POD256 | Bitcoin Mining, Freedom Tech, and Awesome Tangents

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In this episode, the crew reunites post-ImagineIF to debrief an energizing week across Bitcoin, AI, energy, and Freedom Tech. Rod thanks the team and presenters for delivering high-signal talks within tight constraints, and we reflect on why keeping events intimate translates into more action at the community level. We hit the State of the Network, discuss mining economics, and whether large public miners may pivot toward HPC/AI. Then we spotlight hands-on innovation: sovereign smart homes with at-home miners, open-source hardware and firmware progress (Libre Board prototypes, Ember One v5 updates, and Hydra Pool nearing public release), and what it means to prioritize energy-centric control over hashrate alone. We close by celebrating a showcase home miner build: an immaculate hydro-cooled array of BitAxes with battery integration, PLC control, and custom dashboards; ilustrating how open tooling unlocks real-world experimentation and efficiency gains.

[00:00:00] Unknown:

You're back. We are so back. We are so back, baby. It's good to have you back, Rod. I know. I was   a a Scotch busy these, past,   month or so leading up to last week. What have you been doing anyways?   All I know is I'm very thankful for all three of you guys. You hey. You're binging it right now?  

[00:00:21] Unknown:

Yeah, buddy.  

[00:00:23] Unknown:

Holy smokes. At 02:05, that's respect. Are you with me? You had one at, like, 10:00 this morning. Yeah. And then I pounded one of these.   That one. Dude, this is what Jack Jack is is Jack in here as well? Is he, like, listening in or no? I just gave him the link. He's probably joining right now. There he is. Okay. Got it. Dude, Jack. Jack, you don't need to fucking jump  

[00:00:46] Unknown:

on. You're on the live stream.  

[00:00:48] Unknown:

There he is. What's up, buddy? How you doing?  

[00:00:53] Unknown:

So while you go back,   Good to see you. It's great to see you, Jack. Always a pleasure. How you doing? I'm doing great. Good deal.   We are, I was actually bringing your name up because these Neutronics   or new Neutonics   that you recommended.   So do me a solid.   I don't know how to use this,   podcast board. Why don't you just go in the background if you don't mind? Not to, like, kick you off,   but, you'll just help us produce, this week's episode. How about that? Yeah. No worries. Let me see if I can figure out how to get in the background. Cool. Step one of the Yeah. So, two after 02:00 hitting those energy drinks. Although, I'm not gonna name names, but there are some big time people that were here a lot this past week hitting those bings at, like, 06:00 at night. I was like, buddy, you're gonna have a good night. When's your cutoff? When do you stop drinking them? So I try to at at it's, like, 09:10AM.   Like, the last bit of caffeine.  

I I am   an only one cup of coffee guy per day, and that's at four, 04:30 ish in the morning.  

[00:02:02] Unknown:

Damn. Okay.  

[00:02:05] Unknown:

Do you know, like, 10AM being is that's like your afternoon coffee. Exactly. It's my afternoon coffee. And supposedly or allegedly, they have, like, all these, like,  

[00:02:14] Unknown:

you know, l phenylene and, you know, natural caffeine and whatever. How do you get, like, just one cup of coffee? Do you brew a whole pot? Or, like, do you go to, like, Starbucks and get it?  

[00:02:25] Unknown:

I have to get out of my bed and go to,   Starbucks in the morning, the one that opens at 04:30.   Go get a venti pipe coffee.   Yes. It tastes like Burt coffee. Yes. You could go get cheaper coffee. Yes.   All of it. Got it. You're right. I'm wrong.   However But it gets you out of bed. It gets me out of bed. Yeah. I love the smell, the routine, everything.  

[00:02:50] Unknown:

I thought you're supposed to wait thirty minutes after you wake up before you have coffee.  

[00:02:54] Unknown:

Lies.  

[00:02:56] Unknown:

Yeah. Just straight to caffeine. Yeah. You gotta go right Immediately. Yeah.  

[00:03:00] Unknown:

Either caffeine or beer.  

[00:03:02] Unknown:

I take one or the other. Yeah. Or both at the same time. Yeah. Hell yeah.  

[00:03:08] Unknown:

Hell yeah.  

[00:03:09] Unknown:

So, again, I apologize,   but, guys, do we have a lot of good stuff going on across the board?  

[00:03:15] Unknown:

Yeah. It's gonna be easy.  

[00:03:17] Unknown:

First of all, I just wanna make a couple announcements,   real announcements, and just say thank you guys for participating last week.   You all three of you guys absolutely   crushed it, like, straight up, and I'm just so thankful.  

[00:03:33] Unknown:

Thanks for the invite. I'm glad it didn't cause a riot.  

[00:03:38] Unknown:

You did not.   And even though we had some turbulence   landing the plane,   that was more my fault than yours,   in terms  

[00:03:48] Unknown:

of Like, on that note, I'm just like, out of all the   crazy things we've done together, there's so many other, like, actually important things we could have, like, argued about and, like, ended our friendship over.   And, like, to have it just come down to, like, who is controlling my slides in, like, the last minute of my presentation.  

[00:04:08] Unknown:

Yeah. I I'm That was funny. Yeah. Was that conspiracy? Did you get to the bottom of it? We can we can look back and laugh on it now. Yeah. It was the deep state. Yeah. It was the deep state. Yeah. It was,  

[00:04:20] Unknown:

well  

[00:04:21] Unknown:

NSA. Yeah. The yeah. There's a number of things. But, like,  

[00:04:25] Unknown:

just to go All the three letter agencies are back there.  

[00:04:30] Unknown:

True. And   one of the things that, you know, a lot of people don't,   appreciate and when you're putting together   experiences at this scale with so many different people,   every second matters.   So when you're off by fifteen seconds, then it compounds and adds on, and then it's like, oh, you guys just started six minutes later. It's like, yeah. Because our intros were actually, like, fifteen seconds throughout the day or thirty seconds longer. So that's built up to the last present. I mean, just a lot of little things.   And, you know, Iko, you crushed it, and you're just one of, like, freaking 40 prima donnas. I have to, you know, I'm just joking.  

No. But, honestly, like, I was super   impressed by the quality of the presentations,   by the con I mean, the people in the audience all left with the feeling that I really wanted them to feel. I wanted them to be entertained. I wanted them to be informed, and I wanted them to be inspired to go, like, think about the world differently. You know? Some of their preconceived notions, I wanted them to question it. I wanted them to freaking be inspired to be like, holy shit. You know what? This is the coolest thing is going on right now across Bitcoin AI energy and Freedom Tech.   Let's freaking go.  



[00:05:45] Unknown:

That that was the impression that I got. It was   it was   it was so inspiring. In fact, for several of the talks that I listened to, I probably only heard, like, the first two minutes. And then it was just like and you just oh my god. We gotta do this. We're gonna do this. And then yeah.  

[00:06:02] Unknown:

And that's the thing, like, you know, people like, oh, you gotta go bigger. And so I'm like, absolutely not. Like, this is the probably the biggest I'll go.   Mhmm. And then we just go into our own summits. We go into our own workshops, and we go into our own meetups, and we go back to the community level to actually execute   and implement, like, all of these amazing   big dreams.   And, and then we wanna make it into a reality. So, anyways, I can't thank all the people that you know, we had over 500 plus people. We had a number of people listening in and watching it on the live stream. It was,   it was phenomenal. So thank you again.  

Shout out to you, Rod. Yeah. Very well done. Tyler, bad news. I need to cut your presentation.  

[00:06:45] Unknown:

Oh, yeah. Other than that, it's it was really good. It's because I had those slides. You know? Yeah. I had the the note cards like a like a novice.  

[00:06:53] Unknown:

I had to use note cards too, man.  

[00:06:56] Unknown:

It dude, the the the theater was just so beautiful. I mean, like, I get it. Like, you're like, I I wanna make sure I'm punchy   and not missing   a a a point. So,  

[00:07:08] Unknown:

Well, in the formats, like,   I've never been so challenged to pull off a presentation before. And Yeah. Same. Like you always say, creativity loves constraint,   and you definitely   pushed it to the maximum   on your presenters   getting   this conference pulled off. That was like like, my back is I carry my stress in my lower back, and it's still sore   from leading up to that presentation because,   I just really wasn't sure I was gonna be able to pull it off. There's so much you wanna say Yeah. When when you're getting ready to present and you're, like, trying to boil it down to just the absolute   most signal, there's no room for any noise. And like you said, like, every second counts.  

And yeah. I mean, that's why I use the the note cards because there's just certain things I really wanted to say and make sure I didn't forget to say.   And,   you know, when you're up there on stage, your adrenaline's going and you just start talking and it's easy to skip stuff. But it was so fun once it got started. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.  

[00:08:11] Unknown:

The the energy in the room was great. So so Eco for thirty seconds, then Tyler, then Scott.   What were your topic and what what what was the big message you wanted to push on Eco first?  

[00:08:23] Unknown:

My presentation was called Freedom Tech is Fundamental to a Free Society.   And the takeaways I wanted people to have from my presentation   were that they need to support open source developers   because without open source developers, there is no freedom tech. And without freedom tech, there is no free society.  

[00:08:42] Unknown:

Hell, yeah. One of the big lines from his that I absolutely loved,   was we should have build technology. So instead of don't tread on me, you can't tread on me. Can't. I was like, fucking mic drop. Just stop the presentation. Let's go. We're going home.   We need some hats in a big way. Yeah. That Yeah. Yeah. Hat is, like, unbelievable.  

[00:09:04] Unknown:

And I knew you had it in you. I made that graphic a couple years ago for, Guns and Bitcoin conference I did on self custody.   And that's where, like, I, like, developed this idea, you know, and better harden my understanding around, like, the laws of math being stronger than the laws of man.   And so for me, like the like, Gadsden flag, the don't tread on me flag, like, really kind of embodied that. But it you know, if that's true, which I believe it is, then it becomes you can't tread on me. And that's the whole point of of what we're doing here. Heck yeah.  

[00:09:43] Unknown:

What about you, Tyler?  

[00:09:45] Unknown:

My talk was titled Sovereign Smart Home, and   my whole thesis is that Bitcoin miners actually belong in the home of the future   as a black box   that can monetize excess energy,   provide supplemental heat.   And then the second layer of that was,   if you're going to run a Bitcoin miner at home, you need something to run a node, you might as well layer on a bunch of these open source freedom technologies that Iko went on to talk about   in the house. And so it's kind of an incentive to, I wanna save a buck. I'm gonna do this. Next thing you know, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do that. And your whole house is sovereign, more efficient. Heck, yeah.  

[00:10:23] Unknown:

That's awesome.   And then, Scott,   how was your panel?  

[00:10:29] Unknown:

It was fantastic. Best panel of the whole show. Everyone agreed. It was, it was the best. But, the topic was innovating in Bitcoin mining, and my angle on that is that it needs to be open source both to,   accelerate it,   from where we are now, and to do it fast and to do it in a decentralized way with open source.  

[00:10:48] Unknown:

Hell yeah. One quick tangent on that one.   John Stephanopoulos, something,   came up, and he unfortunately couldn't make   the panel. And I think it was, like, twenty four or forty eight hours prior.   And then, like, anything, everything works out. And then you got a guy like Phil Walton,   Philip Walton from gridless. He's like, hey. I think I'm gonna YOLO in and fly in from Nairobi for this. And I'm like,   cool.   You wanna come on with Scott and, these guys? He's like, heck yeah. And we just slid them in and, you know, we kept the we kept the show going. He crushed it. He did. Philip was amazing.  

[00:11:25] Unknown:

Yeah. He is. Absolutely.  

[00:11:28] Unknown:

So I know we got a Tyler, you're gonna do the state of the network?  

[00:11:32] Unknown:

I can.  

[00:11:34] Unknown:

Okay. Cool.   While you're pulling that up,   boys, we're running the telehash back.  

[00:11:40] Unknown:

Yep.  

[00:11:41] Unknown:

January 20 have we already announced this or no? No. I I don't think so. I mean, I maybe we've teased it, but go ahead. Okay. January 21.  

[00:11:50] Unknown:

Well, I yeah, boy. Chugging that bing.   January Wednesday, January 21,   Nashville, Tennessee.   The weather's gonna be the last three years, the weather has been fantastic.   I expect nothing less.   That's a joke.   But it'll be awesome. Since 1877.   That's right. That's right. We can top that.  

[00:12:13] Unknown:

Yeah. We can top that. I think,  

[00:12:16] Unknown:

we're gonna have,   another great group of folks.   The next two days, we're gonna have the National Energy and Mining Summit.   So if you can't get a ticket to the, NEMS, Telehash is gonna be open as, like, a free meetup,   for the public.   Me, Iko, Scott, Tyler.   Tyler, you're in. Yeah. You coming? Oh, yeah. Okay. Good. I think  

[00:12:38] Unknown:

the 02:56   devs will be there too. I'm not a 100% sure on Junglee, but I think Ryan and Schnitzel will both be there as well. Perfect.  

[00:12:46] Unknown:

Perfect.   I think we'll have a lot to talk about. One of which is   it's kinda cool, and I think I mentioned this to Eco yesterday or two days ago. Guys, we mined a block a year ago, basically.   Yeah. And it's kinda cool doing this, a podcast, as well as the telehash as well as NEMs because   we kind of, like, have to be on stage and and showcase, like, what we accomplished. You know? And I'm very proud of what you guys have all done   in this past twelve months. So it'll be cool to have Ryan, Scott,   hopefully, Zhongli, Schnitzel,   all there to really you know, I'll I'll never forget. It was like   Iko is going through, alright. Project one, if we hit a block or get some money, this is what we wanna do.  

Project two, this is what we wanna do. And now it's gonna be fun to say, hey. Here's what we have done. Yeah. Here's what we have accomplished, and here's what we wanna continue to support with your guys' support. Right.  

[00:13:47] Unknown:

And,   we'll find out if blocks only get solved in Nashville and not Austin.  

[00:13:54] Unknown:

I'm working on that hash, boys. I'm working on that hash, and I think we've gotten some good traction right now. I need to make some follow-up calls. Great.  

[00:14:03] Unknown:

State of the network.   Please. We are at   Block Height 916222   on mempool.space.   Difficulty of 143   142,340,000,000,000.00.  

[00:14:20] Unknown:

Ouch.  

[00:14:21] Unknown:

One week moving average   hash rate of 1.09   per second. We did.   In 2025.  

[00:14:30] Unknown:

Well, there were some there were some wagers. Some friendly wagers on this show. Yeah. There were. Back about when that might happen.  

[00:14:36] Unknown:

Oh. Yeah. People were guessing if it was gonna be before or after end of year.  

[00:14:40] Unknown:

On this show. Right? Yeah. On this show. What was the wager? What did we bet, Rod? Like, 10 sats?  

[00:14:48] Unknown:

10 sats. That's what I can afford right now post, these two events. So, yeah, that would be great, especially if I lost or won because I need them all.  

[00:14:59] Unknown:

Yeah. Speaking of sats, hash price, 51   US dollars per petahash,   hash value   of 40,000   sats per petahash per day.  

[00:15:11] Unknown:

Kinda low, guys. Yeah. It's crazy. Like, in 2021   when I started doing this, like, $50 a day is what I would get with one what's minor and 30 s.  

[00:15:24] Unknown:

Well, Bitcoin's price is, like, the same as the beginning of the year, and hash rate is 30% higher. Right. Yeah. Ex good observation. Yeah.   Wild. You can get an s 21 XP,   over at Altair   for   $5,600.   That gets you 270   Terahash.   Pretty soon, guys, people are gonna just start buying these   one Peta Hash machines as the cream of the crop. It's crazy. Yeah.   And   the halving is due in nine hundred and eleven days.   Coming right up. Yep. Coming right up. $9.01 1.  

[00:16:04] Unknown:

What is,   if you have 270   Terahash,   how long like, in your solo mining, how long would that take you on average to solo mine a block?  

[00:16:15] Unknown:

Yeah. What's the, what tool do you like to use to calculate that? Solo chance is a pretty good one. Let's do  

[00:16:22] Unknown:

so let's see. You have Terahash,   and you have two seventy.   Oof. So, yeah, seventy three years.   Your chance per day is one in twenty six thousand  

[00:16:36] Unknown:

six hundred and seventy eight. So Better get started now because that timeline is only gonna increase.  

[00:16:42] Unknown:

I think that   when it comes down to it,   all miners are lottery miners. Right?   Like, obviously,   some are more, are worse odds than others, but,   some people kinda like to diss on the bid. I was like, oh, it's just a lottery miner. But   all miners are lottery miners. Your chances are not good with any machine.  

[00:17:04] Unknown:

Yeah.   I mean,   I would kinda push back on that, though, because, like, it's about lowering variance. Right?  

[00:17:13] Unknown:

And so, like, the miners in   pointing hash rates like FPPS   pools, they're not really a lot I wouldn't say they're lotto mining.   Yeah. I think it's just kinda getting at the fact that   just these big industrial machines, it's not like you just buy one of those and now you're like And then you're gonna start hitting And then you're gonna start hitting blocks or making, like, tons of money. Like, you're Right. You're talking about how it was back in the day with your m 30, you know. It   it it's,   it's very difficult to   just start a business.  

Right. You know, buying a couple machines or buying a million machines. I don't know. It's very difficult to start a business.   In fact, actually, there was a maybe we can talk about this. There was   there was a pretty hot take by,   our homie,   Robert Warren   about   I think this is a a takeaway that he had from ImagineIF, but that   a lot of the big publicly traded miners,   have   these these activist   investors who are,   it seems like in some cases, pushing them towards,   essentially getting out of the Bitcoin mining business and going to AI, HPC,   and things like that. Just because they want the stock to perform better? Because they want the stock to perform better. This this kinda just points to, like, it's a it's a very tough business.  



[00:18:37] Unknown:

That was a common theme when the whole foreman had their customer off-site here at the space too because it was a bunch of mega miners. The talk of town was HPC, HPC, HPC.  

[00:18:46] Unknown:

And that's gotta be just for the for the revenue. Right?  

[00:18:50] Unknown:

Yeah. They'll pay more, I guess. It's all to inflate the stock price. And I say let them have it. Like, make the room for the people that are gonna be diehard miners   to   to,   benefit from less competition.  

[00:19:05] Unknown:

Yeah. Rob built off that thought. I saw a tweet he had   prediction that Hashwrite might go down   as these large miners transition to HPC.  

[00:19:15] Unknown:

Yeah. I think that's right. I mean, they they own a lot of these machines,   but if it's not giving them the returns that they want and and, you know, the state of the art in Bitcoin miners is advancing forward, you know, maybe they don't they're not placing as many orders for those new machines. Instead, they're getting   HPC compute, building out their their data centers.   Rod's making a look. What do you think?  

[00:19:38] Unknown:

I think it's a 100% right. Like, think about it. It   where's the most mon   how do you maximize   your ROI   and having   some   diversification   in guaranteed,   revenue   from the AIHPC   world or crowd,   and you have the power? Like, you have those contracts on the energy.   So you're   you have a fiduciary duty to maximize it. And so if this is the marketplace   and there's, like,   not infinite, but, like, there's much more demand here on that side. Why would you risk it   by being a just a standalone   Bitcoin miner?   And I think we could collectively agree. I think   playing the standalone   on grid game where there's a fixed cost when your majority of your cost is electricity   is a very tough game to play versus a, hey, my counterparty,   you're gonna pay me x no matter what. Got it. That is 17 times, 20 times, or 10 times my cost of electricity   all in. And I have a guaranteed margin.  

Yeah. I'm all day twice on Sunday on that on that model.   And I'm just gonna go procure and build out more data centers and do these JV partnerships because   I can go get one, two, three customers inside my data center.  

[00:21:02] Unknown:

Like, the cheapest   sort of effective   or useful,   Bitcoin mining   infrastructure is definitely not an   AI data center or an HPC   data center. But I think, you know, Adam and Sullivan from Core was saying Mhmm. That, you know, they're they're investing in these these sort of, like, higher tier of data centers.   You know, they they see the potential there in in kind of spending the extra money to build out these,   high performance compute data centers.  

[00:21:33] Unknown:

Do they hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet?  

[00:21:37] Unknown:

Oh, I don't know.  

[00:21:38] Unknown:

I I don't know either. What what about, like, Mara? Like, they do for sure. Right? They hold all their Bitcoin. Like, did you do you guys see them transitioning into HPC?  

[00:21:47] Unknown:

I think they all are. I mean, not it's a different I think Rod's right. If they have the power agreements, that's   kind of the biggest hurdle.   So why would you not?  

[00:21:56] Unknown:

So I think, eco, I think there's, like, two ways of thinking about it.   One is, oh, I'm a Bitcoin company,   but I wanna accumulate Bitcoin on my balance sheet. I'll just gonna figure out whatever means possible to accumulate more Bitcoin. I think that's Mara's.   Again, I don't know. I don't know, like, all these different Pubcos, but they, like, financially engineer a lot of ways to accumulate more Bitcoin by doing the debt instruments and all this other stuff.   Then there's other businesses actually that have solid businesses. Like, you look at CleanSpark,   you know, they have, like, a a treasury management team led by Rory doing that. They have, like, their mining team. They have their AIH. They're doing all these things   with the intent to acquire more Bitcoin. So they have all these different revenue streams and different, tools that they use at their disposal   to go and acquire or or   or make money profitably because they do sell their Bitcoin, but they like, there's, again, above my pay grade, but there's, like, ways that they sell it, but sell the lots that are more cost advantageous and do a bunch of treasure. That was the treasury stuff that, by the way, tangent going to custody and treasury summit that I wanted to learn more about. Like, how are you   leveraging your insane balance sheet   to do really cool things? Like, get 4% yield because we did x, y, and z,   to to to to do that.  

And then there's other companies that are just, like, straight up like, hey. This is an opportunity for us, and we just want to acquire and make as much fiat and stock prices as much as possible. And I think, like, those are companies like Iron, which supposedly their stock price is just absolutely crushing right now. But they don't hold any Bitcoin. I don't I don't believe on their balance sheet.   So  

[00:23:40] Unknown:

to each their own. Speaking of sorry. And I know this is kinda off topic for pod February, but I'm just curious, like, while we're on the subject of Bitcoin treasury company, Saylor   didn't make it to the S and P five hundred with his micro strategy   company. What are your thoughts?  

[00:23:58] Unknown:

I don't know the ins and outs of, like, how a I supposedly, again, my cursory understanding is, like, there's some black black box room that basically selects who's, like, in the S and P 500   based on some criteria.   And supposedly, his company met that criteria.   My cursory understanding is you have to consistently   over some period of time   meet that criteria. So it's not like, oh, you just met at your in and this person's out. You need to be consistently   in or meeting that criteria   to then be in. So I think it's like,   it's not a question of if. It's just a question of when   over whatever two or three more periods of time. But, again, all these freaking games, like, are just not that interesting to me. It is   dude, you you just brought up guns and Bitcoin. Right?  

What the fuck is Ragnar up to?   Like, I haven't heard his name in a in a long time. Yeah. He's,  

[00:24:57] Unknown:

he's still around. It's just, you know, the there was a lot of divide in the community.  

[00:25:02] Unknown:

And Yeah. I mean,   I remember Bitcoin back in the day.   You know? It was like those were the topics of conversation between,   different   ideologies   and people that were really digging into Bitcoin   and having really interesting I mean, I didn't agree with a lot of them, but it was still freaking fun to have my popcorn and just like, you know,   watch it all go down. But now I'm just, like, I and I'm honestly about to nuke my Twitter and just, like, unfollow everybody and refollow the people because it just seems like it's the same   old   stuff. And that's just me. That's a me problem, and I just need I'm gonna solve it. Twitter is a dumpster fire. It sucks.  



[00:25:47] Unknown:

I think when Elon Musk took it over and started making adjustments with the algorithm, it it there was definitely a shift there,   in the way Twitter was functioning. And then also, I think there was just kind of a shift in,   like, the general,   I don't know. Like like, if if Bitcoin Twitter were like a petri dish, it's like,   you know, there was enough, like, new blood coming into the   system that, the   your   opinions of Bitcoin, like, suddenly became, like, the minority   opinions. Yeah. And there was, like, enough, like,   new people coming into the space that, like,   like, some of these, like, more fundamental, more basic ideas just kinda got drowned out. And, you know, fast forward till today, and and now we've got,   you know, people focusing on   paper Bitcoin, treasury companies,   and   how they can keep child pornography out of the blockchain.  

And it's just like   it's pretty pathetic.  

[00:26:53] Unknown:

Yeah. And so   playing this all out, what's gonna be really interesting, and I don't know when but   like anything and we've all been in Bitcoin pretty a pretty long time now, which is kinda nuts to even think about.   And, no, I don't have enough Bitcoin or or any Bitcoin, so just understand that.   But,   in classic Bitcoin fashion, there's going to be a just straight   downward spiral that's gonna be rip your face off. Not there's gonna be a rip your face off probably in a in a good way going up, but there's gonna be one that's going down, and there's gonna be carnage too. So, like, the one I and I again, look. Who's right? I I don't know if I'm even right. You know? Who knows? But, like, what we're doing at the two three six foundation,   doing our best to help dismantle the proprietary Bitcoin mining empire, every single day, you guys are doing a little bit more to make that dream become a reality.  

I think there's already so many amazing meetups, workshops, and summits happening across the world that's, like, helping move this forward. So this is just the next thing of noise that we just need to or I I am speaking for myself. I need to understand understand and then decide on, like, how to engage it. And then also like, you know, one of the cool things? Iko, when you I don't know if you were there, but,   for my closing panel, which was cut short, by the way. I don't know why it was cut short, but, you know, it was cut short by,  

[00:28:20] Unknown:

that was a joke. That's weird. I got ushered off the stage. Yeah. Well, you know, I cut short too.  

[00:28:27] Unknown:

So so you and I are in the same camp that that we're we were we were both cut short on our presentations.   But the these Vanderbilt college kids I know there's actually a bunch of other college kids. Dude, it was SCC football on it. And I don't care if you wanna call them nerds. Like,   dude, these kids were there   and,   hanging out, wanting to interact with, like, you guys, Laffer,   Kathy,   all these awesome Bitcoiners.   I mean and it was just so cool to see. That's why   a lot of at least I think what I do at least and I think a lot of what you guys are doing is inspiring this amazing   new generation.  

And even though they're maybe not be as vocal on Twitter and so on,   I find,   a bunch of,   enthusiasm   and,   belief that this next group of kids   and adults are gonna just be freaking awesome.  

[00:29:23] Unknown:

I hope so.   Oh, no. It's a it's a hundo hundo percent. Stamp it. It's half in the bag. In the bag. I think Twitter kinda skews people's perspective too because there I I would argue there's probably more Bitcoiners off of Twitter than there are on Twitter.   Dude,  

[00:29:40] Unknown:

did you talk you know, I mean, I don't know why I'd say this right now. But, like, there's a well, I don't know. Like, there's just a lot of good people that we argue with probably   online that were at ImagineIF.  

[00:29:51] Unknown:

Mhmm. Mechanic's not one of them. That's for sure.   What's that? I said mechanic is not one of them. That's for sure.  

[00:29:59] Unknown:

Okay.  

[00:30:01] Unknown:

Not one of what? He's not a good person.  

[00:30:03] Unknown:

Okay. Well,   you know   But go on. No. I mean, I mean, he's nice to me. And, you know, we'll we'll we'll agree to disagree   on a couple fronts. One, I I I hope to agree on this front, which is   online keyboard commandos  

[00:30:23] Unknown:

are totally or or mostly different than they are in person. Oh, yeah. It's the meme with, like, the two dogs on either side of the fence, and they're, like, viciously going after each other, and then there's no fence in between them, and they're, like, passive and friendly.  

[00:30:38] Unknown:

Yeah. That's exactly it. 100%. It's a 100% that. I mean, dude, we had, you know, I mean, it's all online. So, like, Adam back there. Right? Like, all these people were   there in person hanging out.   And it was cool. That's why I honestly,   you know, if I could, like, redo what's the the term diplomat? What is that defined as? Diplomat. Someone said that.  

[00:31:04] Unknown:

Yeah. Dip if you're being diplomatic, you're Yeah. Diplomatic. Being cordial and, like, a liaison between everybody else. Yeah. I like being diplomatic with a lot of people. Yeah. Like, just to help Good at that. Build the bridge, Iko. Well, you have to be because of your position.  

[00:31:20] Unknown:

Well, no. Because on a on a quadruple tangent,   do you know what,   do you know what,   so one one of our members here was like, hey. I'll, you know, I'll I'll,   I'm exiting my villain era. I'm going into my, you know, whatever era. I was like, what? You had a there's a thing called a villain era? I wanna become a I wanna enter my villain era. They're like, Rod, you're, no. You're not allowed to enter a villain era. Like, one day, I'm gonna enter a villain era. What did they mean by that? Like, you just gotta be mean to people and, like, selfish   and, you know, just tell everyone to fuck off and, you know, go on. Yeah. That's not you.  

I wanna try it one day.  

[00:32:03] Unknown:

It's, I mean, do you think you'll get far with people? Don't you get, like, more bees with honey? Why would you be an asshole to every like, be an asshole to people who deserve it. Like, be an asshole to people who deserve it. Like, be an asshole. No. No. No. I'm I'm being completely joking. Okay. Yeah. But what why why did they why did this person that said that to you happen? He was going through something, and and he was just, like, going through something. And then he's like, I'm exiting my villain era. Gotcha. I think he was, like, half joking, but half serious.  

[00:32:29] Unknown:

Anyhoo,   telehash,   NAMS, we'll do that. State of the network is strong.   Plug in your miners,   you know, at home.   Any updates, by the way, Iko, on the two fifty six side that you wanna share? Sure. Yeah. Right before we record right before we started pod two fifty six,  

[00:32:49] Unknown:

we did a live stream with Schnitzel   of the LibriBoard schematic review,   and,   that thing is looking great. We're probably ready to order   prototype PCBs   and components to assemble on that machine behind me right there,   as early as next week. It'll probably be   probably be the week after that. I'm gonna go out of town for a couple days. So probably, like, the October.   But a reminder, anyone could do this. It doesn't have to be, you know Yeah. Anybody could do it. So that'll that'll be on GitHub and in the open for anybody to grab and start if they want.   Keep in mind, it's a prototype. The whole reason we're starting with just, like, five of these units is to see if   it even functions.  

So,   if anyone,   were interested in doing this, it would behoove you to just, like, wait and let us try because there's probably gonna be some revisions   as we validate the design. And,   anyways, that's that's coming.   And then, Amber one, Scott just shared with me last night,   early   pictures   of v five.   Oh.   And he's upgraded the voltage regulator on it, which has, like, removed a lot of the   components on the board and, like, really clean things up. And the new regulator,   I'm assuming, will have much less noise.   It's Yes. It's gonna allow us to, like, monitor it for volt for power consumption.   And,   we're able to,   like, kill 100%   of the power to the chips  

[00:34:31] Unknown:

instantly, like, on Nice. Like, on demand. Right? Yeah. That was a that was a cool,   point that someone brought up in the in the Telegram,   was and and I guess we were talking about it too, Tyler, was, you know, the   the the quiescent, which is just sort of the background power draw for a unit that's off,   which you think of for a industrial miner that's just running twenty four seven.   Well, I'm not turning it off. I don't care what the quiescent power draw is. But,   in these situations with these miners where we're using it for all kinds of different applications, like, you absolutely want low power draw when you're not mining,   high power draw when you are mining. But to have that ability to control it,   fairly precisely, I think, will be a huge benefit. And then, of course Yeah. You know, pairing that with an open source firmware   where you can   you can do what you want. Right? You can you can turn these power stages on and off when you want,   sort of under your own control.  

I think,   Tyler, you're saying that,   people are having difficulties   completely   powering down,   some industrial miners because they're just not designed to do that. So we're we're hoping to kinda give the this control,   these tools to people   to to use these  

[00:35:48] Unknown:

machines, these miners in the ways that they want to. Yeah. That's awesome. Like a standby sleep state. Was it Neil that provided more info? I think it was Neil.  

[00:35:57] Unknown:

Salso.  

[00:35:58] Unknown:

Yeah. Oh, okay. Cool.  

[00:36:00] Unknown:

Right?  

[00:36:01] Unknown:

Yeah. Well, I don't actually know who that is, but   2000. Anyways Gotcha. Shout out. That was a good that was a good call.   Yes. Pop that in there. Like, it's relatively easy to do, and, hopefully, that'll be useful for people.  

[00:36:15] Unknown:

Yep. And then Oh, yeah.   Scott had validated   the v   four design.   What was the other change we were gonna make? It was the voltage regulator and  

[00:36:30] Unknown:

Oh,   oh, adding a fan controller was That's right. What Ryan mentioned. I still am on the fence about that. We should talk about that a little bit more. But, anyways  

[00:36:40] Unknown:

To be determined on that. So Scott had made v four,   by hand, and then   he shipped that to Ryan   who's working on the firmware.   And now Ryan is getting the firmware prepared   to deploy on ember ones   so that by the time we actually produce   the first batch of ember ones, again, on that machine sitting behind me,   the firmware will be ready to go along with them so people can communicate with them.   And then,   hydropool   is   right on   track. We're probably gonna see something   right around the very October   that people can start pulling down from GitHub and deploying their own hydropool instances.   So Junglee's been making strides with that. He's got the PPLNS,   payout strategy   all figured out and dialed in   the,   the share accounting piece of that is good to go. The,   difficulty adjustment part of it is good to go. There's gonna be a lot of user configurable options.  

And,   yeah, we're just excited. We'll probably be   running like a two fifty six hosted instance of hydro pool just for testing purposes.   But just to be clear   for anyone listening,   two fifty six foundation is not in the business of operating a pool.   The whole idea behind hydro pool is that users   and other people   can easily spin up their own open source and easily configurable   Bitcoin mining pool. So,   keep an eye on the socials for announcements   there.  

[00:38:21] Unknown:

I get such, like, tingly good awesome feelings about all this stuff. It's it's so incredible. Like, having worked in this space for a little while now, it's like anything that you wanna do   Yes. Is is sort of,   like, just this cloud of difficulty based on the fact that you have to reverse engineer   what's out there. And it's it's this battle against the original equipment manufacturers to do that. Right? Which is really hard, time consuming,   and at best, you end up with sort of a sketchy understanding of what they're doing because you reverse engineered it. But, like, this to have this stuff there   and documented,   it it just gives you such an amazing   platform to start on. You can just start with doing what you wanna do and,   you know, have a purpose built   for people to do what they wanna do is   is gonna be is gonna be incredible. Yeah. It's gonna be a big unlock.  



[00:39:16] Unknown:

People don't even realize   what it unlocks. I was up in Laramie yesterday for,   University of Wyoming Blockchain Frontier Day Oh, yeah. And Stampede. It was cool. But they had a bunch of people that have mines in Gillette and across Wyoming because it's a big energy state.   And every miner that was on stage, Matt Skurlak, he's an alumni, graduated last year, cool guy. He was at Imagine if.   He was asking them,   he's such a dog, he was kind of prompting them. He was like, What are you most excited about   with open source miners, firmware,   new control?  

Kind of like trying to poke the bear and say,   Under the hood, what are you really excited about? Without fail, every single one deflected didn't answer the question. They don't even have an answer. They never think about it. Right. It's the status quo is, I buy box, I plug box in, it runs 100% done. Who is that question posed to? Like, who was on that panel? There are people that just have   private slash hosting slash family office mines ranging from, like, one to 10 megawatts across Wyoming, maybe four different people. They're, like, hosting for other people or, like, just self operated?  

[00:40:22] Unknown:

Yep. Okay. Both.  

[00:40:25] Unknown:

It's it's early, but people   we're gonna get to a point where people demand this stuff. Yeah. Right? Like, I just can't make my mining operation pencil out without having that ability   to control these devices how I want to.  

[00:40:41] Unknown:

Well, the the miners that have their   finger on the pulse   are going to   see how they can make their operations   just even, like, 1% more efficient   or what however much, you know, efficiency gains they can get. And that's where I think competitive edges are gonna be notched out   in the   months and years ahead in the mining industry.  

[00:41:07] Unknown:

100%.  

[00:41:08] Unknown:

Whatever you can do to just   eke out a little bit more efficiency,   and the most competitive miners are gonna win. And I so I really do believe   the ones using the open source tech that gives them the flexibility   to make their operations as efficient as possible, those are the ones that are gonna win long term.  

[00:41:28] Unknown:

Yeah. Philip described it to me well. Philip from Gridless, we were chatting about this   at the cocktail hour after ImagineIF. I think you were there, Scott. Mhmm. And I was like, it's funny how, you know, your challenges with   the energy management for these micro hydro,   mines in in Africa   are the same problems that I have with heating systems, perhaps like having a dummy pool so that you still get the watts out even if you're not necessarily contributing shares and issuing work.   And he said, that's because you and I care about energy.   If you're just on if you're on an on grid setup and you're mining a 100%, you care about hash rate. But the gridless guys, the the heat punks, the people mining at home, they care about energy, not about mining. Yeah. That's a good distinction. That is well said.  



[00:42:19] Unknown:

Do we wanna go into the home miner of the week, by the way? Because I got I gotta get, in thirteen minutes, I gotta get on this other call. But,   that home miner of the week that you guys showed in our group chat was way above my pay grade.  

[00:42:33] Unknown:

Can we show this is the one with the super clean setup? Yeah.  

[00:42:37] Unknown:

Tyler, can you share your screen by chance?  

[00:42:40] Unknown:

The hydro cooled bit axes.  

[00:42:42] Unknown:

Yeah.   Let me pull it up. I have the link.   Where did you we reposted it on   pod two fifty or two five six foundations Twitter. Yeah? Or Scott reposted it. I think I reposted it today.  

[00:42:56] Unknown:

I don't know if it got added to our notes.  

[00:43:00] Unknown:

But,   I've one thing I'll say is this, you know, I'd imagine if we had folks from the nuclear industry, from different energy   areas, and they were just, like, kinda like, I knew nothing about Bitcoin, but now I'm really interested in what these guys are doing.   And I and I hope   and I plan to bring a number of those folks to NEMS   along with   utility company   executives and innovation leads, believe it or not, at these utility companies.   So imagine bringing these folks together   with us,   and I'll I mean, it's just gonna be   year four is gonna be pretty special.  



[00:43:45] Unknown:

Yeah.  

[00:43:47] Unknown:

Year four?  

[00:43:49] Unknown:

Yeah. This is year four, believe it or not. Dude, you've been coming to this for four years, man. To imagine if? No. No. To NEMS. Oh, to NEMS. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.  

[00:43:58] Unknown:

I don't have permissions to share in Brave browser   without restarting it. Uh-oh. Weak.  

[00:44:05] Unknown:

Do you wanna put the link in the signal chat? Maybe I can do it. Yeah.  

[00:44:15] Unknown:

I can, I can summarize it?  

[00:44:17] Unknown:

Yeah. Go ahead, Scott. Yeah.  

[00:44:20] Unknown:

This was   a a user in,   the open source miners united chat just posted. It was kind of amazing. It was this sort of very humble discussion. Like, I've kinda mentioned this before, but I've been working on this little project. And then he posts the picture of this.   The most beautiful,   well built, well organized it's it's this rack,   and he's got,   I don't know, like,   15   bit axis   hydro cooled. So he's modified them all to be hydro cooled.   He's got   beautiful wiring down to,   power supplies,   and then two huge batteries at the bottom and this full custom,   solar system. So it's it's,   there you go.  

Got it up. It's,   yeah. So beautiful install here. Like, I just, like, gone, like, to the nines,   laying this out beautifully. You can see the bit axis up on the top there all all are all piped up for for water cooling.   And then It's got those little hydro blocks on there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that this is looks like something he custom made Yeah. For all this.   And then some power supplies in the center there. And I think he said he he's using, like, industrial,   PLCs, like, process controllers from the industrial automation world. I think that's what that whole rack in the middle is.   For what? Like, what's he switching? So he's got a, a solar charge controller there, that box on the big the one on the right MPB. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, presumably, he has a bunch of solar panels up on his roof or something. Mhmm.  

And I think it's making decisions about, you know, when to charge the batteries, when to mine,   maybe when to feed the power back to the grid. If you go to the next picture, he's got a picture of this this user interface   that he made here that's showing, like, how the whole system   is is running. He's been able to pipe into the bid acts there and get the hash rate, the temperature,   best difficulty   from each one.  

[00:46:20] Unknown:

Dude, this is literally my ImagineIF presentation.  

[00:46:23] Unknown:

So good.   It's so good. And   he just made this. He's like, I have been working on this for a while. It's pretty cool. Right? This is just like you can just do things,   taken to the extreme, obviously. But   there was a bunch of comments on this post. It's like, oh, you know, like, you spent too much money. You know, what's the dollars per terra hash here? Yeah. It   doesn't it doesn't matter. Like  

[00:46:47] Unknown:

Says all the people who haven't even plugged in a miner. Exactly.  

[00:46:51] Unknown:

You know how much this guy learned doing this? Probably so much. It's invaluable.  

[00:46:55] Unknown:

Totally. Yeah. Yes.  

[00:46:57] Unknown:

Yes. Absolutely.   And this can be, you know, scaled up, bigger miners,   you know, productized maybe. The there there's   there's so many neat things you can do with these concepts,   to build this out is fantastic. And   and it's just rad a f. Right? Like, he just, like, hot rotted his car. Like, that is a worthwhile endeavor if you want to do it.  

[00:47:21] Unknown:

I love how he used DIN rail to mount all the circuit breakers and stuff.   So good. So clean. You can tell he comes from an industrial background.  

[00:47:30] Unknown:

Yeah. I mean, interfacing with those PLCs is that's like stodgy old equipment. Right? It's it's not some, like,   you know, some package you just download off the Internet. So that that definitely took some knowledge and understanding of how those things work to integrate them to your own control setup. Yeah. You said these chip temps are almost too cold. Right, Scott? Yeah. He's got all the chip temps of his BitX there, and it's like 39 c? Yeah. It's in, like, the low forties, 39. That   you you know, we don't know for sure because Bitmain doesn't publish any kind of performance data sheets on how these chips operate. But it I think we have seen some evidence to indicate that they do operate better a little warmer.   Mhmm. Kinda more in the 50 to 60   degrees Celsius range. But, you know, the cool thing there is he's got this all under control. Like, the whole system   is   is monitored   and controlled. So he he's in a great situation to prove out that theory right there. And Well, and if I'm not mistaken,  

[00:48:30] Unknown:

the hydro setup was all done in series. Right? Yeah. So, like, the last bit ax in the row is gonna be getting the warmest water.   So he probably needs to keep the water cool enough to account for that. It might be parallel. There's a bunch of tubes at the bottom.  

[00:48:46] Unknown:

Okay.   I've seen   it sort of it seems counterintuitive. Right? If you're No. You're right, actually. If you're piping the water through all of them, the last one would be the hottest, it's gonna, you know, perform in the worst. But I've actually seen a number of people come forward with this strategy and,   and claim it it works just fine. So Yeah.  

[00:49:03] Unknown:

This Yeah. If the mass I mean, if you got enough water, the bid access minuscule amount of heat.   Yeah.  

[00:49:11] Unknown:

This is so cool. Is that how like, if you get a   a hydro,   miner,   you know, like an off the shelf, like, industrial miner that's that's hide that's water cooled, I think they do that also. Right? Through the the hash boards in the machine?  

[00:49:27] Unknown:

I don't know. I've never taken one apart.   That would be interesting to see. I have an m 64 that doesn't work. I should rip it apart. Yeah.  

[00:49:35] Unknown:

You probably just look at those tubes because usually there's tubes on the outside. At least for the, Antminers, there's tubes on the outside. Do they do they have some sort of distribution point and it goes to all of them? Or does it Right. Like a manifold. Cascade through all of them. I'd want everything on a manifold.  

[00:49:53] Unknown:

Should we read the, I know Rod's gonna have to jump here in a minute. Should we read the, Yes.   Hashers. The Hashers.   Yeah. The hard Hashers.  

[00:50:04] Unknown:

I got them up.  

[00:50:06] Unknown:

While you're pulling that up, Tyler, special shout out to HRF,   OpenSats,   the continued support there, which is absolutely massive. It goes insane long way.  

[00:50:16] Unknown:

Yeah. Big time.   On LinkCoin,   shout out to our hashers. Oh, sorry. You still going? We had a a new  

[00:50:24] Unknown:

support Oh, yes. Sick. Yep.  

[00:50:28] Unknown:

So,   open source miner   oh, open source mining?  

[00:50:34] Unknown:

It's open source miner. Open source miner.  

[00:50:37] Unknown:

So the guy behind Public Pool   is   now a tier one supporter of the ten fifty six Foundation.  

[00:50:45] Unknown:

Wow. Yeah. Massive.   Huge shout out. And in the face of much adversity   too. Yeah. So yeah. Shout out. Yeah. Exactly.  

[00:50:54] Unknown:

Massive. And thank you for coming through, dude.   It's gonna go an extremely   long way. And, honestly, I'm so excited to support   the Open Source Miners United community even more so. Like, that guy Speedy Stars is part of the OSMU. Yeah? Yeah.   Scott? Mhmm. Like,   these guys are just unbelievable.   I I keep going back to there's, like, a thousand Brian Borris out there, you know, just Borris out there that are just, like, hanging around and just doing rad stuff behind the scenes that just wanna just be themselves and go, which is awesome.  

[00:51:28] Unknown:

Yeah. And just for listeners to hear it first, the two fifty six Foundation stands behind everything. Scott,   Public Pool, OSMU,   everything those guys have done,   despite all the drama and noise that's come up recently.   Those who were in the loop will know what I'm talking about.   Those   who don't know, you shouldn't care because it's all noise. Keep going on about your life. You're good. And, you know, the two fifty six foundation is gonna be partnering with OSMU, making bid acts an official project of the foundation.   And,   you know, that's  

[00:52:04] Unknown:

that's A lot of more to come on that front, man. I mean more to come. Yeah. Heck, yeah.   Scott,   love everything you're doing, man. You're the you're the man.  

[00:52:14] Unknown:

My pleasure. I love doing this.  

[00:52:18] Unknown:

Is Tyler gonna butcher these names, or are you gonna butcher these names, Iko? No. It's not on Tyler. I don't I don't open Google Docs anymore.  

[00:52:26] Unknown:

And I don't butcher, so we're good to go. Let's go. Best of both worlds.   On Linkcoin, shout out to Scott Offord from Bitcoin Mining World, Scott Offord from Open Hash Foundation, and Schnitzel   Fish Tank Axe. Got a couple of bit axes on there.   Solo c k pool, we have Schnitzel Wall Axe. Why aren't his miners on two different pools? Gotta diversify.  

[00:52:48] Unknown:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  

[00:52:50] Unknown:

Rockpaperbitcoin.fm.  

[00:52:52] Unknown:

Hash rate.  

[00:52:53] Unknown:

That's true. Can't centralize the household.   Rockpaperbitcoin.fm.   Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself.   Thank you. Seed signer, Biddax.   Kuma is excited to meet y'all in Nashville. Did you guys meet Kuma? Yeah. Yeah. Kuma lives. Yeah. That's Kuma. Best dog.   Wood miners bid ax.   Is that our friend who made the wood drying bid ax cases at temps? Yeah. Oh, we should post a picture of that.  

[00:53:22] Unknown:

Yes. Yes.   He he made a February   logo that I saw in the in the cafe Yeah. At the park. Yeah. Yeah.  

[00:53:31] Unknown:

I did notice that too. It's really nice. Mills it. He, like, drives the wood, mills it, machines it. Yeah. Stud. Like, I'm test. Right? Public pool, we have hardestblock.  

[00:53:41] Unknown:

Blocks.org,   Stalin spit ax.   Shout out. Thank you for contributing Hashrate to the two five six foundation.  

[00:53:48] Unknown:

They love communism.  

[00:53:49] Unknown:

They do. They do. But more people love it on Ocean, is where most of the miners   are. We have Bible HODL, Forest,   Pizandy proof of print, BIDAXONE,   Zircus Sehash,   Reckless Apophis Mining. Apophis Mining. You can just build things. Nice.   Hub   and Virginia Freedom Tech sells bid access. Thank you, guys. Hell, yeah.  

[00:54:13] Unknown:

Dude,   rock and roll.   Gentlemen,   it's an honor to be back. I missed well,   always been talking with you guys. I missed you guys on the pod.   Good to have you back. Yeah. It's great. We've been missing tangents. We didn't have any. Yeah. It wasn't the same without you. No. I and my boy, Jack. I love Jack. Jack, thanks for listening in. I need my,   pod track dialed in here. We'll we'll show you how to get it dialed in. You know, Tom, who we also saw, it was great to see Tom at ImagineIF as well. We saw our old producer, Tom Yeah. ImagineIF.  

[00:54:46] Unknown:

I need to  

[00:54:47] Unknown:

get my buttons going. He always used to write me all my little things   over here. I wanna get that going.   So, anyways,   I got us to roll. We all gotta roll. Yep.  

[00:54:58] Unknown:

Alright. Till next time. Till next time. Everybody.  

[00:55:01] Unknown:

Cheers. Yes, sir.   See you, gents.