Bitcoin Park's Imagine If W/ Rob Warren Ep. 238

Join Bob and special guest Rob Warren as he discusses Bitcoin Park's upcoming event "Imagine If"

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Thank you.

(00:30):
All right. Good morning, everybody. Give me a thumbs up if you can hear me.
Just want to make sure we have Tom.
I hear you, Bobber.
Awesome.
Loud and clear.
Licking chicken.
Five by five.

(00:50):
All right. Well, good morning, everybody. We are going to fix some audio issues at some point,
But we're back. Thank you for joining Bitcoin Veteran Spaces number 238, where we talk about Bitcoin.
My name is Bob Van Kirk. I'll be your host this morning. I'm joined by some others on the space.

(01:12):
In fact, we have a guest, which we'll get to here in a minute.
But first, let's look at the time chain stats for today.
It's Thursday, August 7th, 2025. And the time chain keeps on ticking.
We are at block height number 909,000, just crossing over that number overnight, 909,029.

(01:35):
And it looks like the Bitcoin price is climbing slightly, just over $116,600, which means you can still pick up 857 sats for each U.S. dollar.
And today we are going to get to talk to Rob Warren from Bitcoin Park.
We're going to talk about the Imagine If Summit going on in Nashville, Tennessee this September 19th and 20th.

(01:59):
One more announcement.
We also, Bitcoin Veterans has its second annual summit as well in Nashville, November 10th and 11th.
And day one will be the conference day.
Day two will be the range day.
So please, if you're interested, go to BitcoinVeterans.org forward slash summit 2025.
five, we're looking for speakers, panel topics, volunteers, people who just want to attend

(02:24):
and hang out with other great people who are stacking sats.
So it looks like we have a few people here on stage and a couple others requesting, so
that's good.
I think what we'll do is kick it off this morning right away with checking in with our
guest, Rob Warren from Bitcoin Park.

(02:45):
How are you doing this morning, sir?
Can we do a mic check?
Hey, how are you this morning? I'm doing great.
Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us. I'm glad your mic is working. Sounds great.
You're coming in loud and clear. And we got Neil up here.
We have BFP and the infamous Mining Goblin.
I haven't gotten a chance to thank you, Mining Goblin, but you filled in pretty well for me a couple of weeks ago.

(03:09):
Maybe you should take over the hosting duties full time.
No, but in all seriousness, thank you so much for filling in so I could have a week off.
All right, let's dive into it.
Rob, I wanted to, again, welcome you to the space.
Thanks for coming on.
Excited to hear about Bitcoin Park today.
And maybe just to tee it up for you, because maybe some of the listeners don't know about you and about Bitcoin Park.

(03:36):
Can you share a little bit about your story, your Bitcoin journey, or how you came into Bitcoin?
and then Bitcoin Park and what makes it such a unique hub for Bitcoiners in Nashville and Austin.
Of course, of course. Yeah. And thank you. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here this morning.
Yeah, as you introduced, my name is Robert Warren and currently I head up research and education at Bitcoin Park.

(04:03):
But I initially got into Bitcoin in the same way that a lot of people did in 2017,
which was that I saw a number go up and I thought, maybe I'll buy this and I'll get rich and I'll go
retire on a yacht someday. And of course, that might be what gets you into Bitcoin,
but it's inevitably not what keeps you into Bitcoin. You sort of come for the gains,

(04:25):
but stay for the freedom. And over the course of a couple of years, I found myself finally in 2020
working full-time in the space and working full-time predominantly in mining. So doing a lot
of work in research write-ups, trying to help people understand a lot of the early days of
things like home mining, running your own machines, running at different scales,

(04:47):
setting up some facilities, a facility up in Wyoming, and then eventually working with
a large mega miner running projects and ops analysis there. And then very, very joyously,
now I find myself working still with mining, but more broad field looking at the Bitcoin ecosystem
at Bitcoin Park. And that's kind of a good dovetailing to what's great about Bitcoin Park

(05:11):
is that Bitcoin Park is a membership-driven community where folks come to learn, build,
and collaborate. And so what that looks like is, in practice, we have a couple of campuses,
though digitally we're everywhere. Those campuses are based out of Austin and our home base,
our inaugural campus in Nashville. And we support a variety of summits throughout the course of the

(05:35):
year on a full array of topics as pertaining to Bitcoin, right?
So things like the Texas Energy and Mining Summit, the Nashville Energy and Mining Summit,
things that you've probably already heard of.
We also do things like Nosterville.
We also, you know, very graciously are hosting you guys for your upcoming summit, which we're
very excited to have over in Nashville.
And that kind of extends across the broad domain of the space.

(05:57):
So currently, I have the pleasure of working with Bitcoin Park and really helping support
the membership and really the broader community in understanding the depths of kind of what we're
doing in this very early space from the research and education perspective.
Yeah, that's awesome. Thanks for sharing that. I think that's helpful as we go along in the

(06:18):
conversation. One other question. It seems like what I would say is just, you know, being a casual
observer, Bitcoin Park kind of has like a grassroots roots ethos. Is that fair to say?
Like, it seems like you guys are hosting a lot of different things. And can you talk a little bit
about that? Absolutely. Well, everything, there's kind of this fundamental truth, right? Which is

(06:42):
that everything comes back to membership at Bitcoin Park, to the experience of the single
individual. But really foundationally, in just the broad community, the broad world,
everything in Bitcoin eventually comes back to the individual and comes back to the community.
And so it's one thing to, you know, dump a million dollars into a marketing campaign that gets you

(07:05):
eyeballs across, you know, the broad world or the broad U.S. It's a very different thing to focus on
the specific communities in the specific jurisdictions and locales across the U.S. or the world
and try your best to support the people that are really, really becoming the points of contact for
their neighborhoods. You might learn Bitcoin because you see a Michael Saylor video and you

(07:28):
might get excited because there's this CEO talking about his grand strategy and you glaze over when
you hear about the billions of dollars that he's making. But Michael Saylor is not really the guy
who's going to be sitting there at a BitDevs with you answering questions that you have about Bitcoin.
It's going to be the person at your local BitDevs. It's going to be a local community member.
And so that's something I think we should never forget, which is that that's really the foundation

(07:51):
of this whole Bitcoin thing, not just the technological layer, but this distributed
social network that's so important to support.
Yeah, that's awesome, man. And I think about that too, like how
we are on X and a lot of times we're just kind of
speaking in these echo chambers, but it does

(08:11):
seem like maybe what you guys are doing is more that community
driven focus. So exciting to see that. And yeah, thanks
for being a part of that. That's amazing. I did want to, you know, we have you on mainly to talk
about this Imagine If Summit. And I think it's being called the culmination of Bitcoin Park's

(08:33):
three-year journey. So what's the big vision for the event? Can you introduce us? Tell us how it
works, what you guys are looking to accomplish, all those things. Oh, absolutely. Well, this is
our Summit of Summits coming up kind of mid-late September. You're looking from the really the 17th
of the 20th, we're going to be first having our custody and treasury summit, which is going to be

(08:53):
on Bitcoin Park's campus. And then we have Imagine If, which is our sort of capstone you can think
of, which is the summit of summits, which is really the culmination of all the various things
that we're talking about over the course of the year. And we think about it in the lens of working
in AI, working in energy, working in Bitcoin, and working in freedom tech more broadly. You know,

(09:14):
So we're at this point where we really feel like there's a critical mass in the Bitcoin space.
If you've been here since sort of the pre-2020 days and you were trying to find resources and you were trying to find professionals and you were trying to find people who took this Bitcoin thing seriously and were really dedicated and invested to the future of freedom technology and what Bitcoin could offer,

(09:39):
it was really, really hard to find people without looking like just an alien in whatever landscape you were in, right?
You know, modern days, it still is the case that we are in the minority,
but we have gotten to this point where we are too technical, too professional, too serious to not be taken seriously.
And so what Imagine If is, is it's the culmination of all these freedom technologies,

(10:02):
And it is our summit of summits where attendees are able to come and not just have exposure to the highest levels of Bitcoin excellence, but to begin to introduce that to the broader world.
And so you bring in our main partnership is with ARK Invest.
So we're very, very happy to have Kathy Wood in attendance and contributing.

(10:23):
She's been a huge supporter of our work and has obviously been a huge supporter and advocate for Bitcoin.
And she's coming in and this is kind of the introduction to the broader investing, economics, AI and freedom technology community, where instead of, like you say, kind of talking always in that echo chamber, which is easy to do if you're if you're on X or you're on Primal or you're on kind of the Twitter corner of LinkedIn.

(10:48):
This is really an opportunity for us to take the best of the best in the freedom technology space and begin to introduce it to the broader world.
Yeah, that's awesome. Can you talk, are you familiar with the venue?
I saw that it's at the Fisher Center for Performing Arts.
It looks like a really cool venue for people to gather.

(11:08):
Can you talk about that a little bit?
Yeah, so this is Belmont University's Fisher Center.
Classical opera style, but a new building.
I have not had the pleasure of getting a walkthrough yet.
I'm very, very excited to go there.
But it's if you search Fisher Center, you'll see pictures of these like beautiful columns, beautiful kind of European opera house styled style location.

(11:36):
Yeah, that's awesome. We'll just take a break here real quick to remind the audience.
If you guys would like to come up and ask questions of Rob about the event or Bitcoin Park or anything Bitcoin, please do hit that microphone button in the bottom left.
Otherwise, if you're too shy to speak, use that purple pill in the bottom right.
You can type your questions, comments, drop a meme in the comments box there.

(11:59):
And then, guys, lastly, please do share the space.
We have a lot of people missing this morning.
I think they're all watching Bitcoin climb and refreshing their phones too much.
So let's get some more people in here.
I think they might actually be watching the sick new media dropped by Rick Thomas II, also known as Montani.

(12:19):
advertising the Bitcoin Veterans Summit.
That's probably where most people are tied up
if I had to take a guess.
You're probably right.
And also, I don't need to hog the space
and all the questions.
So my name Goblin, Neil, BFB,
feel free to jump in too.
Maybe raise your hand so I can call on you
if you do have some questions or comments

(12:40):
about what we're talking about this morning.
But I did want to ask another question, Rob.
Can you tell us,
without maybe giving too much away
if you're not ready to do so.
You guys kind of teased an impressive bench of speakers.
Kathy Wood sounds to be one of them with her support.
But is there anyone else that you would care to announce
or give you that opportunity now if you're able to?

(13:05):
Yeah, well, first off, thank you, because I always get nervous
when it's like there's stuff that you can't quite announce yet,
but you're excited to.
We do have a really, really deep bench.
If you check out our website, BitcoinPark.com slash ImagineIf, which is all under, it's all lowercase, you'll be able to see some of the folks that have been confirmed already.

(13:26):
So we have confirmed Kathy Wood.
Dr. Adam Back is going to be there.
Very excited to get him talking about some things that you wouldn't necessarily otherwise hear him talking about.
We're going to be joined by Matt O'Dell.
He's coming out to talk to us a little bit more about the Freedom Tech side of things.
And then in addition to that, there's also going to be Dr. Art Laffer, who is very notable for, if you're not kind of in the world of economics, something called the Laffer curve, which is a really interesting model of taxations and receipts by governments.

(14:01):
So very, very privileged to have at least those four people.
If you check out the website, you can see the rest of the bench.
Yeah, that's really cool.
I also wanted to, at some point during this conversation, I thought it would be cool.
You know, you have a background in philosophy and psychological research.

(14:22):
And our friend Neil here up on the stage also has, I would say, a philosophy background and has written a book.
And, you know, maybe we can reach into some of those deeper topics about Bitcoin and yourself.
But can you just tell us a little bit about your background a little bit more on that with psychological research and philosophy and all of that stuff?

(14:47):
Oh, funny. I appreciate the question.
And there is like a great little subset of us who, while not full-time professional philosophers like the Andrew Bailey's, the Bradley Rettler's, the Craig Warmke's or the Troy Cross's,
I think there's an over-representation of folks who have like, you know, studied philosophy at some point in their background or who have undergraduate degrees or things like that.

(15:09):
Well, yeah, my background initially, just educationally, came through studying philosophy, psychology, and out of undergraduate, then working in a program called Teach for America, which was sort of under the affiliated with like the AmeriCorps brand, if you're familiar with that.
But the idea is they take kids from universities, toss you in a school somewhere in America, and basically you serve a two-year term.

(15:36):
So over the course of that, then went on to get a master's in education as well.
And then from there, I didn't, like all good philosophy majors, had no idea what the hell I was going to do with the rest of my life.
And very quickly got involved in the startup space in New Orleans where I was living at the time and really loved that You know I became a lover and strong advocate of a free system of American capitalism as

(16:03):
a way to raise folks out of poverty and support them through their work and learning, which
was in contrast to some extent to a lot of the sort of nonprofit industrial complex that
I was exposed to in my early days in New Orleans.
and it was really with that work, that sort of combination of the educational side of things,

(16:23):
that combination of the entrepreneurial, the business side of things,
that I started to kind of get curious about Bitcoin.
But like I said, I had no idea.
I was running a company at the time.
I thought, oh, this is cool.
I'm making an asymmetric bet with my personal time and my work with this company.

(16:44):
but maybe I can do that with my capital as well.
And that was kind of what I did.
I kind of bought and I was smart enough to figure out how to self-custody very early on
and not mess around with any sort of altcoins or shitcoins.
And was very fortunate to have had Andreas Antonopoulos in my ear,
making sure I wasn't going to do anything dumb.

(17:06):
And from there, it was really in 2019, 2020,
and the ensuing response by the government to a lot of what was happening with COVID,
that the click, the switch was finally clicked on for me,
where I started to understand Bitcoin not simply as an asset,
as a thing that you kind of bought and held as if I had a bunch of stock certificates tucked away in my safe,

(17:32):
but I really understood it as an anti-fragile network.
And that was really, you know, the early days of COVID, the trucker protest up in Canada, where it clicked and it clicked really hard.
And I said, OK, well, 2020 Bitcoin mining, it's the it's what sort of keeps the machine operational and allows us to be this anti-fragile responsive system.

(17:54):
This is what I'm going to work in. And that was really the impetus and how I found myself kind of deep diving in into that aspect of the space.
yeah that's awesome and no doubt bitcoin has a cultural and societal impact right but
beyond like that like what like what things have has bitcoin helped you discover like as you think

(18:16):
about it from like a philosophy or i guess what things have you noticed uh changes people groups
of people individuals whatever it would be like have you have you noticed any of that stuff we've
kind of been kicking that stuff around on the show the last couple of weeks oh that's interesting
I wonder if there are like particular topics or recurring themes that you hear.

(18:36):
Yeah, I think it's interesting because there's always this moment when you're learning something new.
And it's sort of like you're sitting on this intellectual fence, right?
And the first time that you kind of pick up and discover Bitcoin, you're kind of climbing up and peering over this intellectual fence

(18:56):
where the place that you were, call it the kind of standard status quo fiat world,
you're in this moment where you kind of still speak the language of that,
but you're now sitting on the fence between that and, you know,
this kind of Bitcoin space you've yet to discover.
And there's this really brief moment when you can kind of say like,
oh, dang, this is actually a really clear kind of way.

(19:23):
And then something happens, at least in my mind,
this is my perception of what I see happening, which is that once you kind of commit and you
fully get over the fence and you go, no, I'm going to play in this yard now and I'm going to exist in
the Bitcoin world, you very quickly stop thinking about the things that are no longer relevant to
you. And a lot of that is explicit, right? A lot of that is explicit in the case of like,

(19:46):
you know, nobody can stop me from receiving funds or paying funds. That's amazing when you're still
sitting on the fence, but the second you're over the fence, it kind of becomes a new status quo.
So it's hard to kind of say there's one thing, so to speak, because so much of it is just kind
of baked into the way that you live your daily life. And there's only really that small moment

(20:10):
when you're kind of sitting on that intellectual fence that it's obvious what's different. But
in all, I would say your financial sovereignty, but baked into that, that financial sovereignty
is so much more. It's not just a freedom to transact. It's not just a freedom to custody,
to not be censored. It's also the freedom in terms of how you spend your time. If you can put up with

(20:35):
the volatility and you've been in through enough cycles that you feel like you have enough of a
base, a personal financial base, it also really radically changes the way that you relate to the
things that you do when you wake up in the morning. If you wake up and you can't be robbed,
anyone could pay you for working an honest day. Nobody can take by hook or by crook anything that

(21:00):
you've acquired. You start to change your mindset in terms of, oh, well, do I want to sell myself
to the highest bidder, not just for a certain kind of capital, but for a certain kind of
lifestyle? Or do I want to really think more about the things that give me joy or
give me agency because I know there are certain things that can't be taken from me because I'm

(21:20):
playing a bit of a different game now. I don't know if that answers or introduces a bit of what
you have been considering, but I'd be curious to hear what other people have said. Yeah. And guys,
feel free to jump in. Maybe Neil has some comments. I don't want to put anybody on the spot,
but you did mention, you know, well, let me say this first. I know you are a contributor to

(21:41):
Bitcoin magazine. And so, you know, some of the things that you've written about,
I think you've explored, you know, things from like mining, HVAC innovation type stuff,
which we can get into a little bit. But you did key in on one point from the philosophical side
of things about Bitcoin being freedom technology and being able to, like one of the things we've

(22:07):
been talking quite a bit about is some of the attributes of Bitcoin that make it, especially
on yesterday's episode, reliable.
And self-custody and privacy are two of the cornerstones of that.
And so there are also hot topics in the Bitcoin space right now with what went on with Samurai

(22:30):
Wallet and Tornado Cash.
And so just wondering, you know, with the summit or maybe your personal thoughts on self-custody and privacy, like what things are you keying in on or what might we see out of the summit that can help spur people to move from holding their coins in exchanges or other places to self-custody and focusing in on maybe some privacy tools?

(22:58):
I think that's such a good question.
And, you know, the power of the summits at Bitcoin Park is that and somebody somebody at one of the mining and energy summits expressed it to me really powerfully when we were kind of reconnecting afterwards and hearing how things went was that they said, you know, I always love to come to these summits because I I feel like I know what is going to happen next year.

(23:22):
the kinds of conversations that are happening in the room are between folks that are building
and creating the kinds of things that are going to build the future that all of us are going to
live within. And when you think about that in the context of Imagine If, what I'm personally
most excited about is that because we're operating at this kind of capstone level,

(23:43):
it's this convergence of freedom technology, AI, Bitcoin, energy. Simply getting the right people
in the room is a huge level up in the quality of conversation that you get. So in terms of like a
predicted outcome, I couldn't even begin to predict what will happen as a result of simply

(24:04):
getting the right people in the room. But I have absolute confidence that, you know, getting the
right people in the room is the starting point for having those conversations. I think from a
personal sense, one thing that I think everyone should be hyper aware of is that, you know, we
talk about growing Bitcoin adoption. And if you assume that Bitcoin adoption grows on a kind of

(24:29):
exponential curve, or it grows by X percent a day or X percent a week, over a certain amount of time,
the people who have been in the space for three cycles is infinitesimally small,
infinitesimally small compared to the people who have just gotten in yesterday.

(24:50):
The people who got in in 2017, that little cohort is infinitesimally small
compared to the people who got in in 24, 25.
And what's the point of this illustration?
The point of the illustration is that remembering whenever you got in and thinking how long it took you to really understand what the heck was happening in the space, you have to now look at the world of Bitcoin adoption and say a substantially larger group of people are going to come in and they're going to have their own extended period of time to learn about Bitcoin.

(25:26):
And so what that means is that we can't always jump to the state-of-the-art or the most advanced, the most high-tech way of approaching things.
We have to kind of meet people where they are.
And it's a bit of an uncomfortable truth.
You could say, well, I really want people to do this extremely self-sovereign stack.
And it's hard to recognize that, well, a giant cohort of people just got into Bitcoin, and it's going to take them a little bit of time.

(25:53):
And what's more, because that cohort is going to be different than the people who got into Bitcoin 10 years ago, we need to continuously build newer and better tools to educate these people on the foundational principles of Bitcoin, on the importance of self-custody, on the importance of actually buying in certain ways or using in certain ways.
yeah it's really good and uh mine and goblin i see your hand went down but uh wanted to give you

(26:21):
a chance i'm i'm sorry for taking up the uh all of the questions you're good i was just going to
riff a little bit because the um one of the my favorite memes that i i found within the bitcoin
space was uh a meme on an artist uh he goes by madex uh and it's it's death of the time thieves
And the beautiful thing, you know, it's like I don't wish anybody violent death, but the time thieves, the people that the counterfeit class that are able to just print money at will, they are sucking the time from you.

(26:50):
Right. And they they're feeding themselves that way. And so really, it's a slow death by starvation to these time thieves that are doing that.
And once you understand that and realize that, you know, totally agree with the waking up in the morning and determining what you do radically changes when you are moving more towards a Bitcoin standard.
And that has second and third order effects, not just for your family, but for your local community.

(27:15):
If you find yourself, if you're class of 22 like myself and you find yourself now having some more liberated time because you're less worried about paying for finishing your house next year or paying for tuition for your kids in the coming years, I'm now able to engage civically, locally in my community with my church.
I'll be going to the local board of supervisors meeting next week to shill bit bonds.

(27:38):
And so like the free capital, you can, or the free time really, right, is the capital because time is money and money is time, allows you to become an advocate and allows you to educate other people in your circles because the good vibes will attract people.
The people that are struggling, are hurting, when they come to eat your delicious brisket that you cooked, that you bought with SATs, that gets cheaper every time you buy it, they're going to wonder.

(28:07):
And you start out as the crazy Bitcoin guy, and eventually people start to ask questions because you're having a better time in life than they are because your time is freed up to do what you want and pursue the passions and use the gifts that God gave you to make the world a better place.
I love that.
And don't want to stymie the conversation.

(28:27):
So let's let Neil go.
And then, you know, if 23 Skidoo can go, but let's keep Rob in the conversation as well.
But that was awesome, Lightning Goblin.
Neil, go ahead, sir.
Hey, yeah.
Yeah, so when Rob was talking about meeting people where they are, I mean, that's just
that's just music to my ears.
You know, like that that tangent where Bitcoin world meets Normieville, like that's the front

(28:53):
line of the battlefield and like how do we seize more territory you know like it's developing
strategies you know and these standard operating procedures that to help take that you know any
that any person you know some like in the army you know it's like you're training you just want
okay take any 18 year old kid you know and then it's like how do you get them to a level of

(29:17):
proficiency where they fit in and like understand what's going on operationally and are proficient
And it's just like you're developing those strategies and those standard operating procedures to take them through that process.
And it's like that's kind of where I really like people that are thinking that way.
Like how do we actually onboard?
You know, because it's like you're talking about different tools.

(29:38):
It's like that's exactly the case. Like I have my idea is kind of like basically anybody that was capable of getting Bitcoin through this like macroeconomic, you know, onslaught, they probably already got it.
So like if you're looking at the total population of the world and you're like, what slice of the pie is this going to be effective for? It's like it's probably pretty small.

(30:03):
So it's like, you know, you're you're you're trying to think outside the box.
How do we reach these people?
Because it's like they'll pick it up like it's it's just true.
So you're just asking them to open their eyes to recognize what's actually happening to them in their real life, in reality, and then just like act upon it.

(30:24):
So it was like, I'm really excited to, you know, I'm still kind of new to Bitcoin world.
And just it makes me really happy that there's already people and organizations like Bitcoin Park already kind of thinking, like, how are we going to reach these people?
So I'm just it was really great to listen to you.
Yeah, and I did throw an invite out to the Bitcoin Park handle if you want to come up just for more exposure.

(30:51):
I'm not going to call on you.
You don't have to talk, but it might be good to come up on stage.
23skidoo, did you have some thoughts or a question for Rob?
Yeah, just a couple thoughts.
Just the thing that I've been banging on lately as I've moved pretty damn close into living on a Bitcoin standard,
meaning that I've just moved everything in and then trying to use what tools I can,

(31:17):
such as prepaid Visa cards and that kind of stuff.
But I think it was maybe Bob who was talking earlier that got me inspired because, you know, when he was talking about, someone was talking about, you know, think back to when you got into Bitcoin and kind of meeting people where they are.

(31:38):
And yeah, that was just kind of the only sentiment I wanted to experience.
You know all the way back when I got into it late 13 14 15 that whole spell it seemed like there was much more hope if you will that vendors and people were going to use it peer to peer

(32:01):
There actually were more vendors. I remember looking on sites, localbitcoins.com.
and so my concern now is I guess my meandering point is my concern now is that as new people get
into it I'm kind of bummed that that spirit of Bitcoin is is is to a large extent not talked

(32:27):
about that much anymore it's more just it's more just holding Bitcoin and number go up and then of
course with this show and I'm not dissing anything this show there's a lot of stuff about sovereign
and freedom and all that still exists for sure in the hardcore Bitcoiners.
But it feels like the peer-to-peer network of an exchange money other than on Noster is

(32:48):
getting lost and hard to revive.
And just wondering what Neil thinks about that.
Yeah, Neil or Rob, feel free to jump in on that.
You guys have any thoughts?
I've definitely thought the same things that you've thought 23ski do.

(33:14):
Because especially over the last couple of years,
myself being kind of class of 2017,
I was asking this question of who's going to start to rage quit
when they see people using Bitcoin in the wrong way?
Because inevitably, regardless of whatever reason you get into Bitcoin,
hopefully it's for principles that are articulated in the white paper but it might not be

(33:40):
you're always kind of hoping that people play with your favorite toy in the same way that you do
you know if you if you you love your puppy you want them to love the same things about it
and one function of being this distributed peer-to-peer network is that by default
But unfortunately, I don't think we can ever rely on that. And I don't think it was readily apparent through the sort of earliest cypherpunks up to maybe kind of 2017, which is when you started to see kind of an influx of folks who were maybe, you know, a critical mass of degenerate gamblers or people on, you know, Bitcoin markets or trading stuff on Reddit forums and whatnot.

(34:23):
there was still a lot of cohesion.
You could still kind of fit everybody
onto like a single 747
or I guess for the Bitcoin veterans
it'd be a single C-130.
You could still kind of get everybody
in a single location, right?
Yeah.
And you still kind of understood like,
oh, well, like I'm kind of a weirdo

(34:44):
in this Austrian economics way
and that guy's kind of a weirdo
in like a cypherpunk kind of way
and, you know, we get each other on those grounds.
And now we're at this point
where it may simply be the case where Bitcoinization or hyper-Bitcoinization
becomes the use of these quote-unquote default tools.

(35:05):
I mean, if you think about the way that the broader mass of the billions of people
in the world go about their days, you might kind of parse them ideologically
across where they geographically live.
You might parse them by their sex, male versus female.
You might parse them across their edge, their particular interest set, like their particular personality.

(35:29):
There's a whole lot of ways to kind of get into people's heads and try to figure out, you know, what motivates or compels this person.
And it's not always necessarily going to be these ideas of, you know, freedom and independence and personal sovereignty.
And I don't know if that's ever been the case that the vast majority of humanity has been really dedicated to a kind of like libertarian Austrian economic ideal.

(35:52):
You know, I don't know enough. It probably has. I don't know enough about kind of broader history to be able to know.
But at least in my lifetime, I don't know that I've really seen that in a broader sense.
So where my head is at is where where does freedom come by default?
in the same way that we currently live in a world that is surveillance by default.

(36:15):
You know, I recently went to go rent a carpet cleaner because I have a 12-year-old dog who
woke up in the middle of the night and had an accident on a carpet in my dining room.
So I've gotten very, very good at using the carpet cleaner.
I went to go rent this carpet cleaner from Home Depot, and I see a pamphlet saying that

(36:36):
Clear, which is this airport company, as far as I had been aware, this kind of identity verification company, was now being used by Home Depot.
And it struck me that, oh, dang, you know, under the existing kind of monetary regime, the organization of the world, this idea of surveillance by default, it actually makes perfect sense to have the same people who pull you to the side and search you at an airport.

(37:03):
or these clear people deciding, you know, are you allowed to rent a carpet cleaner and not steal it?
So I think what's the converse of that or what's the freedom money version of that?
What kind of tool emerges where it becomes freedom by default?
Like that is what I think most of the impact is going to happen through

(37:24):
because I don't necessarily think it's going to happen through everyone becoming a cypherpunk.
Yeah, I understand your point.
You know, here's the really ironic twist of Bitcoin.
And I'd be careful because I may get jumped on by Bitcoiners.
But your point about that people may not necessarily want to use it the same way I want to and the freedom qualities.

(37:46):
Well, the weird thing is, is that cash, U.S. dollars, forgetting how they're produced, where they come from and the whole monetary system that they're a part of.
But their daily use of cash is actually way more free than Bitcoin in and of itself in a vacuum.

(38:06):
And regular everyday people for every day all the time, no matter what their political standing were, almost all of them were on board with, I'll just pay you cash at this garage sale.
I'll pay you cash for babysitting my kid.
I'll pay you cash for this small item.
And that way, neither of us has to deal with taxes and stuff like that.

(38:27):
And so Bitcoin ironically takes actually more effort than the old paradigm in that one lens anyway to operate in the same way.
And that's what I'm saying is to some extent starting to get lost.
And as you said, the default of control and surveillance is actually moving in quicker as I can as I perceive it because of the power of nation states and the power of corporations and the interest of them to move in on the Bitcoin on and off ramps and the use of it.

(39:00):
KYC and whatnot than the small-time developers who are creating these things to make it more like
cash, more peer-to-peer, more freedom-oriented. It's no critique of anybody I understand. I mean,
we got the Tornado Cash and the Samurai Wallet facing prison time for creating such tools, but

(39:21):
anyway. Yeah, I won't jump on you because I do think that's actually,
that's a good point but to make it a fair point i would say it would be important to add the caveat
that after a hundred a couple hundred some odd years of a fiat regime evolving the most useful
version of that fiat regime which is the use of you know peer-to-peer cash and of course we're

(39:46):
assuming that nobody is debasing your currency in the background which is you know fundamentally
the problem that Bitcoin is solving for. I would say that, yeah, that definitely has utility,
that has use case, that has functionality in excess to the current state of Bitcoin,
which is less than 20 years old. I think to be fair, you should say, okay, could we compare

(40:09):
the first 20 years of cash usage against the first 20 years of Bitcoin? I think that would
be a very different story. So to be totally fair, I think your point is totally legitimate.
I would just be super conscious of the timeframe that we're looking at,
given the age of the particular technology that we're using, because, you know,
10 years from now,

(40:30):
I would hope that we are all paying with some kind of obfuscated non-custodial
and totally censorship resistant version of maybe a layer two,
whether it's an arc or a lightning or some other kind of, you know, cashew,
some federated mint or something like this.
Yeah, absolutely agree.

(40:51):
Absolutely agree. So, yeah, I'm not trying to I'm being a bit of a devil's advocate, but I'm also being true to my heart to what I'm feeling.
And if I was if I had the skills of a programmer, that's where I'd be is creating ways for this to be easier, obfuscated peer to peer payment systems at the risk of going to prison.

(41:11):
sadly. Yeah, I think, you know, we can dive into that probably on another space because I do think
it's super important to understand what did just occur yesterday with Tornado Cash and also the
fallout from Samurai Wallet and their plea being changed to guilty. We'll have to see the, I think

(41:35):
one important thing, and I know this is a little off topic for today, but we'll have to see what the
outcome is of their appeals. Because I do think not in the Samurai case, but in the Tornado Cash
case, it sounds like there will be an appeal. And so I'm hopeful for that. Neil, I did see your hand

(41:55):
wanted to continue the discussion after that brief timeout. You have your hand up, sir. Go ahead.
Yeah. The thing that I kind of might take on kind of that freedom stuff is, I mean, it's like,
there's lots of things that are very important, but we have to just remember, like, the order in
which they're addressed, you know, first things are first. And when we're talking about layers of

(42:17):
this protocol stack, like, we have to develop it, you know, in that order. And so I don't really
get to where I, I completely acknowledge and understand the valid, you know, concerns for,
you know i mean just countless you know privacy or uh you know just the usefulness or how much we

(42:39):
can you know we can buy in our peer-to-peer how easy it is to just you know send somebody you know
200 sats you know just like at a garage sale like those are completely important and valid but it's
just kind of like i i think solidifying that we're we're still like just getting the base layer just

(42:59):
rock solid and people adopted on that level. And like all the stuff that the developers are doing
with the layer twos and threes. I mean, it's like it's only going to get better. I mean, I would
I would think that that the Bitcoin community, you know, in 10, 20 years or whatever has developed

(43:20):
these layers where they're even more efficient, even more easy. You know, maybe we have something
And then we have a little chip in our brain and we just zap, you know, sats to each other that way.
Like, I don't know. Who knows, like, what how they could take this.
But, you know, like the freedom as that principle is just like, yeah, anybody can do whatever they want with freedom money and you have to be OK with that.

(43:43):
The thing that comforts me is just that the incentives are arranged as such that anybody that tries to cheat the system gets punished, like economically.
Like that's that's what kind of gives that's like my whoopee, my little my warm, fuzzy idea that I hold on to when I'm like, well, it's just free.
Anybody can do anything. It's like, yes, but there's certain behaviors come with, you know, the way the incentives are.

(44:10):
Certain behaviors are punished and come with a cost.
So like that's that's what makes me feel like this is actually going to keep heading in the right direction, even if it's the volatility.
Sure, maybe we take a left turn, right turn, whatever, but we'll still stay mainly on course, moving towards a better world.

(44:33):
Yeah, you gave me an idea.
Getting on a domain register and getting brainzaps.com, that was really good.
Rob, did you have thoughts on Neil's comments or 23Skidoo?
Feel free to jump in.
No, I think it was wonderfully illustrated.
Great. So let's switch topics a little bit. We can jump back to anything you guys want to talk about. Really take it anywhere you want. My job is just to keep it interesting and the conversation flowing. So tell me a little bit. We'll get personal a little bit before we end. Rob, feel free to share or shut this down. But your handle on X is bikes and Bitcoin. So you're clearly passionate about Bitcoin. We've heard a lot of that stuff.

(45:18):
but I want to just reach into some personal stuff.
Tell us about cycling, your passion for that.
How do the two worlds intersect for you, and maybe how does it relate to Bitcoin Park?
Well, first off, thank you for bringing that.
I'm happy to answer that.
The second off is I have a terrible, terrible admission to make,
which is that at least I'm based in the Colorado Front Range,

(45:41):
so we get these beautiful summers that you can get up in the mountains
and do all kinds of riding and biking and hiking and whatnot.
But my terrible admission is that I have not actually gotten out for good, proper training bike rides this season.
All of my biking has been with my toddler attached to the little toe behind, dragging her to and from daycare,

(46:02):
taking her into town so that I could take her to, you know, little ice cream dates with dad.
But yeah, that was a handle.
If you look at my Twitter, you see I joined like 2020, I think.
Like it was, I wish I had discovered Twitter honestly years before because it would have been a lot more engaging just mentally in the years leading up and probably would have been a lot more educated had I done so a little bit earlier.

(46:29):
But at the time it wasn't just bicycling, it was bicycling as well as motorcycle.
So out in Colorado you get these just like gorgeous opportunities to do tons of road cycling.
You can climb the canyons out here.
You can go, you know, there's loads of trails all around these communities.
From my house, I can either, you know, make it into the city of Denver, totally buy trails.

(46:52):
I can make it into the foothills.
I can go climb into the mountains.
I can climb, I can go north if I want to go to Fort Collins.
If I go south, you know, there's all these like really beautiful infrastructure opportunities.
And, you know, there's something interesting, which is like the broader point,
kind of cycling tied into, which is this idea of like training
or this idea of like proof of work.

(47:15):
And there's one thing that I really love about physical exercise, right,
which is that it's just so incredibly fair.
Like a track meet is just so insanely fair
because there's only two things that you're really competing against,
you know, notwithstanding the people that you're lined up against.

(47:35):
You're competing against a distance and you're competing against a time.
And that I think once you start to when you start to appreciate that in a way that not like emotional you don turn training into some like grand epic or something that weighs heavy on you
And you can really strip it down to, you know, these are the things, these are the standards.

(47:57):
The standard is the distance.
The standard is the time.
And everything that I personally do there in the middle is me.
That's me.
That's what I get to take ownership of.
I think that's a really empowering mindset or philosophy to have.
And it's actually something that makes us as humans a lot more powerful than a Bitcoin miner.

(48:21):
If you're trying to compare proof of work or work, human work, compared to mining work,
the biggest difference between those two things is that mining work is stateless.
So it's instantaneous is another way to say that.
If I am hashing, I am contributing to the network in some sense, right?

(48:43):
I'm trying to solve the next block.
If I am not hashing, I do not exist.
And that's really powerful because it makes the system as a whole, the total aggregate of the millions and millions of miners,
anti-fragile and very responsive to the world.
But a minor, a single minor is totally different compared to a human.

(49:04):
You know, a human, the work that you put in is additive.
And I think this is, this is we talk about, you know, Bitcoin is a system is hope.
You can't compare it directly to kind of proof of work in the mining sense, because the work that you put in as an individual, it accrues, it's additive, it's educational.
You know, you you learn something by doing the work.

(49:26):
You don't necessarily know the total outcome or when you're going to kind of strike that final moment of discovery.
So similar to Bitcoin, you don't necessarily know kind of the moment that you're going to have your great insight or unlock something.
But totally dissimilar to Bitcoin is that you are not a stateless machine.
You know, you are the aggregate of all of the work and all of the effort and all of the time that you have put into learning and working.

(49:52):
And that's what I really like about, you know, obviously, you know, cycling specifically.
But the whole broad spectrum, whether it's cycling or it's running or it's lifting, that's one thing that I think we should, as much as we're always trying to humanize Bitcoin, that's something that we should always claim as something that's distinctly human, something that we should lock into ourselves.

(50:16):
Yeah, I really like how you put that all together.
It made me think about things a little bit differently, certainly, and hopefully it did for the audience, too.
That's really good.
And yeah, thanks for sharing on the bikes, the bike side of your handle.
One other thing I wanted to make sure and feel free.
Oh, BFP.
I see your hand.
Go ahead.
You can take it anywhere you want.

(50:38):
I had two things.
One was the referencing we're not using Bitcoin like cash.
And that's because of Gresham's law.
And that's just a quick point.
It's good money drives out bad money.
But the question I had for Rob was I see in his bio he wrote The Mining Almanac,

(51:00):
and I was wondering if he had any other good books, because I'm sure his book is great,
on mining that he might recommend that got him to where he is.
Or I guess I can speak directly to you.
I don't know why I'm speaking in the third person.
But, yeah, do you have any recommendations for a good mining book for the lay person like myself?
All I have is this real basic one that I got.

(51:27):
It's the Bitcoin Mining Handbook by Brains.
And it was all right, but it's kind of small and not real robust.
Sure.
Yeah, well, that's a great series.
I was going to recommend.
Brains has a whole series of books that if you catch them at a conference,
they hand them out abundantly.

(51:49):
So I would always recommend grabbing the brains books that they have.
I'll tell you.
They're specifically the reason why I wrote the book was because, you know, I I am not an engineer.
I'm not a developer. I'm not a shadowy super coder.
I really came into mining by just beating my head against the wall and trying to learn what I could and make sense of it in the context that I understood it.

(52:17):
And so I wrote the book with that in mind, which is that this thing on the surface just looked insanely complicated.
And I don't know that the most valuable contribution that I could make would be to give somebody something super complicated to understand.
So I entered with this mindset of, you know, my goal with the book is to make mining as apprehensible to the lay person.

(52:44):
And if you DM me, if you're in the U.S., I'm happy to shoot you a copy.
Really, the goal was to say, okay, I don't want you to have to look at code.
I want you to start from kind of a first principles basis.
And in mining, the first principles basis is really the machine.
And so if you build up from the machine, because it's easy to think, you know, a machine, I hold it in my hand.

(53:08):
I have like a mental picture of what this thing is.
then I can start to understand the elements of it conceptually.
So by starting with the machine, you can start to move into the landscape of,
okay, well, how do I run a machine?
Well, I need three things.
I need to have some kind of internet connection.
I have to talk to a node.
I have to talk to the network.

(53:28):
I have to have some kind of cooling.
So thermodynamically, I have to be connected to the world, obviously, in some way,
because the machine has to run.
It has to consume electricity and shed heat as it works.
And then I have to have some kind of connection to electricity.
I have to have some kind of grid connection or not grid connection, but I have to be by a source of energy.
And so I really wanted to explain Bitcoin mining from the perspective of a first principles layperson without starting you immediately into this is the hash price and this is how you model your break evens.

(54:00):
And this is the way that you would set up using a container, using these PDUs.
And you very quickly lose people in that kind of way.
So there's loads of kind of niche or more technical resources, brains being some of the best in the game, and I love their work.
But I really wrote the book with that in mind, which is that it's very hard to find more of a first principles layperson explanation of just what the heck is going on in Bitcoin mining.

(54:31):
Yeah, that's really good.
Can you talk a little bit about your work at Riot?
I know you've written about all kinds of things, but one of the things I saw that you key in on is Bitcoin mining's potential to reduce waste and integrate it into like home systems like water heaters, maybe pool heaters, other things.
So can you just kind of before we get down to the end here, can you talk about that a little bit?

(54:57):
Oh, sure. Happy to.
Yeah, so in terms of specific work in the mining industry, I was doing kind of very early days,
home mining write-ups, which were looking into ways to either run machines in your home
or ways to utilize the heat, and this was kind of 2020 to 2022.

(55:18):
And then a little bit thereafter, got into, started a company up in Wyoming with a couple of partners
that was a small facility, so up to a megawatt and a half, which is about 340, 300 some odd machines,
depending on what you're running.
And the goal there was to set up a self-mining and hosting facility with a focus on privacy and personal sovereignty.

(55:47):
So that was a really interesting challenge because we were working to make systems as open and accessible as possible.
and we were also generating a bunch of research looking into things like, you know, how do you,
we didn't have good data on underclocking at the time, so we did a study on underclocking.
We did a study on, you know, physical setup of machines.

(56:07):
How do you physically orient them in a mine?
We did a study on can you put sorts of ancillary mechanisms on machines to improve airflow at the machine level.
So that was kind of early days research stuff.
And then that tied into my work at Riot, which was now instead of on the order of hundreds of machines, on the order of hundreds of thousands of machines across various hundred megawatt buildings, going in and building the systems by which we could actually analyze the operations of those facilities and try to understand these problems from a way, way larger scale and a way more dynamic scale.

(56:43):
yeah awesome thank you for that and before we go to kind of the last question in the wrap-up
uh one thing i like to do from time to time when we have guests on uh at the end of the show is um
i know this completely doesn't flow with the topic but um what's your what do you think
bitcoin's price is going to be by the end of the year just uh we're not going to hold you to it but

(57:08):
we're just curious what are your thoughts i'm literally the worst person on earth to ask about
that. I am the guy who is definitely not going to trade Bitcoin, cannot, if I get a lump sum of cash,
I have to just buy it now and forget about it and just ignore it. Or I have to just dump the cash

(57:31):
and just daily DCA through a river account or something because I am so bad at making any sort
of prediction on that front. And it's hard to say because it does seem like we're in a pretty
different price regime compared to where we were even four or five years ago. So I don't know. I'm

(57:51):
becoming sympathetic to just kind of the slow, eternal grind up. And I think that might just
kind of be what we do for the next few years. They say gold went on a 10-year bull run after
the ETFs were approved. So why would it be dissimilar to think that Bitcoin would do something

(58:12):
so different? So I would definitely be bullish on the idea of up only. But remember, you're also
talking to like the eternal bull who has to just DCA and forget about it because he's too emotional.
I don't know, maybe scratching 200K, somewhere like high 100, low 200K.
Yeah, that's an awesome answer. Thanks for giving the thought process behind it to you.

(58:34):
Really like that. OK, so what's a call to action for our listeners as we wrap up the show?
Tell us how people can get involved with this summit.
Imagine if summit and what's like the best way to get in touch with you, the summit, Bitcoin Park, all that stuff.
Oh, sure. So we were super accessible on all the major channels, whether it's LinkedIn, whether it is X, whether it's primal.

(59:02):
you can always feel free to ping me
ping me directly on X
best things to do if you're curious about
Bitcoin Park just go to Bitcoin Park dot com
and you can learn a little bit about what we're up to
if you want to learn about the Imagine
If Summit all you do is
Bitcoin Park dot com slash
imagine if all lowercase all one
word we would love to

(59:22):
have you
come and join us for this inaugural event
because it's going to be pretty special
and yeah outside of
that the biggest thing is
you know, find find a local meetup, find a local community that you can get involved with.
And that will that will undoubtedly be the best point of entry for your own personal learning.
And then keep your eyes open to what we are doing kind of broader in the digital space.

(59:45):
We have we have two things that we do at Bitcoin Park in the digital world.
One is called stream.bitcoinpark.com.
And this is almost like a an ESPN crawl meets like a drudge report where we curate all of the
most valuable signal throughout the course of the day and aggregate it there in a single website.

(01:00:07):
That's stream.bitcoimpark.com. And then the second one, if you like to sign up for email lists,
is bitcoimpark.substack.com. And if you join that, we have a daily newsletter. We give you
four bytes every single day, two minutes of reading with the idea that you can stop the
doom scroll. You can just receive an email and then you can get back to the work that you have to do.

(01:00:31):
yeah i love that thanks so much for coming on today um would love to have you back again sometime
to dive deeper into some of these topics but really appreciate you sharing all of your wisdom
your experience and uh yeah i'm excited to see what bitcoin park can do there's uh so many i

(01:00:53):
think the ethos is great i think these all these events that you guys host are amazing the uh
grassroots type stuff is where this freedom money is really going to work. I think we see a lot of
financialization going on, a lot of people adopting it through ETFs and not treating it like the
freedom money that is described in the white paper. And so what you guys are doing is really

(01:01:18):
pushing forward freedom tech. And I think more people need to pay attention to it. So thanks
again, Rob, for coming on and sharing with us this morning. Yeah, thank you. The feeling is mutual.
And we absolutely cannot wait to have you guys out in Nashville at the park.
We're super excited for what we're going to be facilitating there.

(01:01:39):
Yeah, awesome.
And just a reminder to everybody, the Imagine If Summit is occurring in September.
Let's see, it's September 19th and 20th in Nashville, Tennessee.
If you're interested, please follow Rob up here.
Follow the Bitcoin Park handle, but you can also go to BitcoinPark.com.
To get more information, grab your tickets, volunteer.

(01:02:02):
Maybe, I don't know if you guys are still accepting speaker requests, but it's only about a month away.
So you guys can check that out right away.
Are you accepting other presentations?
Do you guys need more volunteers?
We are accepting volunteers, and we are accepting proposals for presentations.

(01:02:24):
The schedule is getting tight right now, but we can always fit in high quality stuff.
Awesome. Really appreciate it.
And again, love to have you back anytime.
Maybe we can have you back after the summit just to discuss how it went, maybe some of the highlights and things like that.
But always interested to hear what Bitcoin Park's doing.

(01:02:45):
And yeah, Rob, thanks so much for getting up early this morning and hanging out with us.
That's a wrap, though, guys.
Do want to thank everybody who joined us today, all of our speakers, everybody who had us on in the background.
And please make sure you follow everybody up here on stage.
And, yeah, that's all we have for today.
Again, want to wish you a wonderful Thursday.

(01:03:06):
We'll do it again tomorrow at 10 a.m. Eastern.
Please do join us.
And remember, not to shitcoin.
Thank you so much, guys.
Shitcoining is very bad for you if you didn't know.
People that use fiat currency as a store of value, we call them record.