0:00 The best and simplest analogy that I have for explaining bitcoin mining is it's as if you had a cross between the 0:06 military and Visa. So you get to use resources to process payments and take 0:12 fees, but with those same resources, you are also effectively protecting the 0:17 network. Uh in the same way that the military is protecting trade channels, miners are protecting the network that 0:24 passes all of the value on the bitcoin network. 0:33 Welcome to Medium of Exchange, the podcast where we spotlight business owners building on a bitcoin standard. 0:39 Each week, we share real stories, practical insights, and why this monetary shift matters more than ever. 0:45 Today's guest is someone who's helping usher in a new era of financial literacy and digital sovereignty, one person at a 0:52 time. Beau Turner is the founder of Abundant Minds, where he's demystifying bitcoin mining and wealthb buildinging 0:58 in a world that feels at times increasingly rigged against the individual. B's not just handing people 1:04 tools, he's teaching them how to use them with confidence through his educational content and his team 1:11 providing one-on-one support for hosted mining. He's helping regular people make sense of this monetary revolution and 1:18 actually participate in it. especially in the mining space where confusion abounds. He is clear, direct, and 1:24 trusted. He's also the host of the podcast Hosting bitcoin where he's interviewed brilliant minds like Jack 1:30 Dorsey, Jeff Beauoth, Natalie Brunell, adding even more depth to the conversation that we're about to have. 1:36 And today, we're digging into his personal journey, uh, what he's building at Abundant Minds, why he believes 1:42 bitcoin isn't just an asset, it's a doorway to something better. Beau Turner, welcome to Medium Exchange. It is really 1:48 an honor to have you, my friend. Jason, Jack, thank you guys for having me on and thank you for a beautiful intro. 1:54 Yeah. Yeah, man. Um, so Beau, take us back like how did you discover bitcoin and 2:00 what was the moment you realized you needed to build Abundant Mines? So, like anything of note, it took quite 2:09 a bit of exposure for me to kind of shift my full attention into it. uh it wasn't like a I saw it for the first 2:16 time and I completely understood what I was looking at and why it mattered to the world. My first exposure was in 2:22 2015. I was in college. I was just it's just came across the plate as I was 2:29 looking at other investments frankly and it was this weird thing that you know I was I was young. I was looking for what 2:34 the wealth building vehicle for me would be and this funny thing called bitcoin 2:40 came around and it's like hm this is really interesting. This isn't like a stock. This isn't like anything that 2:46 I've ever seen before. Um, but you know, it's already a couple 2:51 billion market cap. Probably most of the gains are behind us. So, I wish I had not had that view in 2015 and and been a 2:59 little bit more bought in, but I was lucky to get some uh set up my $10 daily buy on Coinbase, which ended up being a 3:06 a a good move years later. But it wasn't until 2020 3:12 uh in 2021 that I really fully turned my attention toward it. So I was in uh an 3:19 engineering major was looking at getting into the engineering space. I ended up just building a real estate company 3:25 after school. And what I found was that none of these 3:30 things, whether in the engineering world or in just the world of real estate development, really ignited that sense 3:36 of kind of inspiration and purpose. And the more that I allowed myself to be 3:43 subjected to bitcoin podcasts and people like Sailor coming on and and describing what this could be, um, it really just 3:51 turned me toward the idea that I could work on something that was not only 3:56 potentially very lucrative and a great place to be career-wise, but also extremely meaningful. And when I had 4:03 first heard about mining, I thought, okay, interesting. Like, you run computers and it makes money. That's cool. And it took, you know, hundreds, 4:12 if not thousands of hours of of additional education to realize, wow, this is actually potentially a vehicle 4:18 to sort of save the environment and save the world and and remake the way that we interact with energy, which was not even 4:24 something that I conceptualized that we needed to remake or or retool how we interacted with. So, you know, suffice 4:31 it to say, the deeper you go down the rabbit hole, the deeper the rabbit hole goes. And that has been my journey. And 4:36 it started with just buying 10 bucks a day and has turned into uh a company that takes, you know, all my time, all 4:43 my energy, and I could not be happier getting people into bitcoin mining. That's amazing. So, you had 4:52 Tell us a little bit about your before we get into like bitcoin stuff. So, you had was it rental properties or what 4:57 what was your the real estate side? Yeah, exactly. So, I I had a rental property portfolio across the southeast. 5:04 Started in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Had a few properties there. And then when I moved to Texas, started 5:10 building a portfolio there. Picked up a couple in Georgia as well, but really was just looking to build the passive 5:17 income stream that most people are are looking for as early as I could, you know, understand what passive income 5:23 was. And to me, real estate was that vehicle, or at least I thought it would 5:28 be. And it never ended up actually being that passive for me. um seemed to take 5:33 only more and more time the more successful it got. And 5:38 at a certain point it just no longer was something that I was passionate about. And I I could see 5:45 that it was a reliable wealthb buildinging vehicle. But um did not you 5:50 know there's there's this saying that someone who's passionate about what they're doing is always going to be far 5:57 better than you even if you are putting significant amount of time and effort into something. And I realized that I would just continually, even though I 6:03 was quite successful for a young guy, get out competed by someone who actually woke up absolutely loving the real 6:10 estate game every day. And so at a certain point, I decided, you know what, 6:15 all these single family homes, these these light commercial buildings, like I love getting the check. I don't love 6:22 property management. I don't love not being able to inspect what I'm expecting 6:27 in terms of people taking care of properties that are several states away. And so 2020 started the process of 6:34 liquidating that real estate portfolio that I'd be been building and uh sold my last property at the beginning of 2024. 6:42 That's one benefit of bitcoin is if I had made that decision, I could have been done with it pretty much overnight 6:47 uh to liquidate all my bitcoin. But property takes a couple years. It's incredibly how it's incredible how 6:53 illquid I've learned that over the last few years. Um how illlquid real estate can be. Um I it's interesting because I 7:00 have very similar um journey to an extent where in addition 7:07 to the impact uh that bitcoin can have on the 7:12 world like the incredible like need for bitcoin that I believe that that the 7:17 world has just purely from a selfish just wealth-b buildinging you know tool. 7:24 how how you can with a single click build wealth with where you you DCA 7:33 and that's it like you all the even when I shifted for me I shifted from my real 7:39 estate journey is I spent 10 years managing my properties myself I had some in Tennessee and Washington state and 7:45 even when I when I got burnt out that passion dried up and I shifted over to property management everything's managed 7:50 by someone else we still have like multiple QuickBooks company files the bookkeeper still asking questions. The 7:55 their property manager is still asking questions about painting the exterior of this house and the plumbing question for 8:00 this other one. And I was like, man, bitcoin fixes this. Like, 8:05 yeah, totally. So, okay. So, was it um so you had re 8:12 real estate as a way to store your time and energy. um what were some of your 8:18 like experiences or frustrations that really was the tipping point that pushed you from that traditional real estate 8:23 wealthb buildinging playbook and explore something like bitcoin mining. 8:31 So it was a mix of conceptual learning and just lived experience. So, on the 8:39 experience side, you know, you have enough really expensive tenant turnovers and you're gonna you're going to start 8:45 to dislike the process of of having tenants and having to turn them over and 8:50 find new ones. And I had one in particular that just wiped out several 8:56 years of of rental income even though the house had no debt on it. So, think like most people are are renting homes 9:02 on very thin margins. They're servicing a mortgage. uh they're hoping to make pretty nominal cash flow on a home and I 9:09 did not have any debt on this place and so it was 100% free cash flow and this person just absolutely wrecked the place 9:17 and it was such a a raw experience of of 9:22 feeling like effort and time had been wasted on that that uh that was really 9:28 the first property go to go. So, as soon as that experience happened, I was like, you know what? This maybe this isn't the 9:34 right area. Maybe this isn't the right the right home. So, I'm going to just go ahead and liquidate this one. And then 9:39 around that time as well, I was beginning to realize that even if I was responsible and had no debt on my 9:46 properties that the entire real estate market is essentially backed by a 9:52 considerable amount of debt. So even if you are a responsible actor in the 9:57 market, everybody else carrying a ton of debt on their property can have a huge impact on the value of your property. 10:04 Because if things like 2008 happen and suddenly there's there's no new credit, there's no new lending um and you see a 10:11 contraction in the amount of debt that people are willing to give out for real estate, then every every bit of real 10:16 estate is going to lose value in nominal terms. And that's a a crappy place to be. So, I was really interested in the 10:24 fact that bitcoin was totally uncorrelated, that it was essentially backed by pure energy rather than as 10:30 much debt as you can pump into it. It was notoriously a bad thing to take out debt and buy at the time super volatile 10:37 and so not a great idea to be leveraged to the hilt. We've seen plenty of people blow up if they if they do that in a 10:44 really uh unintelligent way. So that was that was part of it. But you know the 10:51 the next step you would think would just be okay sell all my properties and just buy bitcoin. But I really loved getting 10:57 cash flow. Like absolutely love the sense of just waking up and something is 11:02 is coming to me without me having to lift a finger uh or minimally lift a finger. And I didn't want to trade that. 11:10 And I had already seen the blowups happen time and time again with with people choosing to get passive income by 11:16 lending out their bitcoin. So, I think there's a few products nowadays that that maybe are a little bit safer, a 11:22 little bit easier to monitor on chain that aren't rehypothecated, but I felt that the most true pure native way that 11:30 I could get passive income in the bitcoin space was to actually get into mining. And started by just getting 11:38 miners and and hosting them with someone. I had a really raw experience that was uh about a year of just 11:45 nightmarish working with the wrong partner and having delays in deployment and broken things and extra bills for 11:52 repair that I wasn't expecting. And I thought, man, like I I had plenty 11:58 of data center coursework and bitcoin mines are not even that complicated necessarily of data centers. So like 12:04 let's go try this and and build a facility myself. And I was lucky to be 12:09 surrounded by the right people at the right time that here in Oregon were in the space for a super long time and 12:15 we're just looking for the right people to work with to actually build something of meaning. And originally I was just 12:22 intending to build and mine and mine quietly and not have anybody know about it and not have a podcast or go on 12:29 podcasts or anything like that. Um, but I've heard that your purpose lies next 12:36 to the worst thing that ever happened to you. And that mining experience, especially because of the timing and and 12:41 me having just gotten engaged and suddenly being fearful of my future, was at the time the worst thing that had 12:48 ever happened to me, at least in a business sense. And so I thought, you know what, we can offer this service. we 12:55 can actually help people get into mining and I can make sure that the people that are looking to get into mining have the 13:01 experience that I wish that I'd had when I first got in. So to make a long story short, um got into mining because it 13:08 seemed like the best way to make more bitcoin and do it passively and turned into so much more. So and then you Founding Abundant Mines 13:14 started Abundant Mines. Um what was that like for you guys? 13:21 Was it just you and like tell me more there. Yeah, it started with just me and our 13:28 our lead engineer, Colin. Colin's been mining himself since about 2012. Um, he 13:36 never turned it into anything super commercial, like had a a small facility, 13:42 which was where I started out having a few machines hosted and our very first clients were hosted and our our first 13:48 large scale facilities in that same town. So that that early space that he had was kind of like the nucleus, the 13:55 the seed that that gave us the jumping off point to go out and build the larger space. 14:01 And he just 14:07 was mining for years and years here and always had a group of people around him. 14:13 He calls it the guild. Uh the the joke being that it was kind of like hurting 14:19 cats, but a bunch of cats that were en enjoying mining. So it was never really a commercial enterprise and more like a 14:24 co-op of people who just wanted to to mine together. Uh but you would have to come if you were one of these cats in 14:30 the guild and manage your stuff yourself. It was not a a done for you service. If you were non-technical, it 14:36 was not something to get involved in. Um, and so, you know, I needed someone 14:42 who truly loved the managing computers and and maintenance and electrical and 14:49 facilities and and all of that on a day-to-day basis, who genuinely is passionate about that. And he needed 14:56 someone who could communicate and and provide an experience and work on 15:01 essentially spreading the word, spreading the mission. And you know, I was I was of course the the capital 15:08 partner from liquidating real estate. And he was basically the the backbone of 15:13 the operation. And for the first year of development, it was just us two. And now 15:19 we're sitting with a team of I think the last count is 16 or 17 people. And it seems like we get a a new person about 15:26 every few weeks. That's you. That's great. No, that's great. 15:34 That's awesome seeing that kind of journey come to where you are now with a 15:39 with a team of you know that large. Um I'm interested in hearing about the name 15:46 right abundant energy and or abundant mining rather and 15:51 bitcoin's scarce like that's one of the things that gets people to understand bitcoin. So in a sense it's almost like 15:58 that's a paradox. How can something that is perfectly scarce be abundant? 16:03 Hm. That's a great question. I'll say that the name came from I've 16:10 always loved having an aspirational name for for a business. So my my real estate 16:16 company was called Good Life Realy. And at the time that was the the highest vision of what I thought a life could be 16:22 was good a good life. And after years and years of of that being the highest 16:28 vision that I could couldn't imagine for myself, I thought, you know what, good is kind of a limiting word. Uh there's 16:35 probably a better higher higher frequency aspirational word that I could 16:40 align with. And um I can't say that it 16:45 was a linear decision to use the word abundance, but I can tell you that over 16:52 and over that word came back as the highest 16:57 expression of what bitcoin meant to me and what I thought it meant to the world is ushering in a world of abundance. And 17:07 despite mining being what seems like the most cutthroat business on earth and a 17:14 everinccreasing group of of people and resources going after a finite supply of something, every time I met with 17:21 somebody or worked with somebody in the mining space or, you know, even just connected with the community, it always 17:28 felt like there was an abundance attitude. It didn't feel like a bunch of dogs going after a single piece of meat 17:34 and having to fight over it. It was like everybody's willing to help each other. So despite it being this uh quote finite 17:43 game going after the last remaining bitcoin of which there's only about 5% of the supply left to mine. It always 17:50 felt like like going after abundance together and not only going after it but but actually creating it and that every 17:57 new resource that we put into mining more coin we were actually uh 18:02 bootstrapping an abundant future and everything else. So hope that explains 18:07 it. I just think that that mining is one of the keys to to us building the most abundant future possible for humans. 18:14 Why is that? Is your business accepting a form of payment that stores value over 18:19 time? A recent survey showed the number one challenge that small business owners 18:25 are facing today is inflation. You raise prices, renegotiate with vendors, try to 18:30 stay ahead, but your dollars keep losing purchasing power. At the bitcoin Payments Adviser, we help business 18:37 owners like you accept bitcoin, a form of money that's built to resist inflation. Unlike dollars, bitcoin has a 18:44 fixed supply and that means the value that you receive today has the potential to hold or grow over time, not quietly 18:52 erode. Our service makes it simple. No servers and tech headaches, just easy 18:57 setup, white glove support, integration with your existing systems. If you're ready to explore a smarter way to get 19:04 paid, one that helps you fight inflation instead of fall behind, visit bitcoin paymentsadvisor.com. 19:11 Again, that's bitcoin paymentsadvisor.com. Tell me more. 19:16 [Laughter] It all comes back to energy and and I Energy as the Foundation of Civilization 19:21 wouldn't have I wouldn't have ever probably learned this had I not gotten 19:27 into mining, but energy is our foundational commodity. It's it's the backbone of of how we all navigate the 19:34 world. If we suddenly had less access to energy, it would be very apparent how 19:40 much we all rely on it to get the very basic service and quality of life that 19:45 we all depend on. And until I was in mining, I didn't recognize that. I 19:51 didn't see that. I didn't understand how fundamental it was. And um 19:57 what I realized was miners are the most natural seekers of and in a sense the 20:04 most well-defined incentive structure to develop abundant energy. And 20:11 before mining, there was no such thing as a 20:16 a uh insensitive infinite consumer of energy that would buy regardless of 20:23 where it is or how much it is as long as it's at the right price. There's there's no such thing as as infinite demand for 20:29 energy. And in my opinion, it's part of why energy innovation hasn't progressed faster than it has. 20:36 So to me, the more mining exists, the more 20:42 incentive there is to create abundant energy, the more abundant energy there is, the more prosperous civilization on 20:49 the whole is. And I I don't think it's a coincidence that the Cardev scale ranks 20:55 civilizations by how much energy they use or how much energy they can channel. 21:00 And essentially, I've always been a a sci-fi nerd. Like I I can't wait for us 21:06 to live in the Star Wars future of intergalactic travel and all of that is 21:11 connected to energy use and and really efficient channeling of energy. And funny enough, 21:18 I think bitcoin mining is the most natural way to bring that about in a sly 21:23 roundabout way. So there's a correlation between 21:28 abundant energy and human flourishing. and couldn't couldn't have summed it up 21:34 better myself. Yeah. Yeah. And so for you, it's like it ties into the the title of your company and 21:42 abundance. What is this maybe a rudimentary question, but 21:48 just for our listeners who maybe are not necessarily into bitcoin or maybe they are and they don't but they don't 21:54 necessarily know about the mining side, can you just like give us a really quick snippet of like what even is mining? 22:01 Of course, it's just the process of taking raw energy, running it through a 22:07 computer that's doing work with it, and using that computer, the the output of 22:13 that computer to secure a network. And there's so many different ways that I 22:18 could explain it. The best and simplest analogy that I have for explaining bitcoin mining is it's as if you had a 22:26 cross between the military and Visa. So you get to use resources to process 22:33 payments and take fees, but with those same resources, you are also effectively 22:39 protecting the network. Uh in the same way that the military is protecting trade channels, miners are protecting 22:45 the network that passes all of the value on the bitcoin network. And so 22:51 that's the most simplistic way that I could describe it. And and the way that that happens in in a mechanical sense is 22:57 you run energy through a computer that's guessing a ridiculous amount of random 23:02 numbers on a second by- second basis. And that randomness creates that security and also the perfect end puzzle 23:10 piece to add every new block to the ledger that forms the history of all the 23:15 transactions that we see on the bitcoin network. That was a great synopsis. 23:21 So mil so military and visa that that that like really like 23:26 resonated with me for a second. So military as in protection of the network. Visa as in the network itself. 23:32 Does that sound right? Exactly. I mean if you think about it the military is not earning fees in a 23:39 direct sense. I mean it's it's quite a cost center but they're not directly taking fees for protecting trade routes 23:47 or protecting other types of monetary networks. But we do as miners, we're we're 23:53 directly taking transaction fees from every block that gets mined. And 23:59 Visa doesn't, you know, they're they're not a cyber security company per se. 24:04 They're not necessarily putting a lot of their resources into protecting something. It's more just about 24:10 facilitating value transfer. So if you just describe it as as a payments network, you're also missing what I 24:16 would say is half of it, which is this is a digital network storing more value 24:22 than any other in the world with no central passwords. So how do you keep it safe? And the way that it's kept safe is 24:28 just everinccreasing randomness thrown into the void with raw energy that 24:34 that's used around the world. Medium of Exchange is sponsored by 24:39 Polaris Payments. Let's face it, for now, businesses still need to accept fiat and credit cards. Polaris Payments 24:47 helps with all your credit card processing needs using a consultative approach. Think of Polaris like a 24:53 performance coach, helping take your business to the next level when it comes to accepting all forms of money. For 25:00 more information about Polaris Payments, visit polarispayments.com. Now, let's get back to the show. 25:06 Jack, I'm going to let you ask the next one. Yeah. Well, it's so interesting talking 25:12 to a a mining guy and an energy guy on like this this premise of getting new 25:19 people into bitcoin because I find my conversations with non- bitcoiners or people who are like curious about 25:25 bitcoin. They'll ask me what is bitcoin and I'll give them, you know, the kind of highle overview. It's, you know, 25:32 digital cash, peer-to-peer, uh, scarce, all that type of stuff. But then they 25:37 always ask the follow-up question of what is mining? And they're like, how does mining work into the network? And I 25:44 I almost struggle with with this because I'm like mining is such a rabbit hole in 25:49 itself that I I don't know how deep to go cuz it's 25:54 like it's like I don't want to overwhelm them with the amount of information that 26:00 goes into mining. And I think that's where your analogy that you just used is pretty powerful. Um, but I am curious Unlocking the World of bitcoin Mining 26:07 when you're talking to somebody, whether it's a potential client or just a friend that you're looking to orange pill, what 26:14 is that conversation of getting them to start to learn more about mining and and 26:20 bringing it into the network as a whole? Cuz that often to me feels like the biggest unlock for people when they 26:26 realize that bitcoin isn't just a store of value, but it is this monetary network that's being supported by 26:32 millions of miners around the world. Oh man, you I mean you've got it right. 26:40 It's it can be really overwhelming to get people to want to learn about mining 26:45 because if bitcoin is is a niche within the financial system, then mining is a niche within that niche. And it's even 26:53 more um it's got even more technical jargon to to navigate that can be really 27:00 tough for people. That said, um, 27:07 a couple things. I've been really surprised by how many people work with 27:12 us and they're we are their first exposure to bitcoin in general. Like, 27:18 they've never set up a wallet before and they're coming to start mining with us. So, just by that being part of the 27:25 nature of our business, we've had to get pretty good at onboarding people and helping them understand. But I think the 27:32 the really special thing about getting into mining is especially in the older 27:38 demographic, the hardest thing for people to wrap their minds around bitcoin having value is the fact that 27:44 it's non-physical. They can't lay their hands on it. It's very difficult for them to to form a relationship with it 27:52 in the same way that they would, you know, a a gold coin or a piece of real estate or shares in a company where at 27:57 least there's this physical world connection that they can analogize. And 28:03 it's part of the reason I use analogies often is because unless we can connect something new to something that we are 28:09 familiar with, it's really hard to build intuition and familiarity and like 28:16 really believe in something. Um before then it's it's just a sense of faith. 28:22 But what's really cool about mining is that it is that physical thing that that 28:28 the bitcoin network, it's the only physical manifestation of the bitcoin network in in reality. And so despite it 28:36 being overly technical and really tough to distill into just a couple sentences 28:41 of what is bitcoin mining, if you can get someone to physically come out to 28:46 see a bitcoin mining facility and see a minor running, that experience is often 28:53 more powerful than the best framed education that you can give someone. 28:58 even onetoone answering every question perfectly. There is something very visceral about driving past a hydropower 29:07 dam, seeing a data center set up next to a substation and then seeing hundreds or 29:12 thousands of computers lined up. And then you have to wonder, okay, someone went to the trouble of setting up all of 29:20 this physical infrastructure. Why? Oh, to secure this thing that they're saying 29:25 has has value. And oh, by the way, this facility that I'm touring is one of thousands around the world and is not 29:32 even that big of a facility compared to the once. So, okay, this isn't just a 29:37 non-physical like nerdy magic internet money thing. This is secured by real 29:43 resources that I mean, they could be used for something else, but but why are they choosing to 29:50 do this? And then you dive into the the rabbit hole of, oh wait, there's so much 29:55 wasted energy and they're actually going and finding that waste and monetizing it. Um, so that wasn't a a shallow dive 30:04 into the rabbit hole, but like the fact that you can physically touch this part 30:09 of the network I find unlocks something very different than even the best explanations that I give people. So that 30:17 that would be the the answer of like how do you get someone down the rabbit hole? God, man, if they'll just get a plane 30:23 ticket and come out and see us in Oregon, I I promise you it's it's an experience. And it's part of why we make 30:29 every every team member that we can come out and actually see the facility. even if they have nothing to do with mining, 30:35 even if they're just in billing or customer service or, you know, like 30:40 seeing the facility is a completely different experience than 30:46 trying to learn a concept online. That's great. I still want to come out. I I I know you 30:51 you invited me out. I'm not going to be able to make it, unfortunately, uh in uh 30:57 when was it? Like August, I think. Um, I spent I spent 13 years in the 31:05 Pacific Northwest. Uh, you're based in Oregon. I was in Seattle. Seattle's not necessarily known for like the density 31:10 of of like conservatives. Uh, the narrative was very much was bitcoin bad? Uh, specifically bitcoin bad for the 31:16 environment. Um, you've you've made clear decisions to like prioritize sustainability, 31:22 environmental stewardship. Um, can you fill us in on like, you know, you 31:28 mentioned wasted energy um and and the the stewardship of the 31:34 environment kind of countering this narrative that's so prevalent, especially in urban areas like Seattle. 31:41 Um, like what what's the truth? What's what's the reality of of of of it all? 31:49 Yeah. One of the things that I I love more than anything about the bitcoin network and specifically about mining is 31:56 that and I've always loved these things just throughout my life is something that is 32:03 very aggressively opposed and poorly misunderstood. And bitcoin mining is is one of those 32:09 things where you'll usually find negative opinions about it. And I think that those negative opinions are are 32:15 extremely misplaced and in fact completely the opposite of being a a 32:21 strain on the environment or a waste of resources. It's one of the most powerful tools that we have for using our 32:27 resources more wisely and actually cleaning up a lot of the waste and pollution that happens across our energy 32:33 systems. So in our case, uh our very first facility was placed on the 32:39 Columbia River in a town where they had essentially extra electrical capacity that was just going to waste. And if you 32:46 aren't familiar with the seasonal variations of hydropower, there are months at a time where hydropower gets 32:53 effectively just thrown over the dam and never run through a turbine because there's a ton of energy that nobody 33:00 actually needs because it's perfect weather year for a significant portion of the year. And most energy goes to 33:06 some sort of heating and cooling. So they'll just let energy flow over these dams. And if you think about it, it 33:14 costs money to build and maintain these structures. It's kind of like having a 33:20 commercial office building that can hold a hundred people and only having 10 or 20 in that building at any given time. 33:28 What happens is there's still common area maintenance and and just fixed overhead that needs to be taken care of. 33:34 And in most commercial leases, you're paying a portion of common area maintenance. And if it's 10 people 33:41 splitting what 100 people should be paying for, it's going to be more expensive for every individual person. 33:46 So it's not that dissimilar in the energy world where every utility, 33:52 regardless of how big or small, has fixed costs that they need to be able to overcome. And that comes from rate 33:59 payers. So, if you have 10 megawws available, but you only have a a group 34:05 of people using one, then effectively you've got a ton of fixed costs that 34:11 aren't being levelized or spread out among enough energy users and 34:16 everybody's energy is more expensive because of that. So we came in, we just 34:22 used capacity that was already there. Um, effectively doubled utility revenue 34:28 and that has brought a whole new economic base to a town that's effectively been shrinking for the last 34:34 20 years. And that's been a a huge impact on the community. And we get to use sustainable resources in a beautiful 34:41 climate and bring a little bit of of joy and new activity to a town that's that's 34:46 lost most of its industry over the last few decades. And just to piggyback on that, you know, that's that's like pilot 34:53 project. That's that's site number one. Uh we're we're looking at different ways that we can monetize landfill gas and 34:59 actually clean up methane that otherwise would be vented into the atmosphere in the Northwest. There's several projects 35:05 near our existing sites where we can actually tap into energy resources that that they can't even sell onto the grid 35:11 and that otherwise would just be pollutants. Um we're setting up for that at our 35:16 Eugene site. Yeah. I want to get some minors there. It's like 35:22 you're in the recycling business a little bit. Basically, I mean, it's truly the trash 35:29 to treasure analogy is is you're you're literally turning the stuff that people throw away into the world's base 35:36 commodity and then it's the world's best money. Um, it's literally illegal to put 35:42 something that could go in the recycle bin into the trash bin in Seattle. And 35:48 you're you're basically uh like you're countering this narrative 35:53 like bitcoin's bad for the environment. You're like flipping it completely upside down on its head and you're basically saying no, like we're in the 35:58 business of recycling. It's not that it should be illegal to not mine bitcoin, but it's it's a very helpful thing to to 36:05 be doing what you're doing. It's it counters the it shouldn't use so 36:12 much energy narrative like to its core. And if you place it in these situations, 36:18 the more energy you use, the better and the better for everybody. And then not 36:23 only that, but on the downstream end of that, um, like half of all the world's energy is used for heat. So miners like 36:31 coincidentally exhaust all of the energy that they use as heat. I mean, it's 99% 36:37 efficient in terms of converting energy to heat. It's not like you lose any of it when it's actually running through a 36:43 computer. So, on the back end of our Eugene site, we're we're hooking it up to green houses so that throughout the 36:49 winter, you can actually grow food and uh provide a little bit more food security to communities that don't 36:55 necessarily have an ability to get fresh food through the winter. So, it's it's this very cool like holistic thing that 37:02 in just a few nerds running computers doesn't seem like it could have that sort of impact, but um placed in the 37:08 right situations with the right intention absolutely can. I'm I'm 37:13 starting to understand the name Abundant Mines. That's that's incredible. And 37:19 that one of the things that I love talking most about uh mining and the mining industry is how creative because 37:27 how creative we get in terms of you know that reuse or that recycling. Um because 37:32 you mentioned it before like at its core mining is a pretty cutthroat business. Like you are trying to get the cheapest 37:39 access to the most amount of energy to ultimately mine bitcoin. But the the 37:46 doors that that opens, I mean, I and especially from the demand response side, from what you're doing with that 37:51 uh hydro hydro dam. Um I saw a statistic earlier today that in the state of 37:58 Texas, uh I believe it's about 50% of air's expenditures come in just 14% of 38:06 the year. So about 1,200 hours uses up 50% of a year's like supply of energy. So 38:15 what's great about bitcoin mining is you can really flatten that variance for 38:20 these huge operators and then you start to see use cases coming in which you 38:26 described of a of a shrinking town now becomes a town that's actually you know on the on the uprise because you have 38:32 cheaper cost of living and you have a you know probably better experience living because you're able to provide 38:39 better quality services and goods. Um, so I just the this this is why the the 38:45 mining is a whole another rabbit hole in itself because I love hearing those types of uh those types of projects that 38:50 are coming on uh coming on to to the scene. Yeah. The uh the analogy I like to use 38:57 and and it plays to exactly what you described in in Urkott is that we're performing gridscale acupuncture. And 39:05 the reason I I like to use that analogy is it's a very small pin prick in terms 39:10 of the amount of energy that we're using or not using, but placed in the right channel, it frees up exactly the 39:17 resources needed to bring more balance and flow to the entire system. And it can be like you said a a very small 39:25 portion of time and a very small block of energy that placed in the right 39:31 sequence, the right time of year makes a huge difference. And even in the Northwest, you know, the the statistic 39:37 is about 1% of the hours of the year are 10 to 15% of the costs. And if we can be 39:44 offline for that 1% of the year, you know, our clients are at a 95% service level. So they they still got 4% to 39:50 spare and they're totally fine with it. It gets them cheaper costs. It gets everybody in our communities cheaper 39:56 costs and we get to have this really holistic impact on what I believe is the the most important the most foundational 40:03 system to us living an abundant future. And it's endlessly fun. I mean I was 40:10 jaded coming out of an engineering degree thinking engineering is the most 40:16 like just hard Maybe not boring, but like just absolute 40:22 grind cognitively to go out and solve complex problems in the world. And 40:27 bitcoin mining makes the entire world seem like a very fun engineering problem 40:34 of how can we better use the resources around us with a built-in incentive structure for getting rewarded for 40:40 having that that creativity and that engineering mindset. So I didn't think that I wanted to be engineer but turns 40:47 out it's actually really fun and if you have the right vehicle and and the right network to support that can be extremely 40:54 rewarding. I want to I want to shift gears a little bit if that's okay guys because I want to get into something before we before The Connection Between Mining and Real-World Use Cases 41:00 we wrap up. Uh Beau you helped facilitate one of the many uh dots um like 41:08 interconnected dots for me. I have a background in in addition to real estate a background in payments. Uh we titled 41:15 this show Medium of Exchange. Uh we talked a little bit about about this at the conference in Vegas. Uh and I 41:23 listened before I ever you know knew you. I listened to your podcast with Jack Dorsey and that's one of the things 41:30 that you guys talked about and um you know mining is talked is thought of sort of this like backend infrastructure 41:36 thing but in many ways it's like like what makes spending bitcoin even possible. My mom is always like, "Jason, 41:42 you don't plan to ever sell your bitcoin. Like, why would I buy bitcoin? I I want to be able to like, you know, 41:49 like sell it and use it, right?" Um, and so in a way, bitcoin mining though, it 41:55 makes bitcoin spending possible. So, how do you connect the dots between like 42:00 mining and using bitcoin in the real world? And and I kind of want to like 42:05 talk a little bit for a second about, you know, real world use cases rather than just number go up and and and 42:13 mining. Yeah. Well, the the first thing I'll say 42:18 to that is we run a business and I love more than anything taking payment in 42:24 bitcoin. It's so much easier. It's so much faster. It settles basically 42:30 immediately. uh I don't have to justify receiving a bitcoin payment. And so in 42:37 terms of just running a business when people pay for machines or pay for hosting in bitcoin, I'm super happy 42:43 about it. I I love working with the best money in the world. And we encourage people to do it by offering discounts 42:49 for doing so. So people that pay with bitcoin on on their invoices are getting a 3% discount because not only is it 42:55 easier, faster, cheaper to use, um it saves us on transaction fees. You know, 43:00 we talked about Visa earlier in the podcast. You can totally avoid the 3% on Visa, uh, and instead pay the network 43:07 fee, which is quite nominal compared to 3% charge on your credit card. Um, and 43:13 then when it comes to actual use, you know, once you've you've mined your SATs, you can do with them what you 43:20 please. And I think um like commerce 43:25 really is the most natural vehicle for us to learn how to use something and and 43:31 have an incentive to use something. And in a way, not sure if this really answers your question, like getting a 43:38 bitcoin miner, even if it's a hosted minor, is kind of the most pure form of 43:43 a bitcoin business where you're taking inputs and getting an output and expecting to make a a profit. 43:51 And so to me at least, it's it's this really beautiful cycle or system that 43:57 you can get someone involved in with relatively low overhead if they've got the right partner that gets them a a 44:04 bitcoin native, not just like buy it, hold it, you know, put it somewhere and don't look at it for 10 years, but 44:10 actually a a stream of flowing Satoshi's that they then have agency to choose to 44:17 do something with. And just by the nature of it being um a business rather 44:22 than a savings account, there's a little bit more of a a sense of being active in it, even if it is totally managed for 44:28 you. And you know, many of our clients aren't necessarily uh coming out and 44:33 rigging computers up or doing repairs themselves. But even still, it is technically an an active business in the 44:40 sense that you're putting something in and getting something out on a recurring basis. Um and it also connects them to 44:47 that that actual processing of transactions. So you know it's it's core 44:53 infrastructure and by being a part of core infrastructure you get a much deeper sense of one how does this 45:00 network work? Why am I getting paid this money to do this? Like where is this energy actually going? And then every 45:07 time a block confirms, you know, the transaction fees, you're you're getting a little piece of that just by being 45:13 involved in the network. And so, uh, whether you're spending your bitcoin, sending your bitcoin somewhere, you are 45:19 actually facilitating the fact that this is not just a store value network, but a medium of exchange network. Does that 45:26 answer your question? I mean, I don't I didn't have a very articulate question, but yeah. Um, like because Jack Dorsey, 45:33 you know, was very explicit, right? like he's he's like we we have to get to the medium of exchange era. And so I'm 45:40 always curious to like hear from people who are running a real business who are 45:45 really accepting bitcoin. It's like well it's $2 trillion store of value but nobody accepts bitcoin. Well, no, like 45:51 Beau accepts bitcoin every day, right? Um and so I I guess uh I guess 45:58 the answer to my mom is like no, you you can spend it. When do you think that 46:04 we will be in an era where every day, you know, not just bitcoin miners, but something that's not bitcoin themed that 46:11 we'll be able to buy stuff with bitcoin? I think you can make the choice to do it 46:17 today. And the the quote that I will call on here is the future's already 46:24 here. It's just not evenly distributed. And so there's people there's people in my company who have not touched the fiat 46:31 system in years and have lived on a bitcoin standard and paid for everything on a bitcoin standard and you know go to 46:37 their local farmers market and pay in bitcoin. They've got their their uh bitcoin debit card where they they 46:43 effectively have no exposure to the dollar system whatsoever and they live in a sea of people who have no exposure 46:49 to the bitcoin system whatsoever. So in any group of, you know, a million people, you've got a few of these these 46:57 pioneers who are effectively living in the future and doing exactly what you're describing. And what we're really 47:04 wanting to get toward is just a critical mass of those people such that it's not 47:09 this like weird one-off thing, but like a a community of people that that exist 47:15 that live in this way such that it's normalized. So when 47:22 hard to answer when will a a majority of people live this way hard to answer um 47:28 all I can say is that there are people doing it now and that it's more by the day and the more tools that we build and 47:34 the more infrastructure we build for that to be a common thing the easier it becomes the more you get not just the 47:43 intrepid pioneers but you get the early adopters and then you get the early majority and it's a a gradually and then 47:48 suddenly, you know, first it was a strange thing to go out and spend your bitcoin and then it's a strange thing to 47:55 use an archaic payment system at some point in that line. So, I can't tell you 48:00 when that that kind of psychological shift happens, but I would say easily 48:06 within our lifetimes, but maybe within just a few years. Pioneering the Future of bitcoin and Energy Systems 48:11 And I love how you used uh the term pioneer there because I was actually 48:16 having a conversation last week with uh a fellow bitcoiner and he was talking 48:21 about the idea of reframing what are what we've often referred to 48:28 ourselves of as plebs. And when you think about it, you know, pleb is it's 48:34 turned into a compliment in the bitcoin space, but from a historical context, it's more of like a commoner, right? 48:41 Like you kind of look down upon plebs. And that's why bitcoin being this, you know, uh this kind of act of revolt or a 48:49 silent uh vote against the system, it's like a badge of honor. But in reality 48:55 with with all of the innovation and advancements that the bitcoin industry 49:00 has taken in the last you know 16 years but even really in the last five years. 49:06 It it is a pioneering movement. It is showing that you can live outside the 49:11 system in a way where your purchasing power increases over time versus decreasing and taking on these risks of 49:17 of playing with this magic internet money where just time and time again you're 49:22 proven you're proven right. Um and I guess that you know looking at it 49:28 through that lens like what is what does the next five or 10 years look like for 49:33 you? What are what are you trying to build? What do you hope to to look back on this conversation right now and say, 49:39 "Yeah, this is what this is where my focus was, and I'm happy that that uh it's where I decided to put that 49:45 attention." Well, one, I I love you reframing the 49:50 word pleb to pioneer because I do think that the language that we use is is super important and that it does need to 49:57 evolve in that sense. And I'll I'll joke with people. I love calling my my fellow 50:03 uh bitcoin meetup attendees uh psychopaths, but you know in the future I will probably refer to them as my 50:09 co-visionaries because that's a way more positive way of looking at these people. But it can often seem the same to be uh 50:17 just absolutely nutty about something that people don't understand. Uh but if 50:23 you're proven right then, you know, suddenly you become a visionary and that can only be seen in the course of time. 50:30 Um, as far as the the impact that I want to have and that I want this business to have, one, I want to onboard as many 50:38 people as possible to bitcoin. And the vehicle that we're doing that with effectively right now is bitcoin mining. 50:45 And I've been very pleasantly surprised that we are often the very first 50:50 exposure for people. So going to continue educating, going to continue spreading the word to people who are not 50:57 already in the space. I already make very uh intentional efforts to speak to 51:02 people who are not in bitcoin already because I think that, you know, we all already kind of get it. There's there's 51:08 a a community of people that that once you're sort of brought into the fold, it's really easy to to stay into it, but 51:14 there's got to be those people on the the outside bounds of space to pull 51:19 people into the gravity well. And so to the degree that I can move people's hearts a little bit closer to the 51:25 bitcoin space and get them that first exposure, my mission is is accomplished. 51:31 And in terms of the the business itself, you know, I really do think that we have the ability to transform energy systems 51:39 and by extension transform the prosperity and abundance that people 51:44 experience on a daily basis. And right now we're focused on the Pacific Northwest because I think if we were to 51:51 uh focus too broadly or or sort of distribute across too wide of a landscape, we wouldn't be able to have 51:57 the same kind of of really laser-like impact. And so we are laser focused on 52:04 the Pacific Northwest right now. But ultimately, this is the technology and 52:09 the industry that I think will bring energy abundance to the world. So, I won't limit us to the Pacific Northwest 52:15 forever, but for now, laser-like focus to make sure that the Northwest is 52:20 abundant, prosperous, uh, bright orange, and growing a lot of minor heated food. 52:28 I love it. Uh, Beau, I know we need to we need to wrap up, but, uh, where can people go to find more about Abundant 52:35 Minds and what you're up to? Easiest way to find us would be our 52:41 website. That's abundantminds.com. You can also find us on YouTube and all 52:46 of the socials with the handleAbundant Mines. Uh YouTube would be the easiest place to get the most content possible. 52:53 You've got long form videos, short form videos, all of our podcasts are on YouTube. Um we we do our best to make 53:01 all of the best information that we have free and accessible to anybody. So if you're looking to learn more, I would 53:07 say that that YouTube is the easiest place. uh but would love to to have you reach out on any of the social networks. 53:14 Uh someone from our team would be happy to assist you on your bitcoin journey and make sure that if you're looking at 53:20 getting to mining that you get in with the best company in the world. Yeah. And I So yeah, just quick shout 53:26 out. I got set up with some miners from Beau. It couldn't have gone better. His team was amazing. I I I like it was like 53:34 sharing with some friends some screenshots because the the chart just went right from flatline to just right 53:39 up and I was like, "Wow, it's working." Like the the miners are on. It's happening. So, um yeah, thanks so much 53:46 for h for for joining us, Beau. Uh we really appreciate it. 53:51 Thank you, man. Thank you guys. This has been a blast and and appreciate what you're doing for the space. 53:56 Thank you. [Music]