Speaker 1: I'm not even allowed to run natural gas.
Speaker 3: Into that is that right?
Speaker 1: And my natural gas bill has gone up by four
Speaker 1: hundred percent in the last year.
Speaker 2: Well, natural gas prices in the US have come down.
Speaker 3: Wow, geez, not allowed to pipe in natural gas into your.
Speaker 2: House, not in the new area I want to build onto.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I find that funny, given that the EU has,
Speaker 3: you know, in the last twelve months, has now deemed
Speaker 3: natural gas to be green, a green energy source again.
Speaker 3: Remember they had said it was a dirty energy source.
Speaker 3: And then you know nuclear was shut down, and the
Speaker 3: Russia situation has happened, and the forecast was for a
Speaker 3: very cold winter.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Thankfully they didn't get that, so they deemed natural gas
Speaker 3: to be this clean source of energy. So now, okay,
Speaker 3: that's interesting. Now you've got California saying.
Speaker 2: You can't new houses, no new houses can have it.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 1: And we we we had a wood burning fireplace and
Speaker 1: we wanted to put a gas into our fireplace. So
Speaker 1: we had someone come out and just run the gas
Speaker 1: line and drill through the thing. And my wife went
Speaker 1: to go find gas logs, and you know, she went
Speaker 1: on home depot dot com or whatever it was Low's
Speaker 1: dot com and up, we can't ship them to California.
Speaker 1: You've got to We couldn't get logs shipped to California.
Speaker 1: My wife had to go onto Craigslist and drive thirty
Speaker 1: minutes from the house and meet somebody in a back
Speaker 1: alley and do a cash deal to get gas logs.
Speaker 1: Like I'm not joking, I mean I'm joking about the
Speaker 1: back alley piece, but like literally on Craigslist and had
Speaker 1: to go do a cash deal to get gas logs
Speaker 1: in California because we couldn't. No one would ship them here.
Speaker 1: They're all for sal Well, we just can't get them.
Speaker 3: Insanity of that, Yeah, see that's just not a People
Speaker 3: aren't really thinking through the second or third order effects
Speaker 3: of energy usage. So in other countries where there's new
Speaker 3: sources of energy that are coming in and available for use,
Speaker 3: the main benefit is, yes, that there's reliable gas or
Speaker 3: a reliable fuel, carbon based fuel source. But the second
Speaker 3: layer derivative is that they're not burning wood in their
Speaker 3: homes and they're not collectively burning garbage, which then they inhale,
Speaker 3: which lead to health problems.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they'd rather have us burning wood, would wood
Speaker 1: in the fireplace then clean burning natural gas, which is
Speaker 1: which is which is pretty insane.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to dig more into this ESG,
Speaker 1: specifically this narrative and how that affects applying to man,
Speaker 1: where that goes, and how that affects bitcoin. But unfortunately,
Speaker 1: to the kind of point you're making, it seems like
Speaker 1: we're going to see prices of energy going up. When
Speaker 1: energy prices go up, everything goes up. If you're just
Speaker 1: tune in, you're listening to the Mark Moas Show. I
Speaker 1: am sitting down with Lisa Huff and we are discussing
Speaker 1: energy markets, bitcoin and ESG and a whole lot more
Speaker 1: we're going to cover that when we get back.
Speaker 2: Don't go away, We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: All right, Welcome back. If you're just tune in, you're
Speaker 1: listening to the Mark Moss Show. We're talking about the
Speaker 1: Decentralized Revolution, and I'm in studio with Lisa Huff. We're
Speaker 1: talking about energy markets, We're talking about ESG, We're going
Speaker 1: to talk about bitcoin mining and so much more. Lisa,
Speaker 1: we were just talking about before the break, the insanity
Speaker 1: of CALIBOOI where I can't even get I can't even
Speaker 1: get gas logs anymore. But going back to this ESG
Speaker 1: narrative at the end of the day, back to making
Speaker 1: things very simple. It just crimp supply, right, So they're
Speaker 1: pushing these policies in place that would ultimately crimp supply
Speaker 1: and that would push prices up.
Speaker 2: Is that how you see that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say that that's a second or third
Speaker 3: order effect. I mean, I think we really have to
Speaker 3: look at the root of ESG and where did this
Speaker 3: come from. And I was actually researching for your show.
Speaker 3: I wanted to brush up on my ESG, even though
Speaker 3: I talk about it all the time. I wanted to
Speaker 3: be thoughtful about what I said today, and I discovered
Speaker 3: that it was actually brought into existence by the UN
Speaker 3: in the early two thousands as a way to reward
Speaker 3: companies that had these virtuous properties about them. But I
Speaker 3: would offer to your listeners that to me, ESG has
Speaker 3: become something of virtue signaling and less about the returns.
Speaker 3: And so the way that the ESG narrative has played
Speaker 3: out in the US and actually around the world, that
Speaker 3: ESG just doesn't pay to be responsible. So I heard
Speaker 3: this analogy recently that ESG is like giving wheat grass
Speaker 3: to a cancer patient. But ESG is worse because it's
Speaker 3: the equivalent of giving the cancer patient wheat grass and
Speaker 3: delaying the chemotherapy. So what do I mean by that?
Speaker 3: I mean that it's created two separate capital market structures.
Speaker 3: It's created a capital market structure that is free of
Speaker 3: carbon or ESG related topics, and it's created the other market.
Speaker 3: And anytime that we have government interference, and that's what
Speaker 3: that is, right, that's state interference. You don't have a
Speaker 3: free market. And we must have free markets, and we
Speaker 3: must advocate and fight for free markets because without them,
Speaker 3: we have no true economic activity. All economic activity is tainted.
Speaker 1: So yeah, by coming up with this arbitrary scoring system.
Speaker 1: It's a way to really kind of impose controls, right,
Speaker 1: and so now they can force companies to get this
Speaker 1: score which is made up of environmental, social, and governance scores,
Speaker 1: which pushes all types of things from their environmental impact
Speaker 1: all the way through their diversity on their board, and
Speaker 1: it takes away to your point, to free market, which
Speaker 1: is ironic because you know, it seems like if these
Speaker 1: business owners are so greedy and we need to make
Speaker 1: them be more diversified, well, if they're so greedy, wouldn't
Speaker 1: they hire the best person for the job. Like, if
Speaker 1: I'm so greedy I want my business to do well,
Speaker 1: then I'm going to hire the best person. I don't
Speaker 1: care what race, sex, color, whatever they are. And so
Speaker 1: it's sort of like a contradiction there.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting. So the development and the path that
Speaker 3: Blackrock has taken. So a few years ago, I mean
Speaker 3: you probably remember they came out with a bunch of
Speaker 3: exchange traded funds that were ESG compliant and they really
Speaker 3: heavily marketed those funds. And now recently they have issued
Speaker 3: a statement. I'm gonna read it to you just so
Speaker 3: you get the full. You know, this is exactly what
Speaker 3: they said. We believe that greenwashing is a risk to
Speaker 3: investors and detrimental to asset manager industry credibility. There is
Speaker 3: no evidence that buying low carbon ETFs leads to less
Speaker 3: carbon use, so ESG should be noted. Those investments out
Speaker 3: have underperformed every other investment, every other type of investment.
Speaker 3: Of course, what's led the way in recent years this
Speaker 3: is energy. There's a group called the Climate Action plus
Speaker 3: one hundred that claims to represent fifty percent of all
Speaker 3: asset managers sixty trillion dollars in assets under management, and
Speaker 3: in coordination they've told companies that they need to cut
Speaker 3: their emissions or really improve their ESG metric. So this
Speaker 3: caused of course that, you know, so what's the effect
Speaker 3: of that. We eventually see prices spike at the pump
Speaker 3: because there's under investment into with capital markets, into businesses
Speaker 3: that are producing energy on shore, like we talked about,
Speaker 3: which is necessary for national security. So it leads to
Speaker 3: a spike in prices at the pump. And in the US,
Speaker 3: we have a term for that. That's antitrust. Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: a group gathering together that influences price.
Speaker 2: That's a good point.
Speaker 1: So oh sorry, no, Lass, that's a good point.
Speaker 2: I haven't really thought about it like that.
Speaker 3: So Blackrock, Vanguarden, State Street voted on new directors at
Speaker 3: x On. This is I think a year or two
Speaker 3: or three ago, and after they did, Exon cut their
Speaker 3: production targets by twenty percent. So think about Okay, they
Speaker 3: cut their production targets, what does that mean? That means
Speaker 3: that they stopped projects. They stopped exploration projects around the world.
Speaker 3: Who was there to pick those projects up?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Many were already in the works of being developed. Who
Speaker 3: do you think was there to pick it up?
Speaker 1: Asia and China specifically out Petro China.
Speaker 3: Petro China picked up the majority of those assets. Okay,
Speaker 3: now let's see, if you're paying attention, who's the largest
Speaker 3: shareholder of Petro China Blackla right. I mean, this is
Speaker 3: not a free market when we have actors who influence
Speaker 3: or influences a light word for what they're doing to
Speaker 3: these energy companies. We do not need states in energy markets.
Speaker 3: We don't need states in markets period. Former Treasury Secretary
Speaker 3: Sarah Raskin has said that this forced investment coming through
Speaker 3: states is an attack on sound investment practices. It forces
Speaker 3: investments favored by politicians. That was a quote. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: anyway I could, yeah, ramble on about you.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I find it's very offensive and it's been personally. It's
Speaker 3: affected my family and my friends. You know, Bank of
Speaker 3: Montreal a couple of years ago they pulled out of
Speaker 3: their natural resource group. They had ninety employees and natural
Speaker 3: resources and one of my family members was one of
Speaker 3: those managing directors. And you know, went to work one
Speaker 3: day and they bemo. Right, Bank of Montreal so enormous
Speaker 3: energy assets in Canada. They say, no, we're not going
Speaker 3: to bank energy anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it hits everybody. I mean, back to
Speaker 1: here where I'm at. My gas bill went from one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a month to four hundred a month. And
Speaker 1: you know, while I certainly don't like that, I can
Speaker 1: afford that, but what about the people that can't. I mean,
Speaker 1: it affects everybody. So it's insane. I have seen quite
Speaker 1: a bit of backlash building.
Speaker 2: Obviously.
Speaker 1: We've seen a lot of Republican led states first started
Speaker 1: divesting their funds from Blackrock. Billions of dollars were pulled
Speaker 1: from Blackrock because of that, and then I think was
Speaker 1: there twenty six states that have filed into a lawsuit
Speaker 1: about this ESG investing texts of course being one of those,
Speaker 1: and so then there's a lot of backlash. I believe
Speaker 1: it was Vanguard that now has abandoned their net zero goals,
Speaker 1: and now Blackrock is running pr like this going whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: hang on, hang on, We're not like as bad as
Speaker 1: you think we are. So there's definitely a shift happening.
Speaker 1: But I think maybe just a shift in the narrative,
Speaker 1: maybe not so much in the underlying practices. I want
Speaker 1: to dig into some of the mining stuff using the
Speaker 1: these energy sources as mining. We could talk about this
Speaker 1: New York Times hit piece that just came out that
Speaker 1: seems pretty interesting, So I want to talk about that
Speaker 1: as well, in ways that maybe this, you know, bitcoin
Speaker 1: mining can actually help the energy markets. If you're just
Speaker 1: tuning in you're listening to the Mark Mas Show, of course,
Speaker 1: we talk about the decentralized revel each and every week.
Speaker 1: I'm in studio with Lisa Huff. We are discussing the
Speaker 1: energy market. You can find her on Twitter at Lisa
Speaker 1: Underscore Huff, which is h O U G H underscore.
Speaker 2: Maybe you gotta fix that, Lisa.
Speaker 1: Check her out on Twitter. We'll link it in the
Speaker 1: show notes down below. We'll be back with more in
Speaker 1: a minute.
Speaker 2: Don't go away, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: All right, Welcome back. If you're just tuning in, you're
Speaker 1: listening to the Mark Mass Show. I am in studio
Speaker 1: with Lisa Huff. She is an energy trader, she's a bitcoiner.
Speaker 1: She worked for a company called level Field, and I
Speaker 1: want to talk about that. We're talking about energy markets,
Speaker 1: bitcoin mining, so much more. But Lisa, I want to
Speaker 1: get back into the kind of energy and the bitcoin mining.
Speaker 1: But before, let's talk about the company that you're working for,
Speaker 1: level Field, and how you got over there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, thank you. I joined level Field in July
Speaker 3: of last year. I went to them because I work
Speaker 3: for bitcoin adoption. That's what drives me. That is my purpose.
Speaker 3: It's what I think I was put here on earth
Speaker 3: to do. I've recently figured that out. Probably started figuring
Speaker 3: bitcoin out in twenty eighteen, really didn't dive in until
Speaker 3: twenty you know, late twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, certainly when
Speaker 3: everybody was taking every online class at YouTube University and
Speaker 3: all of those things I really got on the bitcoin bandwagon,
Speaker 3: so much so that one of my friends said, you
Speaker 3: should really start a consulting practice and teach people about bitcoin.
Speaker 3: I thought, well, all right, I was going to, you know,
Speaker 3: go back to work in the energy business. Sure, I'll
Speaker 3: start teaching people about bitcoin. One thing led to another.
Speaker 3: I had one public company that was a client mini
Speaker 3: wealth managers, lots of high net worth folks. And I
Speaker 3: was at a conference I met Parker Lewis. I was
Speaker 3: at a conference in Austin and was just telling him
Speaker 3: about you know. He said, well, tell me about yourself.
Speaker 3: What do you do? You know, Oh, what did you
Speaker 3: do before that energy? Where do you live Houston? He probably.
Speaker 3: Two weeks later, I was working for Unchained Capital because
Speaker 3: they wanted somebody to lead the Houston efforts to market
Speaker 3: for unchained and Unchained as you know and others know,
Speaker 3: helps people hold their own keys for their bitcoin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, shout out to Unchained. They're a friend of the show.
Speaker 1: I use them for the services, So check them out
Speaker 1: Unchained Capital.
Speaker 3: Yeah, keep going me too.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 3: The difficult thing about holding your own keys is that
Speaker 3: not everyone is comfortable doing that. In fact, the vast
Speaker 3: majority of people are not yet comfortable doing it. I
Speaker 3: don't find it to be difficult. I do find it
Speaker 3: to be a little nerve wracking if I have to move,
Speaker 3: you know, say, a significant amount of bitcoin. I don't
Speaker 3: know why, but I was recently with a bitcoin developer,
Speaker 3: core developer who told me that he still breaks out
Speaker 3: in sweats if he moves more than about fifty thousand dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, us dollars of bitcoin.
Speaker 1: So I always start with a little test every time,
Speaker 1: we just a little well.
Speaker 3: Mark, I don't even want to tell you what happens
Speaker 3: when you do that, though. Let's say that you start
Speaker 3: with five bitcoin and you want to move those five
Speaker 3: and you say, okay, I'll move you know, point one
Speaker 3: bitcoin to the test address and make sure that it's there. Well,
Speaker 3: you can verify where the test address is going to
Speaker 3: the right address. You can look at the address on
Speaker 3: your Treasure Ledger cold card and you can verify the
Speaker 3: address obviously in the box of where you're filling it
Speaker 3: in or the QR code where you're sending this. But
Speaker 3: then the change the other four point ninety nine bitcoin
Speaker 3: is created inside of a new change address. So to me,
Speaker 3: that's more frightening because you can't verify what the change
Speaker 3: address is. You just like have to hope that it
Speaker 3: is actually part of your transaction, which of course it is.
Speaker 3: So for me, that's the scary part is the is
Speaker 3: the test. I would rather just just move it. But anyway,
Speaker 3: so I figured out that, you know, gosh, people really
Speaker 3: have a hard time with this, and and level Field
Speaker 3: approached me. I wasn't looking to leave unchained. You know,
Speaker 3: I love those guys, love Parker Lewis. I've learned more
Speaker 3: from Parker Lewis than anyone else in bitcoin just being
Speaker 3: around him on a daily, weekly basis. It's just the stuff,
Speaker 3: stuff that seeps out of him and into you is like,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, He's just this wealth of knowledge and
Speaker 3: history and really formulative thought. So level Field approached me
Speaker 3: and they said, hey, we're looking for somebody to lead
Speaker 3: our business development efforts. We are acquiring a US bank
Speaker 3: and we want to be the first bank where an
Speaker 3: individual can buy and hold bitcoin. So I'm looking around, going,
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, there'll probably be more than five or
Speaker 3: ten percent of us that have our own keys. That's
Speaker 3: this is probably a cause I can work for. I
Speaker 3: will work for helping a broader group of individuals hold bitcoin.
Speaker 3: So we're in the regulatory process right now. I can't
Speaker 3: say too much more. We have announced that we're buying
Speaker 3: Burling Bank. Burling is the bank in the Chicago Board
Speaker 3: of Trade building. They are loved in their community. They're
Speaker 3: an old I think thirty eight year old family bank,
Speaker 3: community bank, very solid assets, not affected by the recent
Speaker 3: banking crisis at all. I would say the boy scouts
Speaker 3: of the banking community. I truly love them as individuals.
Speaker 3: So we're in the process of acquiring them. And part
Speaker 3: of that is you have to go through the federal
Speaker 3: regulatory the banking agencies in order to get those approvals.
Speaker 3: So perhaps you know fourth quarter we will have the
Speaker 3: approval and finish that transaction. So right now we are
Speaker 3: not live, but eventually you'll be able to buy secure
Speaker 3: bitcoin as well as have bitcoin financial services like a
Speaker 3: pay me in Bitcoin option for your payroll, or a
Speaker 3: bitcoin collateralized loan or bitcoin rewards credit card.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to you said about twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: You just you said you're working on bitcoin. You're working
Speaker 1: for bitcoin. It's the most important thing you're on earth.
Speaker 2: To do this.
Speaker 1: You started in twenty eighteen. What was that aha moment?
Speaker 1: What was that epiphany where all of a sudden You're like, shoot,
Speaker 1: this is something pretty important I should be doing that.
Speaker 3: I guess I always felt like I wasn't in control
Speaker 3: of my investments. And I'm definitely a type a person.
Speaker 3: Yet I didn't feel confident enough in the equity markets
Speaker 3: to make adequate assumptions in order to safeguard my retirement.
Speaker 3: And when I discovered bitcoin and really started learning about bitcoin,
Speaker 3: I thought, well, you know, in some ways this is
Speaker 3: like super simple, right. All value in bitcoin is derived
Speaker 3: from the fact that there only ever will be twenty
Speaker 3: one million bitcoin fixed supply, right, Scarcity drives the value
Speaker 3: of bitcoin, and you know, in some regards obviously it's
Speaker 3: it's quite complicated. So I really just began to dig
Speaker 3: deeper and deeper, and I think I fell in love
Speaker 3: with bitcoin when I realized the human rights aspect of bitcoin,
Speaker 3: the ability that it gives people to you know, walk
Speaker 3: across borders. Right. It would be the only way you
Speaker 3: could walk from from you know, Russia into another country
Speaker 3: with one hundred percent of your wealth. What always goes
Speaker 3: through my mind is thinking back to World War Two
Speaker 3: when the Jews were evacuating Germany, and they had on
Speaker 3: coats and they were carrying, you know, suitcases in their
Speaker 3: pockets or stuff with candlesticks and jewelry, and they're wearing
Speaker 3: all of their gold. And we don't need to do
Speaker 3: that anymore, obviously. And in fact, you know bitcoin, I've
Speaker 3: heard today that bitcoin is is I think eighty is
Speaker 3: used by eighty percent of bitcoin transactions under one thousand
Speaker 3: dollars are being done in Africa, right, so it's very
Speaker 3: heavily used in developing nations. We in the US are
Speaker 3: slower to adopt, although we are adopting.
Speaker 2: I think we just don't have the pain.
Speaker 1: The pain's not high enough here. You're exactly where the
Speaker 1: pain is high enough. People people move, You're exactly right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the pain. So I came to it because
Speaker 3: I was in a painful position, major life change, major
Speaker 3: life financial change, fixed amount of dollars. What am I
Speaker 3: going to do with this? Who am I going to
Speaker 3: trust to help me with this? And I was smart
Speaker 3: enough to know that I should not be trading equities,
Speaker 3: although I did that for two years. I traded my
Speaker 3: own uh my own book, so to speak. I traded
Speaker 3: the volatile tech stocks, and I traded energy and that's
Speaker 3: actually how I survived for two years, and I did
Speaker 3: very well. But I realized that that was never going
Speaker 3: to be a long term thing for me, right. I
Speaker 3: was never going to learn technical analysis. I was never
Speaker 3: a going to learn all the intricacies. Not to mention,
Speaker 3: just the counterparty risk always worried me. And I think
Speaker 3: that's what I love the most about bitcoin is that
Speaker 3: there's no counterparty risk. And I think that's we know
Speaker 3: right that this is what sovereign nations see in the
Speaker 3: beauty of gold, which is why they're dumping US treasuries
Speaker 3: and moving into gold. And I believe that they're moving
Speaker 3: into bitcoin and we just don't know it.
Speaker 1: And the part with trading and you're not providing any
Speaker 1: value to the world. And you had said something earlier
Speaker 1: was like you're like put on earth to do this.
Speaker 1: I read this quote recently and it said something like
Speaker 1: the biggest fear in life isn't is it living a
Speaker 1: life where you haven't achieved anything. It's a fear of
Speaker 1: achieving something but it was worth nothing. Something to that effect,
Speaker 1: like you've worked your whole life and you've achieved big goals,
Speaker 1: but they were all worthless, and so wouldn't you rather
Speaker 1: work on something that's worth something that can be beneficial
Speaker 1: for the world, And trading is certainly not that. If
Speaker 1: you're just tuning in, you're listening to the Mark mass Show,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the decentral Revolution. I'm in the studio
Speaker 1: with Lisa Huff. We're back with more than a second.
Speaker 1: Don't go away, We'll be right back. All right, welcome back.
Speaker 1: If you're just tune in, you're listening to the Mark
Speaker 1: Mass Show. Him in the studio with Lisa Huff. You
Speaker 1: could check her out on Twitter at Lisa Underscore Huff.
Speaker 1: That's h Ough Underscore Lisa.
Speaker 2: So we were talking about.
Speaker 1: How you came to bitcoin. You know, I would say
Speaker 1: that it's always when there's enough pain. We kind of
Speaker 1: talked about that before the break, and you know, kind
Speaker 1: of my story was, I got so burned in the
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight financial crisis that I was so
Speaker 1: I had so much PTSD, I kept waiting for another
Speaker 1: banking collapse, and I was subscribed to this newsletter called
Speaker 1: Sovereign Man. Shout out to Simon Black at Sovereign Man,
Speaker 1: who I still read this stuff and really beneficial, instrumental
Speaker 1: in my worldview. And he talks about, you wouldn't put
Speaker 1: all your money in one stock, Why do you have
Speaker 1: your whole life in one country?
Speaker 2: And he talks about the.
Speaker 1: Importance of this flag theory or plenty multiple flags. If
Speaker 1: money's digital, why not have money in Singapore and Hong
Speaker 1: Kong and Panama and stuff like that. And I was
Speaker 1: so worried about another banking collapse. So I was in
Speaker 1: the process of working with one of his attorneys to
Speaker 1: move money into set up a bank account in Panama
Speaker 1: and I could deposit money there, earn a pretty good
Speaker 1: rate of return, and work towards a path of residency.
Speaker 1: And I took another that was twenty fifteen. I took
Speaker 1: another look at bitcoin. I was like, actually, that's kind
Speaker 1: of the same thing I'm trying to get. What I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do is get money out of the banking system.
Speaker 2: And I did.
Speaker 1: And then once I saw, wait a minute, this is
Speaker 1: actually a tool we can win with, Like this is
Speaker 1: the way that we can actually change the world, then
Speaker 1: I gotta tell the whole world about it.
Speaker 2: So we did.
Speaker 1: Let's jump into natural gas.
Speaker 2: Or maybe just energy and mining.
Speaker 1: I know you're there, as you said, in Houston and
Speaker 1: the energy capital of the world, certainly the bitcoin mining
Speaker 1: capital of the world at this point. A lot of
Speaker 1: bitcoin miners have moved there because of the energy policies
Speaker 1: that they'd have there. However, just recently it seems like
Speaker 1: the state is not being so friendly to some of
Speaker 1: the bitcoin miners. I know, there's a bunch of no
Speaker 1: or a bunch of commotion, i'd say, about this new
Speaker 1: bill where they want to take away their credits I
Speaker 1: think is what's going on in that bill for the miners.
Speaker 2: Have you been paying attention to that?
Speaker 3: So that came out last week and truthfully, yes, I've
Speaker 3: watched a little bit of it. I was completely out
Speaker 3: of commission with a hernated disc last week and didn't
Speaker 3: didn't follow that as closely as I as I should have. However,
Speaker 3: I mean, I know the result is is basically that
Speaker 3: it's proceeding into another, you know, section of the Texas
Speaker 3: government and going before others for consideration. And yeah, it's
Speaker 3: it's an interesting it's an interesting place where we are.
Speaker 3: You know, we've got Ted Cruz, who is a bitcoin hoddler,
Speaker 3: attends the Digital Wildcatters in Power conference he's spoke, he
Speaker 3: spoke last year. We've got Greg Abbott, who is a
Speaker 3: supporter of what we're doing. Urkot, I would say, is
Speaker 3: even in favor of bitcoin mining. I know firsthand that
Speaker 3: there are large power producers who are now working with
Speaker 3: Urkot and this is like really new working with Urkot
Speaker 3: to develop you know, more than five hundred megawatts because
Speaker 3: they have basically come to an agreement and explain to
Speaker 3: Erkot that this is a way to stabilize the grid.
Speaker 3: You know, some use the expression that bitcoin mining is
Speaker 3: like a battery. I don't really ever, I don't find
Speaker 3: that to be a great example. Yeah, so it's it's
Speaker 3: a topic of much conversation. What I find, again, you know,
Speaker 3: most disturbing is that it's it's like the state isn't
Speaker 3: UH is trying to get involved with these in markets
Speaker 3: and manipulate the price and you know, demand response. So
Speaker 3: demand response is basically the ability for or caught the
Speaker 3: grid here in Texas to make companies or make you know,
Speaker 3: big users of load shut down should power spike. So
Speaker 3: what happened in I guess February of twenty twenty one
Speaker 3: was this storm Ury and we had about thirty eight
Speaker 3: plants that went offline. Thirty eight plants and why because
Speaker 3: they weren't winnerized. Right, the Texas grid is actually really fragile.
Speaker 3: I think that a grid grid health should have about
Speaker 3: forty percent excess demand at any time, or sorry, excess
Speaker 3: supply at any time, and I believe Texas is somewhere
Speaker 3: less than eight It might be less than five percent
Speaker 3: of you know, available power.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 3: Demand response all right, So this isn't a new concept.
Speaker 3: This has been going on for a very long time
Speaker 3: within Texas. But the media is now painting this picture
Speaker 3: that bitcoin minors are bad because we can react quickly
Speaker 3: if power is needed on the grid. So they didn't
Speaker 3: feel the same way that the media didn't attack hospitals,
Speaker 3: and hospitals have participated. Steel plants participate, you know, big
Speaker 3: institutions participate. There are ways where the grid can shut
Speaker 3: down a large amount of power source. Now, of course,
Speaker 3: hospitals would be the last person that they'd turn off.
Speaker 3: And you know, a steel plant also not a good
Speaker 3: option to turn off because when they do, you know,
Speaker 3: steel is manufactured and it takes a lot of heat,
Speaker 3: and if the steel is left to sit, I think
Speaker 3: for over an hour. Under over two hours without a
Speaker 3: heat source, you've ruined the entire batch. Whereas with big
Speaker 3: mining it can turn off in you know, a minute
Speaker 3: or two or three and turn back on in a
Speaker 3: minute or two or three with no harm to the
Speaker 3: current production because as you know, you know the effort
Speaker 3: of the computer, which is mining bitcoin, right, which is
Speaker 3: kind of a silly name mining where it's not like
Speaker 3: we're digging in the ground.
Speaker 2: That's what we all processing transactions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's happening in a split second.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the best option. I mean, if you need
Speaker 1: this extra capacity, which of course you do. This goes
Speaker 1: back to kind of what we talked about starting out,
Speaker 1: which was having a reserve. We talked about the US
Speaker 1: not having its own energy or getting rid of the
Speaker 1: patrolling reserves and the point of having a reserve so
Speaker 1: in the case of emergency you have backup, and.
Speaker 2: So that's sort of what this is.
Speaker 1: This excess capacity could be used as a reserve where
Speaker 1: it could be shut down and then it could be
Speaker 1: deployed when needed.
Speaker 2: And to your.
Speaker 1: Point, of all the different options that you have to
Speaker 1: shut down energy, the bigcoin money might be one of
Speaker 1: the best ones.
Speaker 3: It for sure. Is so I always think about, you know,
Speaker 3: who influences the media? Right where where is the root
Speaker 3: of this issue? Okay? And I would offer to you
Speaker 3: if we think who is one of the biggest, heaviest,
Speaker 3: you know, bitcoin haters out there that people talk about
Speaker 3: anytime he talks about bitcoin, Twitter just goes wild.
Speaker 1: Warren Buffets, Warren, Warren Buffett.
Speaker 3: Of course, yeah, right, so, Warren Buffett, I have some
Speaker 3: notes I wanted to just share with you. In twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one, Berkshire announced that it was going to build
Speaker 3: ten one gigawatt peaker plants here in Texas and they
Speaker 3: would be paid for by the rate payers. Right so
Speaker 3: the customer so me as a customer institution or a
Speaker 3: huge industrial load pays the most, so Berkshire will get
Speaker 3: a fixed rate of return to build these power plants.
Speaker 3: It doesn't make any sense for them. I mean, fine,
Speaker 3: if they want to build power plants and not fix
Speaker 3: our current plants. Like I said, there were thirty eight
Speaker 3: plants that went down during URI. There was a huge
Speaker 3: computer glitch which caused power prices to spike. And yet
Speaker 3: the Texas Tribune and there's a I can't come up
Speaker 3: with the name of the company. There's an energy coalition
Speaker 3: basically that has said and Greg Abbott, our governor, has
Speaker 3: agreed that it would be better to take all money
Speaker 3: and refortify our existing plants. But Berkshire says, no, we're
Speaker 3: not interested in helping you fortify your existing infrastructure. We
Speaker 3: want to build this new infrastructure. So what is in
Speaker 3: direct competition to a peaker plant? What does the same
Speaker 3: what offers the same flexibility.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of warn Buffet's partner Charlie Munger, who says,
Speaker 1: show me the incentives and I show you the outcome.
Speaker 1: Of course, I always follow the incentives and the lead
Speaker 1: you right to the conspiracy every single time. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: If you're just tuning in you're listening to the Marcoms show.
Speaker 1: I've been in studio with Lisa Huff. You can check
Speaker 1: her out on Twitter at Lisa Underscore Huff h o
Speaker 1: U g h Underscore, and also check out her company
Speaker 1: that she's working with. You can check them out at
Speaker 1: level Field is the name Levelfield dot Us.
Speaker 2: Check it out. That's what we got today.
Speaker 1: Hopefully that was hope helpful for you to understand exactly
Speaker 1: what's going on and what is causing the supply demanded balance.
Speaker 2: That's what we got. Thanks so much for listening. Until
Speaker 2: next time,