Bitcoin & Fossil Fuels vs Fiat Maxis

Hi and welcome to Stephan Livera podcast episode two hundred and eighty four. So who are Fiat Maxis? How should we think about the Bitcoin mining council? What about wind and solar? Are they really feasible or are they really more like unreliables? And how should we think about renewable energy usage and what should Bitcoiners be doing about it? So Steve Barbour, the founder of Upstream Data, rejoins me on the show to talk about it, and he has some very interesting points of view to share. And interestingly, he actually has a lot more credibility on this front than many others have, so we'll get into that as part of the show. out of the discussion. This show is brought to you by Swan Bitcoin. Swan Bitcoin holds a deep conviction that Bitcoin is the future of money. Swan's aim is to help you maximize your position in this dominant digital monetary network. As a Swan private client, you'll have unlimited access to their team, strategic resources, and commitment to Bitcoin education. Bitcoin is an asymmetric investment of unparalleled proportions, rapidly becoming the preeminent wealth preservation asset for every individual and institution in the world. An opportunity like this to build and preserve legacy impacting Wealth for your family or company will not likely be seen again in our lifetimes. The Swan Private team stands ready to earn the right to walk alongside you on every step of this journey into the future of money. Go learn more at swanbitcoin dot com slash private or email the CEO, Corey, corey at swanbitcoin dot com. Lend at HodlHodl is a peer-to-peer Bitcoin backed lending platform so you can lend or borrow Bitcoin and stablecoins globally and anonymously. Lend at HodlHodl is a way to earn extra income on your stablecoins by lending it with an average of twenty-five percent APR. On the other hand, if you have Bitcoin and you need some liquidity, you no longer have to sell, you can borrow against your bitcoins, and you can still hold one key in the two-of-three multisig controlling your Bitcoin. HodlHodl doesn't hold your funds, so lend at Hodl Hold is a peer-to-peer lending platform, so you set your own terms and put up offers depending on how long you want to borrow or lend and the interest rate. Go to lend dot h o d l h o d l dot com. Are you interested to get into Bitcoin mining? Compos is an online marketplace making it easier for everyone to mine Bitcoin and enhance the network's security. This isn't a cloud mining option, you are buying an ASIC and having it sent to a specific facility that has been vetted by Compos all around the world. Now, we've heard mining was only profitable if you're investing tons of money, but now with Compass, everyone can tap into those economies of scale and get reasonably priced hardware and cheap industrial power rates. So if you're unsure about how to get started, go to Compass, they've got hardware and hosting bundles eliminating the need for advanced technical knowledge, so you can quickly get started mining Bitcoin. Visit them, compassmining dot io, and start mining Bitcoin today. And now onto the show with Steve. Steve, welcome back to the show. Stephan, thanks for having me, it's been a while. It has, I think you Those early days when I started the podcast back in twenty eighteen, and, you know, it's, it's all come so far. You've come very far as well with Upstream Data, and I know there's a lot of things going on in the space around, you know, socialism basically, and I know you've have been quite vocal and critical of that. So I guess, do you have an opening comment on what's happening to the space?

Oh, the world's going to shit. everything's going, going to hell. No, I mean, and, and that, that time So I'm, I'm a little less nervous now than I was for that first one. I was super nervous. Yeah, I don't know, man, like, everything is going-- I mean, all walks of life seem to be going more socialist, even America now. I think America twenty, thirty years ago would look at America now and be like, "What the hell has happened? " You know what I mean? So, they're supposed to be the, the shining light of, capitalism and, and call it free markets, and it doesn't seem to be going

You mentioned, the term fiat maxi. So what is a fiat maxi, and what's the problem with fiat maxis?

Fiat maxis, I don't know who coined it, I've been seeing it a lot recently, obviously as a counter to Bitcoin maxis. Fiat maxis are effectively statists, like people that depend on the state, they want you to depend on the state, you know, just lower in the pecking order than they do, than they are, right? I use it, I often reference fiat maxis when I'm You know, complaining online about, you know, the investment community. Like, you know, God bless these people, a lot of them are really good people, but they, they're in these positions where they get to wield the, printed money and throw it around as it comes down the, you know, the cantillon ladder, and, they get to decide, you know, what their firm, whether it's a VC fund, you know, hedge fund, whatever they are, you know, what assets they're buying up. So I refer to them as fiat maxies, It comes from nothing, it comes from signeurage and effectively the, the theft, from the people. So they take that money and then they go, gobble up assets, buy people's shares, you know, there's a lot of weird stuff happening right now, borderline financial terrorism in the markets, and, yeah, that's what I refer to as, Fiat Maxis, Fiat Maximalists.

Right, right. And then bringing that to the Bitcoin energy conversation, we're getting all of this discussion around, you know, and then there's different- People in the community who are responding on different ways. Like, there's one way of people who are trying to say, "Oh, look, see, we're actually doing a lot of renewables, so please, quote unquote renewables, maybe we should really call it unreliables, as our friend Alex Epstein calls them." What's your view on all of that stuff around the so-called renewables?

Yeah, before I, I learned of Alex and his great work and, his, coin term, unreliables, I was calling them variables. Yeah. Another, another spin on the whole renewable thing, like, you know, most of the time when people are talking renewables, like, there's, there's many forms of renewables, like geothermal's considered renewable, hydro. I personally like, you know, when I am talking about renewables, I'm usually talking about wind and solar, specifically when I'm bashing renewables and trying to bring like more sense to the discussion, I'm usually talking, referring to wind and solar, which are just horrible methods of industrial power generation that Shouldn't be, nearly as widely deployed as they are, you know, be- due to the, due to the basically Fiat Maxi's, basically pushing it down our throats. But, I mean, from the, like, just speaking of, like, you know, from an engineering perspective, which is what I am, you know, they, they, they're technologies that don't really scale. They have, absolutely have applications, and I've always said, like, you know, certainly, say technology like,

They're awesome in the right application, like they're, they're w- they're very much needed. there are definitely applications called off-grid small townships that they can really, help out. And I apologize for my voice, it's a bit hoarse. I'm still recovering from Miami, like five days later. But, you know, like there, it has applications like oil field, like, you know, 'cause my background, as you know, is, I'm all about oil field. I've been in oil field my whole career. We use solar panels, like, before, like, they pushed solar panels, into industrial, uses through all these subsidies and, and money printing and, like, and law, effectively. We use, we use tons of solar panels in oil field. Like, solar is really, really useful, for, you know, backing up,

All sites running to keep infrastructure running. Solar panels have a huge place in the world, but where they're taking them, I don't think they do. I think it's, it's all forced. It's not the free market pushing solar panels and wind turbines into the marketplace like in Texas, across, you know, North America and, and everywhere else we see them. And I really fundamentally don't agree with, the narrative that they're clean. I don't think they're clean. They're really, i-in one sense, it's just another form of wealth redistribution. So, I, I mean, we're displacing primarily coal power in the US and in, in Canada and North America, and probably in Australia as well, with a lot of these, wind and solar projects. So they're shutting in coal, in some cases retrofitting it for natural gas, which is great, but a lot of cases just shutting it down forcibly, and also making coal, producers and, and coal-fired power plants, they're taxing them to help subsidize these alternative technologies. But the hypocrisy ex- Exists, in the fact that all manufacturing, or the majority, I won't say all of it, but the majority of it is being manufactured, say, in, in the context of just speaking of, say, America, right? It's outside of America, it's in China, a lot of it's in China and in other jurisdictions, Germany does a bit of manufacturing, but China does the bulk of it. And so when you look at that and look at, well, how is-- how are the Chinese manufacturing these solar panels so cheaply? And they, they're doing it Ever increasing coal, coal fired power plants, that's one of the primary, energy sources used in the manufacturing of these things, and that goes for, wind and wind, wind turbines and solar panels. A lot of the manufacturing is powered by coal, but just in different jurisdictions. So we're basically offsetting, and, and I mean, you mentioned Alex Epstein, he talks about this, we're offsetting the emissions in one jurisdiction, it's, it's being emitted in some other jurisdiction, in some other part of the supply chain, so instead of burning fossil fuels In America, we're burning, or coal in America, we're burning coal in China. And, and then when you fundamentally, it's just a nonsensical idea that solar and wind can displace fossil fuels. I think most rational, you know, energy, you know, people discussing, energy understand that that's not really true. But a- there are a lot of people, and you see, actually, I, I listened to Alex's, podcast re- recently where he replayed his, inquiry with the con- with Congress that had him up As a, as an expert witness, I think. And you could hear it in one of the, one of the people cross-examining him, I forget the, the gentleman's name, who was the one who insulted him. He, he, he was suggesting that, you know, the world is, is soon moving completely off fossil fuels. And this is an absurdity, 'cause even if we magically, could get onto purely wind and solar, they're made from fossil fuels. So you can't displace an underlying technology or resource such as fossil fuels By something that is dependent on fossil fuels at every juncture of the supply chain, and it's even the, the raw material, right? You need coal, you actually literally need coal as a raw material to make solar panels and wind turbines, 'cause steel is made from coal, concrete's made from coal, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, it's, yeah, there's just a lot of, there's this weird that I always find it really creepy and weird that these, you know, Corporations and businesses, and even a lot of companies in the Bitcoin space, are pushing for this solar, wind, aspect of Bitcoin, and they just seem to like conveniently not wanna discuss any of the, the hypocrisy that I just brought up or any of the, any of those, ideas. It's just like sweep it under the table. These are clean, give me my subsidy to go do this project, and let's ignore the elephant in the room. That seems to be what the case is.

Yeah, absolutely. And so the-- there's a lot of dishonesty in the Example that you will probably also, I'm sure you're familiar with, is the Liberty Energy troll back of North Face. So the story went that North Face was trying to say, "Oh, we don't wanna have this energy company's branding on our North Face jackets," and then a competitor company to them, so Liberty Energy, came out saying, "No, actually, I've looked through your products, and ninety percent of them actually used fossil fuel in the creation of them. So thank you, North Face." And that was, it's the same kind of thing, people are trying to deny reality, Fossil fuels, and we need coal, and we need natural gas, and we need these things, and they wanna pretend like, "Oh, we're just living in this green fairy tale fantasy world." Well, that's pretty much

it. Like, we live in a world now where, where, rational discourse doesn't happen. You never see, on TV, peo- you know, bringing up, like even through the whole COVID thing, you never really saw them bring up counterpoints, counterviews, and have an honest debate about it. Now, obviously, COVID was

These political topics. energy as well has been highly politicized, maybe not as sensitive topic as COVID, but it's similarly politicized, and they don't bring up, well, like, you know, I mean, I would say Alex Epstein again because he's probably the, almost the face right now of, and, and his awesome book, like The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, like he's sort of the face of the sort of call it counter movement against this, green-washed energy nonsense. I mean, yeah, that North Face And like, I don't mind calling out a few of these companies in the Bitcoin space, but like, these guys are-- these businesses all over the world, it's hard to blame them, 'cause I mean, when you get rewarded for bullshitting, and you get rewarded for pretending you're green, or pretending you're like kosher, you're, you're zero carbon, you're net zero, you're carbon negative, when you get rewarded for that behavior, you know, how do you fault them for it? Especially when it's coming from the state down, from institutions down, they These things, their investors are expecting it. The financial fiat maxies, right? The, their creditors, like the people controlling the, the financial system, many of these companies are in debt, so they're gonna do whatever the board, you know, recommends 'cause the board is looking to just seek continued solvency with the business, and that means not pissing off your fiat maxie creditors. So, I mean, you know, like you see that everywhere, you see it in the Bitcoin mining space, like Core Scientific, Marathon, many other companies. Companies, I've been picking on those two, 'cause they deserve it, but, you know, they're, they're mining Bitcoin off coal, which is nothing wrong with that. they're doing great things 'cause they're, you know, I mean, I consider all Bitcoin miners doing great things, they're doing great things for humanity with helping secure, helping distribute, helping produce, you know, the greatest money that has ever existed, the greatest freedom money that ever existed. So I don't, I, I see like if, if Bitcoin was purely mined off Compare the utility of what they're doing to, say, the, the negative aspects of, of emissions, which are there. I mean, coal does have, negative health emissions and negative emissions for the environment, but there's so much more to it than that. And, and these companies, rather than be proud of, you know, bringing it to the Bitcoin space, rather than these miners in North America, be proud of what they're doing, like, which I think is great, they're succeeding as businesses, they're hiring people, they're creating jobs, they're not just direct jobs, Supporting industry, industrial jobs around it. I mean, for example, like Marathon, I can't remember, it might be Beowulf, they got this coal fired power plant in Montana, I think it is. I mean, that place, that, that plant was borderline, you know, that was it. They had nothing else, and they did a deal with, Core, they're gonna probably ramp up and they'll do more mining, and they saved like literally probably a thousand jobs at that coal fired power plant, like I'm just guessing. Like, they're doing really good Going out and apologizing for it. Oh, I'm sorry that, you know, we're not carbon neutral, therefore I'm gonna buy these carbon offset credits, pretend that that somehow means they're not emitting carbon, like, which is just the biggest like fiat scam on the go, like this carbon offset thing. So they go buy these credits, now they're o-- they're in the good books of the adminis-- the carbon administrators, you know, arbitrarily, a-and they s-- and then they do a press release saying they're carbon neutral. It's just like, it's absurd on its care about like honesty and, and reason and rational thinking, just look at that and like, this is ridiculous. But it's hard to blame them, even though I, I, I love calling them out for, being bullshitters, but it's hard to blame them in one sense because a lot of these companies are doing what, call it, they're, they're being, they're doing what is in the, they're doing the fiduciary duty to their shareholders, right? They're doing what's in the best interest of themselves and the shareholders. So it's, in Like the, the cantillon hierarchy of central banking.

Yeah, yeah. And so let's get into this whole offset business. So for people who don't know, what is all, what is all this offset business? What, what's the issue with that stuff?

Well, the premise behind it is like carbon emitting businesses, like in activities, whether it's you and I personally like paying our carbon emissions at the gas pump, whether it's a business consuming natural gas, paying that carbon tax. Basically, they're, they're-- it's a new system of account. So Instead of, you know, if you're a normal business, instead of having to worry about cash flow and your balance sheet and your debt and, you know, your accounts receivable, accounts payable, like cash, instead of worrying about your, the cash accounting system and just staying above board on cash, now we have this another layer of accounting system that we all have to deal with, especially like, like it's happening here more so than the US here in Canada, 'cause we have carbon tax in place. So now businesses have to also have this added- layer of overhead dealing with this carbon accounting system. And if you're public right now, if you're a public company, you have-- you're having to put out these like ESG reports, like sustainability reporting. There's this whole another layer of bureaucracy and administrative overhead to deal with this carbon accounting system. And so the premise of it is, okay, they, they tax what they deem is dirty, which is carbon emissions, generally, and, and they can make equivalent- You might not be emitting any carbon, but they might say, okay, your industry is in this, bucket, and this is sort of the equivalence carbon that you're offset-- that you're emitting, and therefore you have to pay this tax. So they, they take in this tax money, then they, they redistribute that to the clean energy or the clean technologies that they deem clean. So, you know, it's not-- it's, so in, in essence, it's something-- it's, I, I would call it like it's well-intended The, the goal is to take money from people emitting, say, carbon or pollution, giving it to people that they deem who aren't emitting or they're reducing it. so obviously the, the big winners are gonna be at least in the space right now are gonna be like renewables, especially wind and solar and EVs. like so basically all of Elon Musk's businesses are, are the winners in the carbon redistribution, wealth redistribution scam. And I mean, the, fundamentally, I think it's a broken An idea when you think about it, 'cause really it's just wealth redistribution first and foremost. So instead of, when they tax me or you, the listener, instead of you spending that money that you earned yourself, they're now spending it on your behalf, the government is, they're taking it from you, and they're gonna divvy it out to whoever they deem is clean. fundamentally that's a-- I think that's broken, because never in history has, has the government deployed capital more efficiently than the free market. you're an Austrian economist, Stephan. I think you could agree with that. We never really see, I mean, there, there certainly will be outliers and examples of the government doing things extremely well and efficiently, but generally speaking, they don't deploy capital very well. They, it's a lot of it's wasted in just poor project management, a lot of it's wasted in administrative overhead and bureaucracy, and a lot of it's wasted in corruption. We just see all of this constantly. I mean, I don't know of, of a, of a government, you know, construction project that's Never came in on budget, like it just doesn't happen. There's always cost overruns, there's always, you know, squandering of, of capital. So the, the premise that the government can, can spend the money you and I earn more efficiently than us, I think is absurd on its face. But that is the premise behind this whole carbon accounting scam, and I think it's well-intended, but, you know, the road to hell is paved in, in, in well, in good intent as well. It's good intentions. So, yeah. I, I don't see If we just let the free market do its thing, as I'm sure you'd agree, because the free market is the best, you and I can deploy our own hard-earned capital better than anybody. And whatever that happens to be for, you know, it satisfies our needs and our wants better than anyone else can do so for us. So, yeah, I-- that's the gist of the carbon thing. And, yeah.

Yeah. So I think one thing to add there for listeners, if you're interested in what the Austrian approach is on this, there's an essay, it's called Property rights and air pollution by Murray Rothbard. So I'll put a link for that in the show notes for listeners, you guys can check that out. But essentially, one way to think of it is this whole idea of social cost of carbon is a fundamentally flawed approach. Instead, we should just be letting, you know, people sue each other for damages, right? And that's, it's like, and that's what Rothbard is going into in that idea there. And there are, I mean, he goes into various ideas around what, what you do if there are, you know, joint tort social cost of carbon, and as you're saying, it's kind of like the government is playing the, the win, the win, picking winners, right? And what's funny here is that a lot of these green ESG types will pretend like it's a market based movement, and oh, see, you're pricing the carbon, but then the reality is, who, who's gonna set the right price for that thing? And it just doesn't really operate in practice, 'cause what happens in practice is more like, you know, from the regulations I've seen, is it acts like a Coal, natural gas, you know, hydro, to basically cross subsidize to the unreliables, right? Wind and solar, because that's essentially what, that's what ends up happening, because one side gets credit and the other side has to pay into that, and then it, it causes this really crazy incentive system. And so then, as you were saying, like people, the fiat maxie, ideology ends up kind of chasing this wind and solar thing, and then we end up not even being able to speak correctly about what's going on and not really a- Assessing things in an overall perspective and understanding, well, there's a net benefit, great net benefit to humanity, right? That there are billions of people who don't have access to the energy that we take for granted, and people who might have very low levels of energy, and, you know, and the other thing is it seeps into a lot of other things that we buy, because if the cost of power is extremely high, then it means it's very expensive to produce even consumer goods, and we don't even know that, right? So it's sort of like, because the industrial- Our rates are so high, then that would cause all sorts of knock-on downstream impacts, and it, it, it actually hurts poor people even more. So it's kind of like the rich people can buy their Tesla and virtue signal about how grand they are, but the reality is they're actually receiving a lot of subsidies for that, and then kind of they're laughing at the, you know, the quote-unquote, you know, all the so-called poor people in their gas-guzzling internal combustion engine car, right? So it's like a very backwards system.

Yeah, the incentive, I mean, like an administrative, well, certainly in this case, like an accounting system like carbon, it's all ta- it's all derived from the top down. It sort of stemmed, it sort of was seeded with the United Nations, and then it spread out between, you know, those statist institutions and into our governments, and it's a top-down system. Top-down systems generally aren't good for the bottom, like they're generally not good for the bottom. They're generally the opposite, and exactly like you say, it's a wealth redistribution from the bottom to the top, just like it Other problems with it, like in my talk, I was on a panel in Miami actually, for anyone wanna catch it, we were talking a little bit about the same things, but more focused on fossil fuels, and Bitcoin mining. But one of the problems is like, you know, if you're a small business and you're getting taxed and say, say you're doing something that deserves an offset credit, you gotta, like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of overhead for you to, to have someone on staff to apply for that, to get it, and you're not even The facts very well. So if you don't, you almost have to, like, it's harder for a small business relative to a large business to comply with the system, because it's another layer of bureaucracy that just generally is, it's gonna add a cost to a business, and the businesses that can't afford it are the, are the smallest. And so it's, it's discriminatory towards small businesses in general, just like most of these top-down, systems are. And I mean, there's so much absurdity behind everything. I mean, the, a lot of the, a lot Rhetoric, like this, clean energy rhetoric, is this idea that, you know, the fossil fuel industry isn't accounting for their negative externalities, right? Like their negative costs of carbon. So like forever, oil and gas producers, for, for example, have been producing and doing business, but they haven't had to pay a carbon tax because they haven't had to, you know, pay for the emissions they're responsible for. It's sort of like a-- They're not applying the same standard though. Like, so that, that is exactly what they're doing now. They're And users account for this negative externality in a carbon tax, but they're not applying it equivalently to, say, the alternatives, which again, we'll just, we'll, we'll contrast with wind and solar. They're not paying carbon taxes on their supply chain, you know, like, recently it was in the news, like Saskatchewan government here in Canada imposed a road levy for people driving EVs because EVs are actually heavier than, generally speaking than internal combustion engine vehicles, so they're doing more damage to the roads, and there was a bunch of outrage over that in the like green energy crowd. But it's like that's, that's at least fair. And generally though, all the emissions that go into EVs, which is enormous, an absolute enormous amount of emissions to manufacture an EV, much, much, much higher than an internal combustion engine vehicle, You know, you can approximate it by the capital cost, and it, it's not being accounted for. They're not, they're not having to pay the carbon tax, in that upfront supply chain, even though it's all fueled off Chinese coal. So, I mean, there's a lot of hypocrisy going on, a lot of just double standards, not applying methodologies properly across, and evenly ac-across all industries, and, and, and certainly discounting or not accounting for all, all the positive externalities of fossil fuels, like you mentioned, like if you-- like coal, cheap and reliable, like you said, and, it drives down the cost of energy, and therefore it supports, local manufacturing, 'cause everything that's manufactured off electricity and the heat and, and the raw materials of coal is done at a lower cost, which, you know, is passed through the supply chains at a lower cost of goods and services. But that's not-- that's call it a positive externality of like using coal, but it's not properly given its due credit. So, you know, the whole thing- Is, is effectively, whether it's from intent or, or it's just by, whether it's by design or whether it's just by happenstance, like it's discriminatory, against fossil fuels in a way that's not really gonna be a net good for society or the environment, in my opinion.

I see. Yeah. So bringing it to Bitcoin, we've got the Bitcoin Mining Council, which you have been critical of. Now it seems they have at least tried to come out and say, "Well, we're, we're an open, you know, council. We're trying to make

If your criticism would still be, oh, I see, you guys are still trying to appease the fiat maxies. What's your criticism then of the Bitcoin Mining Council and that, that kind of thinking and that kind of way of operating?

Well, once again, it's well-intended. There's no, I have no doubt that every member of that council, especially Michael Saylor, who sort of maybe sparked it, is not without best intent. So I give them full credit there. I think, like, aside from the, I think the obvious, fact that it goes against Of not, not colluding, you know, behind closed doors and all that. I would, I didn't really mind that. Like, I, like, I expect miners, other miners, to collude together, work together, try to, like, you know, help each other. In fact, I help other-- I help my competitors in certain ways, they help me in certain ways. we collude, like, we all-- there's always gonna be some amount of collusion. That wasn't what got me going on it. What got me going on it was that it, To legitimize and ostracize, you know, legitimize the low carbon, what they perceive as low carbon miners and ostracize and demonize those of us that are high carbon miners. So I'm not even a high carbon miner, like I'm, like our business, because we use waste gas, we could argue that we're negative carbon miners, like we, we could argue that we're the cleanest miners out there, and that's, you know, I changed my Twitter handle to world's cleanest Bitcoin miner for a while as mocking the whole thing. But the one Like, why are we inviting transparency into mining energy use? First of all, who cares? Like, who cares what energy is being used? Like, like I said earlier, we're all doing a huge benefit to society if, if Marathon is going full on coal, I say all the best to you, you're doing a great service to society, in general. And, you know, hypocrisy on, on the other renewables aside that we just discussed with their emissions, even, even at face value, if like wind and solar were perfectly clean, you know, it's not so bad That some people are using, carbon-like carbon-emitting power sources because we're doing so much good. I mean, I think anyone listening to this podcast agrees that all Bitcoin miners are doing a hell of a lot of good, for society as, you know, keeping the Bitcoin system, robust and, and alive. So one of it, part of it is just like, okay, why are we even, why are we worried about transparency, transparency into this thing? Like, who are we trying to appease? Like, I'm a, I'm a miner. We, we have a lot of clients who are mining. We, we have a small operation ourselves, but we mostly build for other people and, and sell them equipment. And, you know, why, why would I go out and-- I mean, it's pretty obvious what we're doing. We're all, we're pretty much exclusively natural

Just build for anybody. But like, why, why, who's benefiting from us being transparent about this, about like, okay, I'm on X amount of coal, I'm on X amount or Y amount of, solar? I don't see it's, to me, it just seems like posturing, for regulators. It's posturing, yes, they're trying to reverse the narrative that Bitcoin's bad for the environment, that a lot of the fudsters are, are going after, but, it's also not a good, foundation to build

You know, I think we, we, me and you, and, and a lot of the listeners can agree, 'cause based on what we know about the industry, a lot of Bitcoin mining is actually on renewables as it is today, right? a lot of hydro in Sichuan in China, lots of hydro in North America. lots of, you know, increasingly wasted gas, like wasted energy. there's, there are guys doing it on solar, wind, like Coinshares and others have done some pretty good reporting on, on a bit of transparency behind, Bitcoin energy usage. But I completely disagree with the, with everyone out there, and there's a lot of bitcoiners saying, "Justifying Bitcoin's energy use to these fudsters, like the people who are anti-bitcoin and saying it's bad for the environment." Bitcoiners are saying, "No, look at this, like we're mostly renewables. Like, you can't, like, you shouldn't blame us 'cause we're actually better than the average grid. The average, say, user is like X percent coal, we're only-- we're, we're smaller than that percent coal, right? So you I think it's only a, a short-lived phenomenon where Bitcoin mining, based on what I'm seeing in the oil field, I'm seeing increased interest from not just people on waste gas, but people on stranded gas, so that would be a carbon-increasing application, 'cause it's just gas that was t- turned off and now it's turned on. I'm seeing increased, demand from these economically stranded coal-fired power plants. That's, they're gonna be spun up. So this whole concept that, okay, just- Defying Bitcoin is, okay, it's okay that we're using this energy because we're on renewables and we're on relatively clean energy now, that's a really-- you're setting, you're setting yourself up to fail as that transitions towards, more carbon-heavy, energy. And I think it will, like, I, I think it really will, 'cause fundamentally, carbon-heavy energy is really, really cheap, and that's what Bitcoin miners need. It's cheap and reliable. So there's an economic incentive to go towards cheap and reliable. And of course, I think that's Largely driven by the oil and gas industry, but I just think it's a weak argument to make. So the premise behind the council being transparent, I think you're building on an unsound foundation in that fact that we don't need to change people's mind over- You know, what the energy, what the, the current, percentages of, of the energy mix is, because it, it isn't necessarily gonna stay that way. And that, now you're just setting your, your argument up to fail, and it shouldn't be an argument we build on. That's why I don't build on that argument, I build on the argument that energy, like politics aside, Bitcoin is so amazing for humankind, it's not that big a deal if we're, if we're, if we're using, you

know, Unchained Capital are providing Bitcoin native financial services on a foundation of multi-signature, so you can create a vault, there's no setup or storage fees if you build it on your own. On the other hand, if you need a hand, if you need someone to walk you through that process, they have a concierge service. This is available both for individuals or for businesses, so they will ship you some hardware wallets, they will answer your questions, do calls with you, and deposit a thousand dollars of Bitcoin in your vault, and you can use code LIVERA to get a discount on that. desk, and they also offer advanced business accounts. They've also got loans as well, so for those of you who want to collateralize against your Bitcoin, that's also something that Unchained offer. Go to Unchained dot com and you can find out more. Have you thought about backups? CipherGrid is the new product coming out from ciphersafe dot io. This is the best value in the industry. You get everything you need for fifty nine dollars, and this is a metal seed backup for your Bitcoin seed. It's got two stainless steel plates for all twenty four seed words. It's got privacy by default. It's stainless steel hardware that holds it together. It can be locked with a padlock. You get a tamper evidence seal provided, and you get an automatic center punch provided. And just like all CipherSafe products, it's made from From stainless steel, it's fireproof, rustproof, and waterproof, so make sure you or your loved ones could access your bitcoins if an accident occurred. Go and order yours at ciphersafe dot io and use the code livera for a discount. And finally, CoinKite dot com are the creators of my favorite Bitcoin hardware wallet, the Coldcard. The Coldcard is the best in the market. It's extremely versatile. You can use it in a single signature wallet situation with wallets like Specter, Sparrow, Electrum, BlueWallet, and others, and you can also use it as part of a multi-signature setup. So, for example, you can use your Coldcard as one of your keys in your Unchained setup. So, Coldcard has all sorts of features. It's got an address explorer so you can actually verify Verify the receive address to make sure that you actually control the address that you are receiving bitcoins into. So this is a nice little feature to give yourself a little bit more comfort. So go and order your cold card at coinkite dot com and of course, code livera for a discount. Back to the show. Right, yeah, and I think you're right to chase consistency in our arguments, and I think that's, that appeals to me too, right? Of being honest, it, that idea of we wanna be consistent in our arguments as much as possible. Obviously, everyone's, you know, We're all imperfect, but we try to chase that idea because it means we are actually less open to criticism later down the track, right? As you rightly say, imagine if, you know, the, the amount of coal and natural gas mining were to rise. And look, in fairness, there's probably a lot of hydro that will come on all around the world as well, and, and you know, we'll see a lot of, you know, the geothermal, volcano mining, right? The El Salvador, we'll see that come too. Absolutely. I hope so. But we have to be Overall merits, and for some of these green left people, you know, professional Bitcoin hater types, it will never be enough. You could be, you know, ninety percent renewable, and they would still be angry at you for not being a hundred percent or for, for even using it. Like they, you know, they can-- for some people, it just isn't enough, right? Now, one other point that might be worthwhile talking about is, well, okay, the Bitcoin miner or people out there might be saying, "Look, Steve, I agree with you, but we live in this system

Like, you know, we might disagree with the fiat system and how there's so much debt in it, and yet still have an incentive to go take on debt to buy Bitcoin, right? In the same way that you might, you know, Michael Saylor and other, you know, Pierre Rochard wrote about this idea of speculative attack, right? Trying to borrow fiat to buy more Bitcoin, and in that sense, you're helping break that system. So what's your view on that kind of argument, that kind of Bitcoin person who says, "Look, I agree with you, the truth is, the

Because I have to play the game.

Yeah, absolutely. Like, I agree totally, you have to play the game. You can't flip the table and go home crying, like you have to play the game and try to beat them at their own game. It's really the only way to win, like you have to beat them at their own game. So even me, who's an outspoken critic on this ESG stuff, what they're, what they're doing, what they've done to the oil and gas industry, what they're doing to, about to do to Bitcoin mining industry, I

With carbon, wealth reallocation through tax and offsets. I completely fundamentally disagree with it, and I won't-- I'll do my best not to legitimize it in any way. Like, I'll, I'll go out of my way to critique it and bring, you know, that's what I do online. I'm, I'm critiquing it, I'm trying to get people to understand my point of view on it and hopefully change minds, like, you know, changing minds on like coal-fired power and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, I have

Like all things being equal, right? If it's my business versus another business, and they're, they're just towing the line and taking the carbon subsidies, and I refuse to, because I'm just like, you know, I'm on a, I'm on a pedestal and I'm, and I'm speaking out against it, I go out of business and I die. Like my, my business dies, right? I don't have a choice to do it, I have to tow the line on the carbon stuff when it comes to, I have, I have a fiduciary duty to Or a carbon offset credit and carbon subsidy, like we'll do that, but it's not-- doesn't mean it's right. And I will, I will also work within that game, try to benefit ourselves, like you said, like, Sailor is, is, you know, taking on debt to buy Bitcoin, he's gaming the system. Absolutely, that, that's what we'll try to do as well. But at least because I'm, I can speak freely, I'm lucky enough that I don't have certain creditors or shareholders in my company that are censoring me. I can sort Say what I want, and I choose to at least critique that because I, I think the, the carbon stuff is the biggest, it's, it, it, I, I think it's just a generally, a very negative thing for, for Western society in general. It's, I don't, I don't fundamentally disagree with the wealth redistribution aspect of it. I think it's bad for people, and I think it's bad for the environment. I think there's, it's actually a net negative on the environment with all the man hours and bureaucracy burned in, in, in Yeah, yeah, I'll, I'll keep opposing it, but I do try to choose my battles, like even though I don't mind calling out like certain miners for just bullshitting and like, you know, I understand why they do it, and but I don't mind calling them out for it, but I, I do still choose my battles, try, try to do it strategically.

Yeah, yeah, and I think that's all we can really ask, right? So at least as people are trying to speak out and say something about it, well, at least that's something,

I think the, like, I think Sailor is smart and he understands generally what's happening. The, there is gonna be increased regulation on Bitcoin mining, especially North America. I understand that he probably sees that too. He's trying, maybe in his own way, he's trying to get ahead of that, and, you know, maybe that will end up being a service to us, in the Bitcoin community in North America. For me, I just don't feel like we need to legitimize it. Like, we can-- there's other ways to justify what we do as Bitcoin Miners, I don't think we need to legitimize something that is illegitimate in, in my mind.

Yeah, yeah, and I'm, I'm already thinking the argument could also be that this is another way to, maybe this isn't the step that captures Bitcoin, but it's pushing in that direction that, oh, see, all the miners need to be registered and catalogued and X, Y, Z amount of energy because we need to know how much energy you're using. But the other thing to remember is that Bitcoin is a global competition, and so it might end up harming North American miners miners, because now they will lose competitiveness against miners who get, go and set up in other countries. And don't forget, there's a difference between a pool and the mining farm as well. So the mining farm can just simply point their hash power to some other pool as well. So that's also an important point to remember, right?

Yeah, I'm not, I don't think Bitcoin is really at risk of getting fully captured and like destroyed like gold was. I think it's got inherent properties that will resist that, which is a fun discussion in itself, but, Bitcoin, like I think Bitcoin's just gonna destroy all this, crap anyway, like this, they can try to slap anything on top of Bitcoin, it'll blow through it. I'm worried about, like, okay, the regulators come in in North America, the more these big miners legitimizing this like transparency thing and this, carbon accounting thing, it's gonna force me and my customers and everyone else to do it as well, some of which will be at, like I said, be based on the size of your business, you'll be at an inherent disadvantage versus others discriminatory in that sense. And, I mean, it's coming, like, regulations are coming for sure, but I don't see why we should be, like, catering to it or inviting it. Like, I, I think we should at least, not exactly push back, well, certainly push back, but like, be more reasonable about it. Like, I don't think carbon has, any place in the world, let alone in Bitcoin mining, and I certainly don't expect Bitcoiners to, be okay with it. It's, you know, we talk what about these carbon peddlers? Like, they're worse, like they're way worse, like they're like orders of magnitude worse, and it's, it's got all the weight of the state behind it. Like, that's a much bigger problem in my opinion than all these little mom-and-pop confidence tricks and, and shitcoin scams in the Bitcoin space.

Yeah, and that, it does-- some of this folds back into the general debate, those of us who have been, in the general political debate or trying to partake in that about energy, just in general I think it kind of, some of it does fall into the general left versus right, if, if you will, in that world. So who knows, maybe, you know, as Bitcoin becomes bigger and bigger and bigger, it is gonna have that impact into the normal political sphere, and then, who knows, maybe it will be a bit more like, you know, people on the conservative and libertarian sides of politics will be a bit more on the anti, anti-ESG bandwagon. So-

Well, it's, Bitcoin's amazing 'cause like, I mean, it, it sort of wor- advantage to the black market. But Bitcoin is just amazing 'cause like, you know, Marathon started with their pool with that OFAC compliant, you know, KYC, like clean blocks, clean coins. But, you know, I, I don't know if they, if it was just the, the reaction to it or they've realized themselves that we can't do this right now because we're gonna be at a competitive disadvantage and, you know, everyone's shouting at us for it. But like, I'm not sure which one swayed them, if it's people shouting at them or Okay, we're at, we're gonna lose our business over time. And that's the, that's the cool thing about, you know, they can bring in all the regulation they want, they can actually ban Bitcoin outright in North America, all that capital, all that wealth that's generated that would have been in America, in America, say, is just gonna go wherever they're doing it in secret, in like mining in secret. I mean, that's why, like, I've always said, you know, build portable mines because you never know what's gonna happen in your jurisdiction. They

That's nice, that's why I build exclusively portable, 'cause it's not just off-grid, it just makes sense. We've seen it from time to time, there's several states now, and even in Canada, the moratorium in Quebec ended up screwing a lot of people when these, you know, politicians basically stop, you know, do things, make mandates, make rules that keep away mining and shut down all the, all the business that was like in action and underway. And, you know, anyone building portable, and if you're building small, Like you're not a big, you know, core scientific or something, you can probably keep going even in a regulated market if you can keep it, if you can keep it sort of on the, on the down low. Not that I'm exactly advocating for that, I sort of am, because I think it's just such a great-- It's a, Bitcoin mining's a great thing, but, you know, when the, when the regulators come to North America really heavy, they might just put me right out of business and I'll have to shut down. But it's not gonna, it's not

In terms of pushback, also maybe I've seen another idea you mention is that maybe wind and solar should be paying a baseload credit to natural gas and coal. Can you expand on that? What's this idea?

that, that's mostly just me trolling. Like, I, I do, I do like trolling, especially the wind and solar proponents, but like they're dependent on coal. Like, they're dependent on the baseload, the natural gas, the nuclear, all, all, like the unreliables, as you say, like the wind and solar, are dependent on

Elon Musk is peddling with his batteries. You can't back up wind and solar at, at industrial scale with batteries, not feasibly. I mean, the amount, the cost of batteries would go through the roof if you had to, excuse me, if you had to manufacture that many batteries. it's not feasible, any, any energy, anyone, any engi-en-engineer in the energy business knows that. So there's always gonna be a base load backup, and if anything, like, why, why is the base load subsidized? Why is the, why are the reli in any logical world, but also in any logical world, there wouldn't be, there would just be a free market deciding what energy mixes are, you know, deployed, right? Of course, yeah.

So let's chat a bit about Upstream Data. We've got a little bit, we've got a couple minutes left. Tell us the latest with Upstream Data, how things are going there, you know, and you brought that hash hut down to Miami. Tell us a bit about that too.

Yeah, it was fun. so we went to Miami, just as, you know Anything in a Bitcoin conference, I wanted to bring a building, like show it off. I was actually, my original plan, like any, you know, you follow me online, anyone listening that follows me knows, like I, I have all these ideas and I change them and stuff, but I was gonna bring my hash generator, which is an actual motor, and run it on propane at the conference. But they, I was actually gonna mine Bitcoin at the conference with a motor on propane the whole time. But the problem with that, 'cause I thought it'd be a funny troll too, 'cause I I would never normally run a motor on propane, you're just like spending a ton of money on propane, but like I was gonna, I wanted to do it also as a troll against the, the energy fudsters. Yeah. And, I never brought that unit because of some logistics, it's really loud, they didn't want me to do it, they only wanted me to do it after hours and stuff, and it's like, okay, that's boring, right? I also wanted to drive it there so I can mine Bitcoin on the drive, like on the trailer, just Tweeted out and stuff, and really just tweet at the people that hate that stuff. But I didn't do that. I brought a hash hut, which is probably a better choice 'cause it's, I was able to power that up the whole time. we weren't mining Bitcoin, but we were just like, had it demoed. And, yeah, the point with that was just exposure for the company, get people to see what we build, hopefully, you know, get interest and eventually get buyers. It was really-- the overall, the conference

was So I, I, we did a silent auction, we earned about just over twenty million sats. So it's actually decent money for that thing, like, almost its full value, like, like just almost. So that was awesome, thanks to Nick at Kaboom Racks for, getting the winning bid. So he's already sold it. He already flipped it and sold it. But, anyway, we're donating that funds once we receive it to a few, charities. that'll be a bit fun. And, and yeah, no And where we're at as a company, we just hit a really nice milestone, like we just-- I think when I first talked to you, Steven or Stephan, we were-- it was in twenty eighteen, I think you said. Yeah. That sounds about right. I literally just started, you know, I was just starting, I should say, being commercial, and, I think I only had like maybe three units running back then, but we just shipped our hundredth, so we've grown a lot, especially in the last year. Periods of like, you know, Of, the market and demand, but we've done really well in the spool market, people, and our-- and it seems like our products are, the word of mouth aspect is really catching on, 'cause we're getting cu-new customers that heard from other customers, it's really, snowballing, so that's been really, really good.

That's awesome, man. It's great to hear, and, you know, you're, you're really out there. And, you know, from the, you know, carbon and perspective, you're actually massively reducing

Methane, but you're able to process it and then it comes out as, you know, like forty to sixty times, it's like fifty times less,

yeah. The accountants, the carbon accountants say, twenty-five times, like on a hundred-year scale. So like it's, that just means over a hundred-year time period, the methane emitted is equal to twenty-five times the weight in, in carbon, in carbon dioxide. yeah, I mean, I, that's one reason why, like, I am in a really good position in the mining community to We are like literally us and everyone that does what we do, 'cause there's a lot now, like Gam, Crusoe, I could name like literally dozens at this point. It's actually becoming like, it's catching fire in the oil field, like no, no pun intended. And again, that's again why I'm saying like, be careful about framing your arguments on renewables, like it literally, I see oil field exploding in this, in the next decade. But as someone that, like, okay, our business, you know, if you actually, if, if I brought Our emissions, we're probably in the negative like an astounding amount, 'cause most of our deployments are on vented methane, like you said. So it's every time we capture a vent, a methane vent, we're reducing the emissions of that producer by, actually our smallest package does about seven thousand metric tons per year. So I mean, I did a quick math on, I looked through our list of deployments, about the hundred deployments, and at least about sixty percent of them are on vented methane. So that's at least, four hundred and fifty- thousand metric tons were reducing, a year. so that's, you know, I don't like the term carbon negative, but that's where we're at. So I think it gives me a good foundation to stand up and say, okay, this carbon thing's bullshit, even though we can, we can benefit from it more than maybe any other miner or like equivalent to anyone else doing what we're doing. But I, I really do think it's, it's a horrible scam that's hurting everybody, but, you know, the people at the top. So I refuse unless someone can convince me otherwise, I refuse to, go along with that.

Yeah, totally fair. so any tips for listeners out there if they wanna get in touch, if they wanna get started mining, do you have any, you know, any words of advice or words of what they should be doing when they are advocating as well?

beyond what like I ranted about in this short, short session, well, getting in touch with me is easy, just at s g barbour at, at, on Twitter. You can, a lot of people ping me there, I, I usually respond when I can. If you're interested in our business, like upstreamdata dot ca, just hit our contact form. words of advice, not really sure, just, just, you know, keep hodling, but don't be afraid to spend some things on your wife and family from time to time. It's not a bad thing to spend a few sat, so, don't mind

doing that once in a while. Excellent. Well, thanks very much, Steve. I really enjoyed Willing to speak the truth, even if it's not a popular truth out there. So thank you for that.

Yeah, speak your mind at least. Like, w-whether anything I say makes sense, at least, you know, I'm trying. Thanks, Steve. Thanks for, thanks for having me, man. It was good to catch up.

So what do you think? Should Bitcoiners be pushing back on the ESG people? Should they be making use of the carbon credit scheme, even if they know or disagree with the fundamental reason for this being in place? Well, I'll dot com slash two eight four, and I will see you in the citadels.