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The Honest Money Show is your guide to understanding what money really is, and where Bitcoin fits in. Hosted by Anja Dragovic, Australia's female-led, Bitcoin-only podcast, it cuts through the noise to explore how money shapes our lives, why the current system leaves so many people behind, and what a clearer, fairer future could look like.
Expect honest, accessible conversations with some of the most interesting thinkers in the space, the kind that take you from "I don't really get this" to genuinely curious. No hype, no pressure, just money, made clear.
Whether you're brand new to these questions or already deep in them, you're welcome here.
If your emotions are swung around by the movement
of a price chart, are you free? What would you say?
That's why when people like Ray Dalio say,
hey, central bankers aren't looking at it, I'm like
— well, actually, Ray, you probably have a lot more
information asymmetry than I do on 99.9% of things.
But this is the one little piece here, that ain't true.
Bitcoin really is, if you look at it, the ultimate tool
for social and environmental justice.
Joining me today on The Honest Money Show
is Daniel Batten. I am so excited to
finally speak to him. I know we've been
trying to make this happen for some time.
And I'm very, very pleased to have you on
the show today, Daniel. It's great to be
here. Thanks for inviting me, Anja. Well,
most of our listeners will probably be
very familiar with you. But for those who
aren't, do you want to give them a little
bit of a backstory? Well, I came to
Bitcoin from an energy angle, not from a
money angle. I was fascinated in how it
could solve energy problems and also solve
environmental problems. I was running a
climate tech company at the time. And some
people had said to me, you should research
Bitcoin. It's really good for the
environment, to which I said, that's not
what I've heard. And thankfully, thanks to
their encouragement to do due diligence,
which is what you should do if you're an
investor. I did look into it more deeply
and I'm like, you know what? You're right.
Why don't more people know about this?
This is an incredible asset for the
environment and for the energy sector.
Found myself writing about it and found I
had people who were interested in that
sort of research. And that's resulted in
me entering into the Bitcoin ecosystem
through the energy angle first. And then
it was a while later that I actually found
out, hey, this is actually really cool as
a monetary proposition as well. So it's a
slightly different journey to a lot of
people. Yeah, it certainly is. And for me,
Why should someone who's in Bitcoin
care about the energy angle and learn
about it? I'd say the first reason is if
you're ever going to talk to anyone else
about Bitcoin, then you really, it's a
good idea to know about Bitcoin as energy.
Because the world is likely to embrace
Bitcoin as a solution to an energy problem
before it embraces Bitcoin as a solution
to a monetary problem. And there's a few
reasons for that we can get into later.
But one of them is that think about it
from the point of view of the people who
own and operate the monetary system versus
the people who own and operate the energy
system. Do you think you're incentivized
if you're one of the custodians of the
existing monetary system to say our
monetary system is broken? No. Of course,
you're heavily disincentivized because you
would lose your job. You would create
chaos in the markets. And it's easier to
blame outside factors. And there's a whole
raft of people who protect the existing
status quo by citing anything other than
the existing fiat monetary system as a
problem for some of the things that
Bitcoin is well aware of that I won't get
into because I'm sure you've covered them
well already. But if you look at the
people who are operating the energy
systems, the grid operators, utilities,
etc., it's exactly the opposite incentive.
That's a fascinating thing. You have no
incentive at all to obfuscate and to keep
things hidden. You have every incentive to
say our grids are under stress. We need
help. We need resources. We need
government assistance. We need subsidies.
We need whatever it is you think you need
to try and stabilize the grid at a point
where there's some almighty forces that
are destabilizing grids right now. So the
incentive structure is exactly the
opposite in the energy sector, in the
financial sector. And the other thing is
that to say that Bitcoin solves a monetary
problem is true, but a lot of people don't
even understand there's a problem. And so
until people understand there's a problem,
they can't entertain a solution. Whereas
if you look at on the energy sector,
people know we've got a problem. You don't
have to look too far. In Costa Rica, where
I live, you're having blackouts more
regularly. In a lot of countries in the
world, you're having blackouts more
regularly, including Spain and Portugal,
where I visited earlier this year, who had
a massive blackout last year. And just
generally with the AI load coming onto
grids, if grids are not being strained
already, they're about to become strained.
And at the same time, you have more and
more variable energy coming onto the grid
at the same time. So you have the world's
number one and the world's number two
megatrends on a collision course on the
same wires called the grid, where they're
both highly unpredictable, both in terms
of the supply of energy. You can't predict
when the sun's going to shine exactly and
when the wind's going to blow. Nor can you
predict exactly when a whole lot of people
at once are going to fire up a whole lot
of agents on that chat GBT or that clawed
query. So you have very spiky demand and
very spiky and intermittent supply of
energy at the same time. It's not a good
recipe for stability. So that's something
that people can see. It's very
transparent. There's no opaqueness there.
And so for those two reasons, the
incentives plus the plain visibility of
the problem, that's why it's highly,
highly likely, and we're always seeing
evidence of it, that people will embrace
Bitcoin as an energy solution first.
Bitcoin as a monetary solution second. And
that's good news because even if you don't
care about energy, I mean, everyone, I
think, should care about energy at least a
little bit because it's what keeps the
lights on at home. It's what is required
to have a stable economy and a whole lot
of other things. But it paves the way. It
becomes a catalyst where then when society
normalizes and says, OK, this Bitcoin
thing is pretty good, it has some utility
to us. Then you've already entrenched it
as some technology which has utility,
which has value. And that whole argument
that it's worthless, it's a Ponzi scheme
goes away because people say, well, even
if I haven't yet seen its utility as
money, I can see its utility in solving
energy problems because it's solving them
right now on the global grids. So the more
that Bitcoiners understand about energy,
it leaves us in a better position to
orange pill other people, including
policymakers, regulators, politicians,
institutional investors, you name it. So
the more versed we are and how Bitcoin
solves energy problems, the better we can
further Bitcoin adoption, isn't that? It
is. And I like it's really fascinating. I
have heard on a podcast before where
Prince Philip was talking about, you know,
how he likes to approach conversations
with policymakers through the energy
angle. And I just found that really
fascinating because it's more like of a
strategic way to do it. You're kind of
helping answer some of their problems. But
I'm just really curious for you to connect
the dots for me, like onto the how, like
what's the mechanism? What does Bitcoin
actually do? Yeah, look, I'll pick up on
that point because it's well made. So
Prince Philip, we actually caught up in
Abu Dhabi recently and we were chatting
about this. And he said, look, he went out
having conversations about Bitcoiners'
money, but found the easiest way to get
nation states to adopt it was if they
adopted Bitcoin mining. And we've seen
that play out where Van Eck has said that
there are now 11 nation states who are
investing in Bitcoin mining. There's only
one ever that has invested part of their
government treasury in purchasing Bitcoin
directly, and that's El Salvador, and
they've now stopped. So simply in terms of
the ratio, it's a much easier way for
nation states to get involved to mine
Bitcoin rather than to use government
coffers to purchase it, which has a whole
lot of political issues around the
outside. In terms of how it works,
basically the thing that creates Bitcoin
is responsible for issuance. There's only
two ways you can ever get it. You either
purchase it or you mine it. And so all the
Bitcoin that's been brought into
existence, all 20 million of them to date
and another 1 million in the future
roughly, has been brought into existence
because it was mined. Because you had
these things called ASICs, application
-specific integrated circuits, whose
purpose was to do one thing only. And that
was to guess a random number many, many,
many, many times. And it turns out that if
you guess a random number of hundreds of
trillions of times per second at the same
time as everyone else's, this links to
securitizing the network. I'm not going to
explain exactly the mechanics by which
that works, but it creates a layer of
energy which secures the network. It
validates transactions and it performs the
third function, which is that it's
responsible for the new issuance of
Bitcoin. Because if you successfully guess
that random number, which is every 10
minutes roughly, then you're rewarded with
a little bit of Bitcoin. And so people who
are, it's a terrible name, by the way,
mining Bitcoin. Validation or securitizing
the network is really what's been done and
issuance at the same time. So it's kind of
like a combination of cybersecurity, the
audit office and the central bank all at
the same time.
ever use the word central bank in the same
sentence as Bitcoin. But it's responsible
for the issuance of the currency. But
unlike a central bank, there's only so
much that can be issued and it's
algorithmically defined. And because it
requires a lot of energy to guess that
random number, that has a lot of
tremendous advantages. It has some
disadvantages, too. The disadvantage is
that because the population doesn't widely
understand energy, most people think that
anything that uses a lot of energy must be
bad for the environment, which in fact is
not true at all. It depends on the type of
energy you're using. It also depends on
how flexible the consumer of energy is. An
energy user which is using more than 50%
zero emission energy and is able to do
additional things such as stabilized
grids, because it's very flexible on its
demand pattern, that's a net promoter for
the green energy transition. And Bitcoin
fulfills both of those criteria. It's 52
.4%, according to Cambridge University,
sustainably powered, and many ancillary
uses, including being able to ramp up and
ramp down energy usage. What that means is
when the sun goes behind a cloud and the
solar capacity goes down, or the wind
stops blowing and your wind energy goes
down, Bitcoin miners can power down very
quickly to match it. But what many people
don't realize is it does the opposite
thing, too. When you have too much wind
energy, you have an oversupply, that
damages critical, multi-billion dollar
grid infrastructure. It can fry equipment.
And you can't simply unplug those wind
turbines, or that can create the opposite
problem, where suddenly they can't be
available to supply energy when there's a
deficit. So what grid operators need is
they need people who not only can power
down very quickly, but can power up very
quickly. And in some cases, less than one
second. And Bitcoin mining can power up
and power down. In as little as 0.7
seconds. And again, this is not theory.
This has been done on the Swedish grid
right now. One of my clients, his name is
Bipin Patel, runs a company called
Flexionics. And they powered up over 11
,000 times in a single year to help
stabilize the grid when there was an
oversupply of wind power on the Swedish
grid. They helped to keep the Swedish grid
stable. Tremendously important,
particularly as you put more variable
renewable energy onto them. So that's how
it works. That's why it's become such a
strong net positive to the environment.
And that's also because it uses a lot of
energy. Whilst that's a positive thing, a
lot of people, particularly in the early
days, didn't understand that was a
positive thing, which is also why you had
a period where Bitcoin was vilified before
it started to get more understood. And now
what you find is both the peer-reviewed
literature, the media are net positive
reporters on Bitcoin as a positive
environmental force. And now we're at the
final pillar, which is now the
politicians. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm
listening to you talk and I'm just
thinking, wow, Australia needs this. But
also... They really do. I was actually on
an energy podcast with an Australian
energy podcaster recently. And he was
like, this is exactly what we need. And he
had a question which was, well, can't
battery do the same thing? And it's a
question I get a lot. Battery, isn't that
the answer for the intermittency of solar
wind? And it is part of the answer, but
it's not the full answer for a couple of
reasons. And nor is battery a competition
with Bitcoin mining. They're actually
incredibly synergistic. The advantage of
battery that that has over Bitcoin is two
things. Number one, Bitcoin can't store
energy. Batteries can. So it's
bidirectional. That's an advantage. Second
advantage is that it can react more
quickly than Bitcoin mining. Batteries can
power up and down. They can take load
within 0.1 of a second. So that's
tremendously valuable. But if you try to
use batteries as your entire solution,
it's a little bit like trying to build a
fire with newspaper and kindling. It's the
best thing to get the fire started, but
it's not the best thing to continue it.
Because batteries only have a four-hour
discharge time. And often you might have a
peak wind event that might last for three
days or a deficit of energy for three
days. And so what do you do in those
cases? Well, Bitcoin can. You can power
down for 72 hours in a row. You can power
up for 72 hours in a row. So it has much
more flexibility. The second advantage it
has is that it's way less expensive. It's
economically self-sufficient. And it's
much more modular. You can power up and
power down to exactly the required level.
And unlike batteries, where if you power
up and power down a lot, it loses its
discharge and charge capacity just like a
phone does over time. Bitcoin doesn't. So
the two actually go together extremely
well. And the best solution is we have a
little bit of battery to do the fast
demand. Then you have a lot of Bitcoin
mining at the back end. That's the ideal
hybrid solution. This has been proved in a
lot of peer-reviewed studies, but also a
lot of cases around the world, such as the
ERCOT grid in Texas, who have done exactly
that. And they've had up to three
gigawatts of Bitcoin mining. To give that
perspective, that's enough energy to
supply or to power down up to three
million homes. So that's a lot of
flexibility you have. And what that meant
in Texas, and this is really key, is that
after there was a winter storm in 2021
where lives were lost, billions of dollars
of damage was done, the grid operator was
fired. So three bad things. Three things a
grid operator never wants to happen.
That's the grid goes down. Part of the
reason was the equipment was not
weatherized, particularly the gas plants.
Some of them froze during an ice storm.
But part of the reason was they didn't
have any flexible demand. So that when
some of the generation was lost, they
didn't have consumers that could instantly
switch off. And then Berkshire Hathaway,
so Warren Buffett's company, they've got a
company called Hathaway Energy. And they
came in and said, well, we can solve that.
We've got these things called gas peaker
plants. And it'll cost you about $8
billion, which subsequently the budget
increased to $18 billion. And what they do
is where you lose some generation or we
have peak demand, you just fire up these
gas peaker plants and they'll give you
that supply when you need it. The problem
is, apart from the fact they're really
expensive, in order to supply that power
instantly, they need to be idling all
year, which means they're not helping to
green the grid. They're fossil fuel based.
They're running all year, whether you're
using that energy or not, even at idle
capacity. And whereas Bitcoin mining is a
solution at the opposite end, rather than
getting more supply of energy, you
actually just power down. So Bitcoin does
two important things. At the front end, it
helps to monetize that solar and wind
energy that otherwise would have been
wasted. And what that means is you can
grow your entire solar and wind
propositions much faster, much more
profitably when you have Bitcoin mining as
part of the mix and when you don't. In
fact, the literature says that a solar
farm of 50 megawatts will take 8.1 years
to be profitable if you don't use Bitcoin
mining, less than four years if you do. So
that profit gets plowed straight back into
more solar, more wind. So you get more
solar and more wind on the grid in the
first place, which is great. And then when
the sun goes behind a cloud, the wind
stops blowing. Bitcoin mining can very
quickly ramp down. And this is not the
opinions of Bitcoin mining companies. This
is exactly the words of the grid operator
of Texas, what they observed firsthand,
not Bitcoiners. He didn't own a single
Bitcoin. In fact, he said, I'm not going
to own it. It's too risky. I'm risk
averse. I run a grid, but I can see the
utility of ASICs. He'll get there. Yes.
But I can see the utility of Bitcoin
mining in order to stabilize a grid, which
otherwise would be unstable. He didn't
have to purchase those $18 billion of gas
pika plants that helped to keep energy
prices low for consumers in Texas. It
helped their decarbonization program. And
they didn't have to spend anything because
they just partnered with Bitcoin mining
companies. And the only money they spent
was the money they paid the Bitcoin mining
companies, which they would have paid
someone anyway to power down. But the
difference was rather than paying a steel
factory to power down, where you only get
four hours of power and it's highly
modular, the steel factory is either on or
off. So you can get the opposite problem
of not enough demand. Bitcoin mining, you
get it to power down exactly what was
needed, then power up exactly what was
needed for as long as was needed. And
because there was another competitor and
competing for what's called that flexible
consumer, the overall marketplace for
flexible energy actually became more
competitive. So the overall cost to the
Texas grid of paying for those services
also went down. So everyone won. The grid
operator won. Everyone won except for
Warren Buffett, who lost an $18 billion
contract. But everyone else was pretty
happy, apart from the people who were
supplying the gas pika plants who lost
that business opportunity. Yeah, man, that
is so fascinating. Like you really
inspired me to learn more about this. Are
you seeing, do you know of any case
studies of Bitcoin mining helping
underdeveloped countries? A lot, actually.
There's a lot happening in Africa in
particular. And I'll share two stories. So
one is in Ethiopia, when large dams are
built, they're always overbuilt because a
dam's not modular. You can't build half a
dam. The dam's either there or it's not.
So you have to build for future demand.
And that means that you've got a lot of
surplus energy for a good 20 years that is
just wasted. It cannot be used because
there's no demand for it. And so they take
a long time to pay themselves off. And
often dams never pay themselves off. But
that's because there's never been a
customer for that surplus energy, which
was highly flexible, but also could locate
right at the dam site itself. And so
Ethiopia found, hang on, we've got these
things called Bitcoin mining. They invited
them and they said, hey, we've got all
this spare capacity that no one's using at
all. How about we charge you some
relatively inexpensive rate? You use the
spare capacity. So you get a cheaper rate.
We get money we otherwise wouldn't have
got. So we both win. And then we'll use
that additional revenue to help to build
out our grid and will help rural
electrification, which is exactly what
they did. They still installed a large
number of extra substations, transmission
lines directly on the back of the Bitcoin
mining revenue that they got, which was in
the order of 55 million one year and over
100 million the following year. And so if
you look at Africa right now, the two
biggest political themes are youth
unemployment and rural electrification and
Bitcoin solving one of those two themes.
So that's significant. It's not a small
contribution to the continent. It's a
potentially major one. And then on a more
local scale, you've got companies such as
Gridless. And the problem with getting
electricity to Africa, there's 600 million
people in Africa right now who are in
energy poverty. So these are people who
have no access to electricity whatsoever.
One of my clients is from Senegal. He told
me the story of he was an asthma sufferer.
He used to stay with his grandmother who
lived in a rural area of Senegal. And when
he got asthma, he had to be rushed to
hospital because there was no electricity.
So there were the life-saving support
systems, the hospital systems, surgery,
refrigeration, for food, all those basic
things, refrigeration for medical
supplies. They just don't exist at all.
And so the quality of life goes up a lot
when you can get those basic services out
to rural areas to protect basic human
needs. And it's been a problem until now
because a lot of Africa's population is
rural, which means that there's no profit
incentive to build out the grid. Tens of
millions, hundreds of millions of
transmission lines when you're never going
to get enough people paying enough money
to get a return on investment. So for a
long time, people have known the solution
is not these big monolithic grids, but
micro grids. So just as Bitcoin is a
decentralized network, the grid itself
doesn't have to be completely centralized.
You can be decentralized. You can have
little micro grids popping up in these
rural areas across these places and
continents such as Africa. But the problem
is, again, that they still have to be
profitable. And when people have tried to
do it using a charity model, typically
what's happened has been you've maybe
built this little micro hydro dam in some
river and it's delivered some power. And
it took a long time to get off the ground.
You had to go through a lot of grant
raising. And then it finally got off the
ground. It was never profitable. And then
when there was a need to maintain the
equipment, there was no money left to
maintain it. So it slowly became degraded
until it was five years later, 10 years
later, was no longer usable. And this was
a repeated pattern with micro grids in
Africa. Now, what gridless have done is
they've said, well, hang on, we can solve
that problem. The reason that these micro
grids aren't profitable is that there is
no buyer for the energy at times of days
when the community doesn't need it. You
see where I'm going with this, right? It's
like, well, hang on a minute. Bitcoin
mining will buy that energy. And then when
the community needs it in the morning and
in the evening when they're cooking
dinner, it'll power down. So the community
will always be prioritized first. But
whenever the community doesn't need it,
there's this buyer of that otherwise
wasted energy. And that buyer makes the
whole proposition profitable that
otherwise wasn't. Self-sustaining. There's
no grant process to go through. There's no
lags in getting approval from a grant
administration body. And there's enough
money that not only is there enough money
to maintain the micro grid, but the
tariffs that people pay are lower because
overall, there's more money, there's more
customers for the same amount of
electricity. So it's phenomenal. And he's
now done this in five countries. And it's
benefited 28,000 rural villages in Africa.
Now, there's a long way to go. There's 600
million villagers, not villages,
villagers. So people, there's 600 million.
So that's a start. There's a lot more we
can do. And the more that policymakers and
regulators understand about the utility,
the value, the promise of Bitcoin mining,
the faster we can go. The more we can
overcome some of those old confirmation
biases, the faster that people can go.
That is so inspiring. Like, I'm getting
goosebumps listening to you. It's mind
-blowing. I'm just so excited. Like, I'm
glad we had this conversation because I
just really am now interested to learn a
lot more about it. It's the best story,
isn't it? I mean, Bitcoin really is, if
you look at it, it's the ultimate tool for
social and environmental justice.
Because it's helping people in energy poverty,
and it's doing it using clean, renewable
energy. And this has been what people have
struggled with. And it's doing it in a way
which has proven that it can be scaled.
That's phenomenal. We haven't had that in
the past. And it doesn't depend on
government subsidies, which is really
critical. Because even if you get a
government subsidy in one country,
there'll be 17 countries you won't get it
in. So something that stands on its own
legs financially can scale much faster.
And do you think that will happen? Do you
think, are you starting to see the
beginning of the trend of people starting
to rock this and implement it and have
those conversations in different countries
around the world? Absolutely. So I'll give
you an example. In Brazil right now, there
are five energy companies who have started
investigating or in some cases are
actively piloting Bitcoin mining. And
these are not small companies. The major,
the largest energy company in Brazil,
state-owned, the largest privately owned
energy company in Brazil, the largest wind
generator in Brazil, are all either
investigating or have already set up a
pilot for Bitcoin mining. Now, why would
they do that? Because they looked at
batteries and they, in one case, said, you
know what? Batteries will give us some
revenue back. It will stop us wasting so
much. But the cost of the batteries is so
high, we're just going to waste it. So the
conclusion they reached was that the
second best option was to waste it. The
third best option was battery. But the
best option was to do Bitcoin mining with
it because the capital expenditure was
very small. But the revenue they got from
it was reasonably significant. And so this
is happening at scale right now. Virtually
no one's reporting on this. In Europe at
the moment.
Not a lot. And I think that's for a couple
of reasons. Number one is that in Bitcoin,
within the Bitcoin ecosystem, generally
speaking, Bitcoin solving a monetary
problem is the narrative we spend most
time talking about. And rightly so,
because it solves a big monetary problem.
And we should continue to speak about that
avidly. And what's also important is we
recognize that the solution that the world
will understand first is actually the
energy problem. And so the more we can
learn about this, the more equipped we are
to have conversations with people, to
introduce them to the utility of Bitcoin,
who otherwise might not understand it
because they have to understand the
problem before they can understand the
solution. In Europe, the reason that very
few people know about it is the word
Bitcoin mining is never used. Bitcoin
mining was very effectively lobbied
against by the central bank of the
Netherlands, the European central bank and
a lot of other bodies. And as a result of
that, there are now some fairly unfriendly
policies around Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining
in Europe, which Bitcoin mining companies
and Bitcoin companies are working with,
let's say. But also there's a narrative
that's been created, which is of Bitcoin
as something which is wasteful and not
useful. So in Europe, they have the
problem that they've really created a
narrative where they're no longer able to
embrace a solution for their own pressing
energy problems. Whereas Brazil, they
never embarked on that process of
vilifying Bitcoin in the first place. So
they can look at it from first principles
and say, it makes economic sense. Let's do
it. And all those energy companies,
they're all renewable energy companies
that are doing it because they're the ones
who have the curtailment issue, because
they're the ones who have the variable
supply where they have too much wind or
too much sun at different times of day,
which would otherwise get wasted. So in
Europe, the issue is that the person I
mentioned to you in Sweden, he doesn't
call it Bitcoin mining. The Swedish grid
doesn't call it that. They call it
flexible low. They call it data centers.
They call it anything but Bitcoin mining.
And they don't go around telling grids in
other countries what they're doing because
there's no incentive to. They're just
happy that they found a solution to their
problem. So what's happening is you're not
getting that same network effect that you
get in other technologies where back in
the early days of the Internet, one of
your friends uses the Internet and maybe
they're just one of those people who look
at weird technologies and everything. But
then they can say, no, no, this is
actually good. Here, look at it. You say,
oh, yeah, that is quite useful. And then
you get that network effect. So that's not
happening to the same extent with Bitcoin
mining. So it'll be a little slower in
places like Europe, but it'll be faster in
places like Africa, like Latin America,
like Southeast Asia, like the Middle East.
These are the countries that are really
starting to embrace Bitcoin as a way to
solve the issues of how to stabilize
grids, how to monetize stranded energy,
wasted energy, stop curtailment, reduce
the need for gas pika plants and also
mitigate methane at the same time. Yeah,
the methane angle is interesting. And I
want to learn a little bit more about
that. But one thing, as you keep talking,
that I find very curious, and I've
referenced this a few times in my podcast,
Jimmy Song did a survey on LinkedIn just
asking a general question in terms of
whether people find that AI is producing
energy waste. And curiously, no one seems
to think that the energy that gets used in
AI is a bad thing. They think is a
positive thing for society. But curiously
enough, they don't feel the same way about
Bitcoin. So I just found that interesting.
The utility of AI is more obvious. It
touches people's lives faster, whereas,
again, the utility of Bitcoin for a lot of
people is less immediately obvious,
particularly if you live in a country
which has a reasonably stable financial
system, banking system, doesn't have high
inflation. The people who see the utility
of Bitcoin really fast are the people who
live in countries which don't have a
stable banking system, where you can be
unbanked very easily. I mean, you can in
the West, but it doesn't happen as often,
nearly as often. Where it can be used as a
political weapon, where there is high
inflation or in some cases even
hyperinflation, and where there's a need
to get money from one place to another.
And the existing rails are really clunky
and involve substantial fees. And Bitcoin
really solves a lot of those problems in a
way which is very safe that even stable
coins can't to the same extent. So it has
a number of huge advantages, but you tend
only to perceive them if you're subject to
the problem in the first place. And for a
lot of people in the West, they don't see
the problem. They just go about life. But
AI is more immediate. Yeah, that makes
sense. But I want to pivot a little bit. I
saw a tweet that you made that I was just
so curious about. It was something along
the lines of you speaking and mentoring
some central bankers. I want to know about
this. Not many Bitcoiners have had the
opportunity to speak directly with central
bankers. Well, there's a few of us who
have. There's a few of us. There's a few
behind the scenes. And I'm not even the
one who's spoken to the most central
bankers. There's people who have spoken to
more than I have. So every year I speak to
Cambridge University's program. It's
called CDAR, Cambridge Digital Assets for
Regulators. Last year, I think there were
165 people. This year, there are over 200
people from all around the world. So I
think about 36 different nation states
represented each time, roughly. And they
included securities and exchange
commissions. They included central banks.
They included policymakers and regulators
and government officials. And yes, central
banks are sending some of their staff,
including divisional heads, and in some
cases, deputy heads of the central bank,
to school to learn about digital assets.
They're learning about not only Bitcoin.
They're learning about Bitcoin, about
crypto generally, about stable coins. So
all three. Not CDBCs. Right. So those
three asset classes. And one of the
modules they learn about is the ESG
module. So in order to form policy, they
need to be able to tick their ESG boxes
for their country. And so part of what I
do is I give them the data that allows
them to make sensible decisions about the
ESG profile of Bitcoin. So I share with
them the environmental story and also show
some of the social data we have about the
communities which Bitcoin is known to
benefit. And they're fascinated. They are
genuinely surprised. About the level of
peer-reviewed evidence there is for its
social and environmental utility. So it's
been a lot of fun. And that's why when
people like Ray Dalio says, hey, central
bankers aren't looking at it, I'm like,
well, actually, Ray, you probably have a
lot more information asymmetry than I do
on 99.9% of things. But this is one little
piece here. I have some asymmetrical
information. That ain't true. Central
bankers are looking at it. They are
investigating it. Now, there's a
difference between looking at it and
implementing it. But what's important here
is that the Czech Republic has already
done a trial. Ukraine has already said we
have removed the final regulatory
obstacles that prevented central banks
from holding it. And there are a small but
significant number of central bankers who
are actively learning about it. And there
are conversations directly happening
behind the scenes with heads of central
banks and deputy heads of central banks to
understand the asset better. Now, I'm not
going to comment about whether that's a
good thing, whether that's a bad thing. I
know that Bitcoiners have different
opinions on that. But what it does show
very clearly is that central banks are
looking at it. They are taking it
seriously. They are adopting a position.
That is so fascinating. I think only two
years ago, Michelle Bullock, the chairman
of the Reserve Bank Australia, she
actually went on record to say that they
don't have a position on Bitcoin. So,
yeah, it's really interesting. But I'd
love to know, is there like a case study
or an example that you can provide from
like the before and after, like of a
person, a central banker, how they come
in? What are some of the impressions early
in their journey versus how they leave? It
really depends on which country they're
from. And that will largely determine some
of the questions they have. The way that
Ukraine might use it is very different to
how the Czech Republic might use it, which
is different from how Ethiopia might use
it, which is different to how some Latin
American country might use it. And so
they'll have very different reasons for
evaluating it seriously. If you look at
Bhutan, for example, they don't hold it at
a central bank level. But what they did
was they mined a lot of Bitcoin and
created a corporate, well, not a corporate
treasury, a national treasury, National
Strategic Reserve, which was a substantial
portion at one point. They sold some of
it. They seem to have some be able to pick
the top quite well, and they sold a lot of
it. Good for them and used it to fund a
lot of their infrastructure. Forty five
percent of GDP at one stage. What's also
interesting about Bhutan was that they
started mining Bitcoin at the point where
they were actually quite close to
defaulting. On their balance of payments
because they had lost a lot of their
tourist revenue as a result of COVID, like
a lot of countries. And they were quite
close to having to take out an IMF debt,
but they avoided it because they did
Bitcoin mining. So that was actually a
tool where they could not have to become a
vassal state. Let's put it blankly. They
could maintain their economic and their
sovereignty as a nation, as well as having
money to put up government salaries and
refurbish your airport and a whole lot of
other infrastructure development. So
countries will hold it for different
reasons. What's in common with a lot of
regulators is it's about, and I say this
with anyone who's wanting to orange pill
anyone at all, and it comes back to first
principles of communication, is that
humans have two ears and one mouth for a
reason. And we might think we know why a
country should adopt it or why a central
bank should adopt it or why a sovereign
fund should adopt it or why a community or
a single business owner or even a friend
should adopt it.
We don't know anything
until we've listened. And so it always
starts with just listening and hearing
what their reasons are or might be. And in
some cases, Bitcoin might not be the
solution for them. So being open to that
possibility based on their values, based
on their stage of life, based on the
pension fund stage of its pension fund may
not be the right solution. But in a lot of
cases, it will. But not presuming that we
know the reason why until we've actually
asked first is really important. So I'll
give an example. So I run an
infrastructure investment fund, CH4
Capital, and we invest in Bitcoin mining
projects which run on landfills because
they use the landfill gas that otherwise
would be airborne and would contribute
massively to climate change. It's 84 times
more warming, the methane that comes out
of landfills over a 20-year period than
carbon dioxide. And it's fuel. It should
be used for something. So we help these
Bitcoin mining companies to put in the
infrastructure so they can purify that
gas, send it to a generator, generate
electricity, mine Bitcoin on site.
Now, it
makes a lot of sense to the landfill owner
because they get some money for the power
and they get the government off their back
who's no longer telling them to regulate
their pollution. But you can't presume
that that's the reason they want to take
action. We were talking to one landfill
owner and he was like, well, we don't
really care about that. What we care about
is we own some land surrounding the
landfill. And we actually have a lot of
land. But the land's worth virtually
nothing because it stinks and because it
has high methane emissions. No one wants
to live there. In fact, they can't live
there because it's unhealthy. Methane's
responsible for a million premature deaths
every year through atmospheric leakage.
But he said, but if you can do something
with that methane so it doesn't go into
the air, the value of my land goes up. So
we wouldn't have known that that was a
reason for him taking action if we hadn't
got into a conversation, hadn't got
curious, hadn't asked a whole lot of
questions. So the simple answer is what
turns on a central banker to Bitcoin. I
don't know. Because every central bank is
different. Every regulator is different.
Every policymaker is different. Every
government official is different based on
their position, their stage in an
electoral cycle, perhaps the jurisdiction
you're in. Often, Bitcoin will benefit
them. But the more listening you can do,
the more likely you are to find out what's
the clincher. Does it feel almost like the
West will be the last to adopt Bitcoin in
many ways? I'm just kind of sensing that
overall trend. Yeah, like there's a level
of hubris that we have that's going to
shoot us in the foot. Well, we're seeing
evidence of that, aren't we? I mean, it
has been embraced in Bitcoin, on Europe
rather, on grids. But again, it's been
embraced slowly because you don't have
that network effect. It's been embraced
faster in Texas. So there's one state in
the West, at least, that did embrace it.
So you might get these little pockets in
the West, these little anomalies, the
Czech Republic, etc., that embrace it. But
I think you're right that we're not going
to see a widespread rollout for a couple
of reasons. Firstly, is that, well, the
same, if you look at Africa, for example,
they bypassed landlines and went straight
to cellular technology. So Africa could do
the same thing. They bypass banks and go
straight to being your own bank, holding
Bitcoin, self-custardying. So I can easily
see the same thing happening with Africa,
with Latin America that happened with
cellular technology. Bitcoin has already
got a reliable track record of turning how
technology trends normally roll out on its
head. The early investors in Bitcoin were
not the VCs. They weren't the angel
investors. They weren't the institutional
investors. In fact, they were shut out for
more than a decade. It was retail
investors. And they had the first
opportunity. And it wasn't until around
about 2024, really, with the ETFs that a
lot of those institutional investors were
even allowed to purchase Bitcoin and hold
it on their balance sheet. Very unusual
for an asset class. And similarly, it's
very unusual for a technology that the
utility of that technology should be felt
in the developing world first and the West
last. But that seems to be repeating
itself again. Where if we look at how
Bitcoin's been used, its utility, most of
the inspiring stories are coming out of
Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.
I need to get closer to these stories,
Daniel. And having said that, there are
also some really inspiring stories that
are happening in communities within the
West, too. Absolutely. I want to shout out
to Luke Cortez and Brooke Cortez, who are
doing some incredible work in Buena Vista,
Colorado, simply to introduce their local
business owners, local community to
Bitcoin. Doing amazing things. And in the
process of two weekends, so two half days,
they onboarded 50 people in the community
to Bitcoin, who have continued to use it.
And they've got 20 business operators who
are using it. And these business operators
have said things like, we've seen an
increase in foot traffic. We're having out
-of-towners who are coming specifically to
Buena Vista to spend Bitcoin. One out of
eight of our purchases is now in Bitcoin.
20% of our revenue is now in Bitcoin. Just
within a few months. And so phenomenal
things. So it does have utility in the
West, too. It requires a little bit more
education. But I don't want to leave the
impression that it's not going to be felt.
It very much does have utility in the
West. It just requires a slightly
different angle. And sometimes just a
little bit more education beforehand.
Yeah. I'm also curious to know about the
mentoring work that you've been doing. I
mean, we've kind of touched on it, but not
really. I'm just, yeah, I'd love to know
who you've been working with. Yeah. So
around a year ago, I worked out that if I
wanted to really have a sustainable,
positive impact on Bitcoin as an
ecosystem, as an asset class, as a
technology, I have a skill as a coach. And
if I could coach other people to have the
conversations with people they were
connected with, then just help them to
have the best possible conversations. That
could potentially have a really strong
impact. And that was much more sustainable
as a strategy than me trying to do that
myself. And that's proven to be the case
because some incredible people have come
in who are having conversations with, I
think at the moment we've got about more
than five different energy ministers and
nation state leaders and political party
leaders who have all been talked to by
people who are my clients. And we talk
about day in, day out about how you
influence the top level, how you have the
conversation that they need to hear, not
the conversation you want to have. Which
is really key because what led us to
Bitcoin to embrace it is not what will
lead the next adopters to adopt Bitcoin.
So the better we can understand those
principles of influence and those high
stake meetings, and the better we can, I
would say, make ourselves as anti-fragile
as Bitcoin as itself, the better we can
have a large stack of positive self
-belief, the more we can take away the
debt of doubt and self-doubt. Then we have
a whole ecosystem that can really advance
Bitcoin very fast because Bitcoin by
itself is just a technology. Bitcoin by
itself doesn't change the world, but in
the hands of Bitcoiners who are its
advocates, it does. So if we grow that
peer-to-peer network of Bitcoiners who are
bringing Bitcoin to other people, then we
can accelerate adoption. And so that's
what I've been very passionate about doing
is bringing that skill that I've had for a
long time as a coach to a mission that I
care about personally. And for me, it's
been tremendously rewarding, Anya, because
I've always loved coaching and I've always
loved seeing people growing their
missions. And now there's this X factor
that the mission that they're growing is
the one that I'm personally wanting to
grow at the same time. So we have this
added halo effect that we're all in the
same boat. And that's been something that
I didn't think I'd experienced in this
lifetime. It's been very, very rewarding.
Yeah, I can imagine. I can imagine it
would be. But tell me a little bit more
about the anti-fragility. I've seen you
tweet about that. I'm just curious to know
more about what it is that you mean by
making Bitcoin as anti-fragile. Well,
there are a couple of things that no
matter what mission you have will make a
big difference to its probability of
success. And one of the biggest ones is
actually your peer group. Bitcoin is a
peer-to-peer network. And who your peer
group is influences profoundly your
behaviors, your actions, your mindset,
your beliefs, and your habits on a day-to
-day basis. In fact, the research says
that it has more of an impact on your
behaviors than even the parenting you've
had as a child. That it's the single
biggest non-genetic influence there is on
behavior. Okay. So why don't we optimize
that and make sure we surround ourselves
with people who are mission-aligned, value
-aligned, who inspire us to be our best on
a regular basis. That seems like a good
idea. And then what's one of the things
that prevents us from really making the
traction we want on some mission we care
about, such as Bitcoin? Blind spots. Blind
spots. We don't see ourselves the way
other people see us, by definition. We
don't hear ourselves the way other people
hear us. And so having someone else who
can not only point out a blind spot, say,
hey, did you really mean to come across
that way? Are you aware that when you
introduced that idea that way of how that
person was responding and how that might
have landed, but can also give you the
corrective remedy, that's tremendously
valuable on that person as a coach? And so
if you combine those two things, you have
coaching plus you have a curated peer
group. Well, you're still not guaranteed
of success. Just like you can have the
best football team in the world doesn't
mean you're going to win on a given day.
But you certainly have skewed the odds
substantially in your favor. And if we do
that with enough Bitcoiners, then we can
make a difference. So anti-fragility. Let
me be very specific. If your emotions are
swung around by the movements of a price
chart, are you free? What would you say?
No. No. Because they're tethered, aren't
they? They're tethered to an outside
event. And so if you are happy, if you are
stable, if you have agency and sovereignty
of your own emotions, independent of the
movement of a price chart, or in fact, any
external event, you might say, well,
that's unrealistic. That's impossible.
Well, it's an aspirational goal, but it's
an aspirational goal well worth having.
And certainly, as humans, we can get to
the point where external events have much,
much, much less effect on us, on the way
we feel, and our internal self-regulation
has much more impact. That's absolutely
possible. It's not only possible. It's the
way that most kids live. So it's something
we've all experienced at some time. Then
you just have more sovereignty as a human
being. You're less fragile. You're less
likely to get disheartened if things don't
go your way or if the price needle moves
in the wrong direction. And this whole
emotional rollercoaster that you can go on
based on the performance of an asset,
wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have that
emotional rollercoaster? Because we don't
have to. And so a big part of the work
that I do is about helping people to
realize that self-sovereignty doesn't just
mean that you have custody of your own
Bitcoin. Self-sovereignty is when you have
sovereignty over your own mind, over your
own feelings, over your own emotions.
You're not swept away by someone's words
or criticisms. And it's something I had to
learn firsthand when countering a lot of
Bitcoin environmental FUD was what really
helped was not getting angry about it.
Because if I got angry, I would have
responded in a very different way. And I
didn't think that would have been helpful
to Bitcoin. In fact, it would have just
got me labeled as another emotional,
irrational, not evidence-based Bitcoin
evangelist. But the ability to come back
and respond with respect, with dignity,
from a centered place, without anger, and
not attack the person issuing the message,
but sometimes attack the logic that was
being used was tremendously important. And
if we can have more people who can do
that, I think we'd be more successful in
furthering adoption. Yeah. And it's not
because of any superpower inside me.
That's what I want to make very apparent.
It's because I had the good fortune to
learn some tools, meditation, breath work,
et cetera, that really helped with that.
And so a big part of the work that I do is
recommending people to say, hey, if you're
not meditating, if you're not doing things
that will give you sovereignty over your
own mind, or doing breath work, which
gives you sovereignty over your own
nervous system, yeah, you might still be
pretty good most days, but it's harder.
It's harder than if you're using tools
which are well known to give you more of
that sovereignty, more of that freedom,
more of that self-regulation back again.
And it makes you more useful, frankly, to
society, to your family, and to Bitcoin. I
love that. I love that. Thank you so much.
Do you have any final words that you'd
like to share with my audience? I would
just say, stay curious. Keep on learning
about Bitcoin as energy. Because remember
that to other people, they won't
necessarily be like you. They won't have
the same disposition to do their own
research. We are the outliers. Most people
aren't like us. And most people will see
the utility of something only if they see
the problem that it solves. So be curious
about Bitcoin as energy, because this is
something that a lot of people can
embrace. For a lot of people, Bitcoin
solving a monetary problem is a
philosophical idea. But Bitcoin solving an
energy problem, that's an engineering
challenge with a deadline. Love it. All
right. Thank you so much, Daniel. You're
very welcome. It's been a pleasure. Okey