PCR117 - Mining a Rebellion with Nico & HasH

This episode of Plebchain Radio features QW solo hosting and guests Nico from Rigly and HasH, discussing various aspects of Bitcoin mining, including solo mining, hashrate marketplaces, mining pools, mining centralization, Upendo Block Party, Bounty Pool and Alliance.

Rigly : https://rigly.io

Upendo : https://upendo.rigly.io/

Alliance Telegram : https://t.me/+K8JjHpTgqoFjZmIx

CryptoCloaks Alliance Bitaxe : https://www.cryptocloaks.com/product/bitaxe-gamma-601-1-2th-alliance/

Avi Burra's Book 24 : https://www.amazon.com/24-Avi-Burra/dp/B0CN9NRNNB/ref=sr11?crid=27RW9P8JQ4YMV&keywords=avi+burra+24&qid=1700327391&sprefix=avi+burra+24%2Caps%2C122&sr=8-1

Plebchain Radio Shirt - Black and Yellow -https://lightning.store/product/plebchain-radio-black-t-shirt/

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Pleb Chain Radio, a live show brought to you by Plebs for Plebs, which focuses

(00:08):
on the intersection of NOSTER and Bitcoin protocols.
Join QW and Avi as they run down the weekly news and developments, breaking down the current
thing and the future frontier with the foundation of decentralization, the builders, thinkers,
doers, and plebs.
All right, we are live.

(00:30):
Welcome, gentle plebs, to episode number 117 of Pleb Chain Radio.
Today is Friday, 6-20-25.
The time of recording is 5.01 p.m. Eastern Time.
Today, our guests, we're going to be doing everything mining.

(00:51):
So whether it's solo mining, hashrate marketplace, maybe your mining pool, whatever it is.
Nico with Wrigley, Abendo, and the newly formed Alliance. Then also our secondary guest is Hash,
the Hash Master. We call him in the solo mining circles. I think it's going to be a great show

(01:12):
in regards to the production side and the consumer side of Hash rating, Hash mining.
So let's talk.
Make sure to listen on Fountain and subscribe for early access and bonus episodes.
I actually just did an episode with Sam Means from Lightning Store and Wavelake.

(01:35):
That's been posted on our bonus material.
And Avi did one with Jameson Lopp.
So we've had two episodes now that we're trying our best to pump out some premium.
This show is streamed live on Zap.Stream and any other Noster client that supports streaming, such as Amethyst and No Stir.

(01:56):
And today's meme readout, I've actually never done a meme readout, but you might notice that Avi is not here.
Avi's doing the Lord's work. He's taking up a missionary position, and he's on a mission right now in Prague, spreading the gospel of Satoshi.
So Avi, if you're listening, I love you, buddy.

(02:19):
We miss you.
So this mean readout is one frame.
It's a gentleman.
He's got his daughter on his lap and the son playing on the ground.
It looks like it's set in 1950.
He's sitting on a couch.
And the daughter says, Daddy, what did you do when the big miners centralized?
He says, we formed an alliance of solo miners to snipe blocks, honey.

(02:42):
The son on the ground says, fucking legends.
I like that one. So Culture Corner, upcoming events, Nostrebama, July 14th through the 17th.
That's in Mobile, Alabama. That one's building up steam. Check out Sergio on Nostre. He's usually
the one posting about Nostrebama. Nostrebama actually has a Nostre account now. And I think

(03:09):
they have a website. So if you're going to be in that area, definitely check out Nostrebama.
It's a free event.
There'll be t-shirts, dog tags, the whole nine.
So good luck out there.
Lake Satoshi coming up August 1st through 3rd.
That's in mid-area of Michigan.
Lake Satoshi, look that up.

(03:29):
Solid plebs.
Those are really grassroots pleb events and a big fan of that.
So today, our largest zapper, our largest zapper in the last week, I don't know who it was.
It was an Anon. It was an Anon zap from the bunker.
So I'm going to do a roast of someone that I have no idea who they are.

(03:51):
So here we go.
Shadowy super coder holed up in their bunker.
Picture this, a keyboard warrior who thinks they're Neo of the Matrix,
but looks more like Gollum guarding a Red Bull stained laptop.
They're typing 200 words per minute,
yet their social skills are stuck in 56k modem territory.
Dial up, slow, and constantly disconnected.

(04:13):
This sovereign individual's bunker is a shrine to chaos.
Empty energy drink cans stack like a post-apocalyptic art installation.
A flickering monitor casting their face in a ghostly glow.
And a chair that's probably fused to their body by now.
They claim that they're hacking the mainframe to save the world.

(04:34):
But the closest they've come to revolution is crashing their own Wi-Fi,
trying to torrent a pirated copy of Hackers from 1995.
Their diet, instant ramen, and the tears of defeated bugs in their code.
They whisper, I'm in, to their screen at 3 a.m.
But the only thing they've infiltrated is a Reddit thread arguing about core or knots.

(04:57):
Keep dreaming, bunker bro.
Your code might be tight, but your vitamin D levels are on witness protection.
Thank you very much. We appreciate you and keep the zaps coming.
Today's sermon, The Revolution Will Be Hashed.
We are at the dawn of a new age where centralization is flourishing in the mempool,

(05:17):
where ASIC manufacturing is centralized, where block templates are being created without miners' consent.
This has gone on long enough.
So a year or so ago, I wouldn't know.
I wouldn't think twice.
But there were problems.
I had no idea there were problems.
But where there are problems, there's heroes in this battle for decentralization.

(05:38):
We're getting to the point where we have options now.
We can just hash solo for less than 100 cuck bucks and pennies,
and pennies on the monthly power bill.
Decentralizing the hash rate is also decentralizing the risk.
Plebs are low risk, large numbers.
We can just form an alliance and push back.
Will it be profitable for solo miners?
Maybe, but probably not.

(06:00):
But where there's purpose, there's value,
and we don't need a briefcase full of money to fight back.
We can just do this on a shoestring budget by the thousands.
I got into Bitcoin to separate money from state, to decentralize power, to create positive change for the next generation.
I stand by this mission, so I will call on you listening now.
Join the movement, join the resistance, and let's mine this revolution together.

(06:24):
Friction brings change, and I, for one, am going to be a part of this positive change.
So it may not be much, but hey, it's honest work.
So speaking of solo mining, you know, or just mining in general, we have a guest segment today.
And I would like to welcome Nico from Wrigley and the Hashmaster Hash.

(06:48):
How we doing, Nico? How we doing, Hash?
And is this thing on?
What a rambling mess, I feel like.
When I do an intro like this by myself without Avi, I realize how codependent our intro is because we break everything up.

(07:11):
So it just ends up being me talking forever.
And I don't like to hear my voice as much as anybody else.
So how are we doing?
Doing well.
You did a great job.
I thought it was – the meme and the sermon were both epic.
It was a big smile on my face.
Yes, I thought it went well.
Well, the meme, you know, you might recognize that from our Telegram group.

(07:34):
I did.
Or on Noster, under the Wrigley account.
So, Hash, how are you doing, buddy?
Doing well. I'm doing well.
Yeah, I love the sound of the Asics going in the background.
Yeah, my bad.
This show would not be complete without that sound.
Indeed.
And you know what?
I've only had a bid-axe for like three weeks, and it's just one of those sounds you like to hear, right?

(07:59):
Yeah, when the power goes out.
Maybe not your wife or girlfriend or partner.
I don't know how you roll, but it's something you get used to.
You know the revolution is buzzing in the background, and my wife's like, what the hell is that?
The soothing sound of decentralization.

(08:20):
Yes.
And chaotic cable management.
But so, Nico, I have a burning question for you.
Typically, we start off the show with a burning question.
So let's say Foundry calls you, Nico.
You get a phone call.
It's Foundry.
They call and ask to buy all your hash rate to funnel it to their pool.

(08:42):
What do you do?
That's a great question.
Well, are you in it for the revolution?
As somebody that is currently running a relatively non-trivial amount of hash rate, I have a lot of options.
Foundry is definitely not high on that list.

(09:03):
Nothing against the Foundry folks over there.
I know a few of the guys.
It's just not where I choose to point my voting power on the network.
Interesting.
There's this market where if you have enough hash, people are interested in it.
Yeah, absolutely. So all the pools are kind of competing for your hash rate, right? So if you go to, you know, if you're mining on Brains and you say, hey, Luxor, Brains is giving me, you know, 1.5%, can you do 1%? And Luxor is going to be like, well, how much hash rate do you have? And if you have enough, like, yeah, sure, we'll give you 1%. And, you know, you can kind of play them off each other a little bit that way.

(09:47):
It's definitely a race to the bottom in terms of fees, which is why Foundry before used to charge zero fees and just basically give out credit arrangements where they would kind of own your mining in exchange for zero fees.
It was a little bit how they worked at first.
And now they don't really do that anymore, and they charge a small fee to their miners.

(10:09):
Isn't that everything, though?
Isn't that like everyone's deal?
You get your Netflix for $7.99.
it even ships to your door and then now it's $30 and you're like,
what the hell happened?
Yeah.
They lure you in and then they raise the rates.
But with,
with mining,
can't you just,
you know,
just,
I mean,

(10:29):
it's as simple as just changing the pool,
right?
If you're not,
if you disagree.
Yep.
You can do it with the flick of a switch.
I have it automated where we have three pools kind of on standby that I can
kind of filter between.
and I'll often run hashrate in parallel
amongst all the different pools

(10:49):
just to kind of keep them honest
and see how the payouts are
and kind of track each of them.
So this last week,
well, number one,
RIP, my Raspberry Pi 4,
Raspberry Pi 4.
Ever since I tried to re-download

(11:10):
the initial blockchain,
it just would freeze out in the 70s.
And I got to think and I got to thank all the ordinal pooping in the park that was going on for that.
So what I'm getting at is I upgraded my node.
So I did a brand new build.

(11:32):
I got a start and I got my start nine back on there.
And I love the fact that I can just switch between core and knots within just you know 30 seconds So once again just keeping people honest with just you know a flip a flip of the switch right
Yeah. That flexibility is really useful, right?

(11:52):
Where you're not tied.
Whether you agree with any of them, or if you, you lean one way,
maybe I lean one way the other, the next week I have that switch.
So it's, I mean,
I think that's what this whole decentralization is about.
and what that does is create that market like you're saying for for hash or market for
a block confirmation whatever it is you have that switch so let's let's let's dive into some things

(12:18):
number one hash what's your backstory what radicalized you man oh man i i have quite a bit
of history um unfortunately and maybe how what what what conditioned you to all of a sudden you're a
Noster because that's a big that's a big difference from me let's say my space back in the day oh yeah
for sure um I used to be on Twitter back in the day and then just left because it was it was a cesspool

(12:44):
and then I you know to be honest I forget how I stumbled upon Noster but I've never looked back
and it's been a breath of fresh air to be honest
but yeah
are you curious as far as my history with Bitcoin

(13:04):
and mining?
You don't have to go into that
but you've clearly into mining now
so what conditioned you to say I'm going to be a miner?
well you don't start out at mine it's not 2011 anymore you know well i mean that's interesting

(13:25):
that you bring that up i so back in like 2010 i want to say i this was around the time when the
client was three in one so you had the wallet the node and the miner built into the application
so I remember I had a brief stint
you know dabbling with that

(13:47):
you know this was back in the day like everybody was
majority was still running Windows XP
I remember running it
and the rest is history
I don't know what I did I lost interest
I don't know it's unfortunate that I lost interest at that time
that's kind of like my first touch

(14:08):
it like mining if you could say that when it was still cpu based um sorry what what version of the
client were you running that's awesome i have i don't i don't know it was whatever client that
still had the three in one so you you would have to go back into the release yeah you'd have to go
back into the release history but that is what i remember it's a vague memory uh i wish i had more

(14:35):
involvement back then like I do now but um but yeah fast forward to probably 2023
which I was dabbling in like how can I you know stand up my own rigs in my in my residential house
like what what's all involved there okay you know I'm gonna have to hire an electrician

(14:58):
you know do all that to get you know you know some of these beefier miners running
on residential power, right? So I'm like, this isn't really feasible anymore. Like, I'm already
going to dump, you know, a lot of money into this. And then I stumbled upon, like, Bidaxe.
I was like, oh, this is cool, you know? Like, it's, the barrier to entry is pretty reasonable, like,

(15:24):
100 bucks or whatever it was. Alright, I'll grab one. And then at that point, I was like, okay,
this is cool because it's the one ASIC on there and that's all it takes.
Right.
Um,
so from that point on,
it's,
it's just been an,
uh,
an addiction you could say.
Uh,
and I love it.

(15:44):
And yeah,
and now we're here.
So,
and Nico,
I know you've been on our show before,
but let's,
let's talk about why you got into mining.
Yeah.
Um,
So I started working in Bitcoin because I kind of fell in love with the system back in 2016.

(16:09):
And my first kind of foray into working in the industry was to try and do some like technical writing,
like think, you know, GitHub man pages for developers so I could kind of better understand the system.
and I was working for BTC.com,

(16:31):
which some of the kind of older folks
who have been around a little bit longer may remember
because they had a really popular wallet SDK.
It's an open source wallet that you could basically build yourself.
And they needed some help with their documentation,
so I helped with that
and then moved over to their block explorer

(16:51):
and finally was working with their mining pool.
And at the time, this was right around the block size wars
when SegWit and SegWit2x and the New York agreement
and all these things were going on.
And BTC.com had just gotten acquired by Bitmain.
And all of a sudden, we all started working for Bitmain

(17:12):
and things started to change.
And we started to notice how they were all of a sudden
starting to push a lot more Bitcoin Cash stuff.
And it was like, oh, what's going on here?
And then I think, I don't know, it must have been late 2018 when all of a sudden I think Bitmain couldn't pay like salaries anymore.
They just kind of pulled the plug on our contract.

(17:33):
And it was because they had had a bunch of faulty S17s that they put out into production.
And alongside that, Jihan had pointed a lot of their self-mining hash rate to Bitcoin Cash.
and basically those two things pretty much capsized the company. So Bitmain had basically
become insolvent and they couldn't afford to pay their employees. At that point two things happened.

(18:01):
One the guy the main designer the chip designer behind Bitmain's S9 at the time their flagship
miner which was the best kind of bitcoin mining machine that had been produced to date
was designed by this guy that left the company and started What's Miner.
And so he left the company and then the guys that were running all of the pool infrastructure,

(18:24):
which were the folks behind the btc.com pool, which at the time was the largest Bitcoin mining pool,
left and started pooling.
And I had been working with the pool guys and I kind of left at the same time
and started helping out doing kind of more research type stuff over at Pooling.
And yeah, that's where I kind of really started to get my hands a little dirtier in terms of what was really going on behind the scenes with mining.

(18:53):
I helped Alejandro de la Torre out with taproot activation.
So with Speedy Trial, if you remember that back in the day.
They had to go to all the mining pools and basically explain to them like, hey, in order to activate this soft fork, you need to go through this process.
And the mining pools were like, well, what's this soft fork even about?
so we kind of did a lot of education there explaining all that.

(19:19):
And eventually left Poolin.
They started doing some shit coining and things weren't looking super great there
because they were basically managing their liquidity for their pool
through Three Arrows Capital and we all know how that ended up.
So then they became insolvent and ended up having like a bunch of IOUs for their miners.
So the lesson there is FPPS liquidity management is very much non-trivial and not transparent.

(19:47):
And it's very risky on the pool side.
So just because they're paying you at a fixed rate for that hash rate doesn't mean that there isn't risk.
The pool is just absorbing all of that risk and it can very quickly go south, which is what happened with pooling.
So even though you had a great technical team there, if you're not managing your funds correctly,
things can go awry.

(20:11):
So yeah, I left there and then started doing my own larger mining operations.
Larger, not that large, but a few megawatts.
In Argentina using Flare Gas.
This was right around the time of the pandemic.
And at the same time was still interested in,
I've always worked closely with protocol development and Lightning Network

(20:34):
and trying to figure out how to kind of merge mining with greater decentralization
and how we can have better protocols around mining.
And that's where I met Evan, who was trying to create a marketplace around mining.
And that was something that I had been interested in.
I was looking at potential solutions.
And now we have Wrigley.
Sorry.

(20:55):
And what is Wrigley?
So we did a show on this.
Anybody that's listening and hadn't heard it,
I do recommend going back to the Wrigley show with Evan and Nico, but just maybe a quick overview.
For sure.
So Wrigley is basically a peer-to-peer mining marketplace where Bitcoiners can buy, and I say Bitcoiners, not just anybody because we only take Bitcoin as payment, can buy hash rate from existing miners.

(21:28):
So miners usually sell their hash rate to a pool or they do solo mining, kind of just mine by
themselves, but usually they're trying to kind of lower the variance on getting rewards, which
involves selling their hash rate to a pool, to make a long story short. And what we basically do
is say, hey, instead of you selling it to this pool, why don't you just sell it to another
Bitcoiner that will pay you for that hash rate? And we've kind of structured a few different

(21:53):
products around how Bitcoiners choose to pay for that hash rate. The easiest way is you kind of just
go and buy it directly and you're paying a premium for that. So if you want to, for example, have
better privacy guarantees around your Bitcoin, mining is pretty much the most private way
to access Bitcoin. So you can pay kind of a privacy premium there to buy a hash rate and take that

(22:18):
off a miner's hands. And somebody might ask, well, why should I pay a premium or why should I put
more Bitcoin than I'm going to be getting out? And the reason for that is that, well, otherwise the
miner won't point their hash rate to you, right? If not, they'll just mine to their own pool account.
So you have to kind of incentivize them to point the hash rate your way. We also have auctions,

(22:41):
which is kind of a price setting mechanism for hash rate that will be delivered in the future.
And that's useful for the miners because it allows them to kind of hedge what the risk of that hash price will be in the future.
And either side can kind of win there in terms of who bets correctly on what the future value of the hash rate will be.

(23:06):
And then our most recent way of selling hashrate on Wrigley is what's called fixed return, which has been selling out.
So if you try and go buy it right now, we're trying to get you more hashrate.
And that where you pay for it ahead of time Sorry go ahead And Hash have you actually used the product wriggly oh yeah heavily yeah how long have you been uh obviously you been hashing for a long time but how long have

(23:35):
you been uh using the let's say hash rate marketplace like quickly oh so i got into
a pendo you know with the auctions and then you know it was ran by wrigley so then i got
interested in Wrigley. So I, you know, dug into that. And then I saw, oh, you can, you can buy
hash, you know, on the spot. So I'm like, oh, that's cool. I'm just going to go in and,

(23:58):
you know, buy some 120 terahash per second for 24 hours, you know, let's try it out. And
I really like that ability to just on demand. Hey, I want to point hash at, you know,
For example, the Alliance.
And I think that's cool, the ability to do that within a few clicks.

(24:21):
So, yep.
Yeah, we have choice.
You can just have your little solo miner 1.2 terahash sitting on your desk,
or you can just big ball it and throw a petahash or something at whatever pool you want
just with the click of the button.
So it makes it to where you really get a full spectrum of a mining experience.

(24:46):
And I've just been thrilled with it.
In my learning curve that I've done, Wrigley is something that you kind of got to get used to it.
You know, you're kind of like, okay, hash rate marketplace.
is I've heard about, you know, these kind of online mining companies

(25:09):
that have had issues in the past.
How is this different, Nico?
Yeah, so this is a common question we get.
It's a big one.
It's a big one, right?
How is Wrigley not cloud mining, right?
The compass mining is what I think of.
Compass mining, right, right, right.
they go bankrupt or they try to give you your ASIC you're like hey I want my ASIC that I was

(25:35):
renting and it's it's non-operational yeah Evan on his desk in New York has a like a five thousand
dollar paperweight which is the reminder of a failed hosting experience yeah yeah I mean we
you know the ones that are ahead of us just make it that much harder when you but maybe maybe

(25:55):
learning experiences like that are why we're better in the future, right?
For sure. They're, you know, expensive lessons, but, you know, you definitely learn.
Yeah. So, I mean, the reason why Wrigley isn't exactly like cloud mining or hosted mining
is that in cloud mining, the person that's selling you the hash rate is the owner of those machines.

(26:23):
So they have a big mining farm and they're saying, hey, I will rent you some time from my mining farm.
And it's, you know, you go to Bitfufu or you go to Bitdeer and they're kind of like a one-stop shop.
There isn't this kind of two-sided marketplace that we have with Wrigley.

(26:45):
That's at least traditionally how cloud mining has worked and part of how we differentiate ourselves from cloud mining.
The reason there is that usually cloud mining is the person that's selling you the hashrate has kind of unilateral control over pricing, delivering, accounting, all of these kind of aspects.

(27:06):
Whereas with Wrigley, we're kind of this, just this intermediary that operates like the referee and the switchboard.
So they'll point the hash rate at us and we'll point it to a buyer and we'll just observe that the conditions that the buyer and the seller came to the table with are met.
And if they're not, then we issue reimbursements or potentially any kind of legal action that may need to take place in the event that there should be a breach of contract between the two parties.

(27:38):
Obviously, we try and avoid that, but that's a little bit our role as an intermediary there.
And then hosted mining is when you buy a machine outright and pay somebody to run it for you.
So that's a little bit different as well because then you're forking up quite a bit of capital up
front and you need to really trust that the person that's or the company that's going to run that

(28:03):
machine is going to do so effectively. And there's also just like a lot of premium that gets built in
there so it's like you usually they'll charge you a premium on the machine then a premium on the
hosting fee a premium on the electricity fee that they're charging you and it's like all these places
where they're taking out some margin in in Wrigley and on the marketplace we try and abstract that

(28:28):
all out and we just say hey this is the value of hash rate or the going rate for hash rate on
the pools today. Let's figure out a way in which you can align buyers and sellers around this going
rate. Got it. And then since our last show, we did that show obviously about Wrigley and it was

(28:56):
focused on Wrigley, but there's been some newer developments. And I think one that really made a
splash on Noster. And what is Appendo? Sorry, I was just finding the unmute button there.
Yeah, so Appendo is a new way to mine that Evan really came up with as a side project with

(29:24):
Wrigley. It's kind of like a fun, you know, experiment to see, hey, what if we tried solo
mining as a team. And the idea here is that usually when you mine, you mine to a pool,
like I said before, to lower the variance and get payouts more consistently. The other option is you

(29:45):
can not mine to one of these FPPS pools and you can try solo mining, which is mining for real.
In other words, the way in which Satoshi intended, which is one CPU, one vote, right?
And in that sense, Bitcoin mining is effectively a computational lottery.

(30:08):
And that means that once on average, every 10 minutes, the network adjusts so that a share is found or a block is found that it meets the established difficulty for all the computers on the network that are trying to find a block.
and by solo mining if you are fine if you do find that block instead of splitting the rewards

(30:32):
with the rest of the pool you get to keep all the rewards right so you mine the block for yourself
and what upendo does is say hey why don't we find kind of an intermediary point
between kind of this massive pool mining and mining all by your lonesome why don't we just

(30:53):
join forces with a few folks and see if we can find a blog together as part of a team, like a quest.
And Evan started this out and realized like, hey, this is really fun. Did it on kind of Saturdays to
see, you know, who would show up and posted it on Noster and all of a sudden folks started to show up.

(31:13):
And yeah, it's really been a lot of fun to kind of build community around this. We've noticed that
it does, it has become quite a popular event.
It reminds me of the, the quests that we used to do back when Zaps first,
first came around. I started something called the Zapathon.

(31:35):
And what it was, what,
what actually triggered me was Wallet of Satoshi at the time was,
was the big Noster really easy custodial zapping wallet,
no fee type of thing. And they made a note that said, hey guys, you know, you guys have been

(31:57):
zapping a lot. We went ahead and, you know, increased our bandwidth or made it to where
they adjusted for more volume. And I don't know if that's from channels or what happened on the
back end. But that's when I realized, wait a second, we could break things here. So we started
of doing these 30 minute, um, sometimes optional one hour, uh, zapathons where you zap as much as

(32:20):
you can, uh, and see if you can take down Wallace Satoshi. Uh, and, and they played along too. They,
they, they had a lot of fun on the, on the, on the, on the opposite side. Uh, and we did take
them down multiple times at the end of the day. It was, it was, it was great for them, uh, because
they were kind of just, uh, trial and error, uh, fixing what they, what they could when they saw

(32:42):
surges like that. Cause ultimately if there's mass adoption, you're going to need those, uh,
those, those runways open. Um, so it was, it was a cool community, um, push. And I feel the same
energy when I think about the block parties. I, I think, you know, it might just be one block,
but it's our block, right? How about that hash? Maybe you can talk about that.

(33:08):
yeah no totally like and that's what it's about it's like making history right because that block
is forever and always and to say that as a community it's an alliance that we're we did that
how cool is that right it's a big it's a big uh you know middle finger to foundry and the big boys

(33:29):
right so well and that's that's the next topic right because you're not only on the time chain
You're not only leaving your mark in this world, but you're also, we're going up against this centralization, this mining centralization that I don't think we were really talking about this until the big debate with Mechanic and all the block template and the spam.

(33:55):
All this stuff where everyone's like, well, I haven't even thought about mining really.
And then everything's good for Bitcoin.
Everything's good for Bitcoin.
it wasn't really a discussion. Um, and I feel like now more than ever, especially on the mempool,
all you see is foundry, foundry, ant, ant, foundry, foundry. And you're like, this is really wrong.

(34:15):
In my opinion. Um, yeah. Yeah, no, totally. I mean, early on, you know, blocks are being mined
by people on their laptops. Right. And then that kind of shifted over time and that got
capitalized by big companies. Um, and I, I feel like now is the time to kind of take a step back

(34:37):
and kind of shift that back to, uh, the people as a whole, right? Cause you, you get too much
monopolization of mining companies. Uh, it's not good. Right. And that's, and that's been a concern
for a long time. Right. So I think, I think what we're doing now is, is good. Uh, but, uh, over

(34:59):
time. We just have to build more momentum though, to make a big impact. Right. So,
well and it it gets to the point where we we not going to be um the big the big one out there I mean me personally I not going to go have a mining farm I not going to go make this profitable thing where I can always apply capital forward to continue to increase my mining rigs I just not in the place to do that

(35:24):
So it was kind of a part of Bitcoin that I never really thought about.
But seeing a problem creates an opportunity for me to at least do my part in changing things.
And I think that big movement of, you know, whether it's the BitX project or NerdMiner or all these smaller, lower wattage ASICs out there, it really makes this kind of a hobby.

(35:52):
You know, maybe I'm LARPing. I don't know. But it's something where I'm doing my part and I feel like, you know, I sleep well at night. I don't know about these corporations that their entire life revolves around hash rate and the cost of energy to deliver that hash rate. Nico, how are you sleeping at night?

(36:12):
yeah i have it's i have a lot of exposure to kind of this this world uh and it's really interesting
to see all of the fiat games that are played by um large publicly traded mining companies
and the tricks and the just fundamental like unsustainability of how these companies basically

(36:42):
just take out debt and play with their valuations totally like against the um you know future
value like real value that they're able to generate for their shareholders right it's like
they're kind of playing valuation games taking out convertible notes on debt to cover and plug
holes on not profitable mining for example right but they can out compete because they just again

(37:07):
play the kind of the fiat game of just kind of printing more money, right?
In order to grow their operations.
And most don't hold their Bitcoin, right?
Yeah, some do.
And that's kind of part of playing into the valuation game.
So yes, you're right.
A lot don't.
Some still...
I feel like since this Bitcoin treasury craze has been happening, you're starting to see

(37:31):
it more.
Yeah.
But, I mean, when mining wasn't profitable, everyone was kind of struggling.
They were kind of forced to get off that Bitcoin standard, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think what they kind of realized was like, oh, wait a second.
Our Bitcoin is more profitable than our mining.
So, like, why don't we just, like, hold on to, like, the actual Bitcoin rather than liquidating it and trying to realize gains through, like, the mining profit, right?

(37:55):
um well i i i can't be sure but i think meta planet just has like one hotel
and that's their whole business and then they're just a bitcoin treasury company now so
it's like bitcoin plus ai pump me pump me and that's what you end up seeing is that these
mining companies like all of a sudden they're all on the ai like tip but it's not like they

(38:19):
have really developed ai strategies or like as if you know just switching from bitcoin mining
to AI mining is going to be the same. It's not. And when you really start to push back and be like,
oh, so how do you actually plan on redeploying your whole fleet and, you know, shifting over
from Bitcoin to AI, you realize that the teams that they have to bring on board for all of that

(38:39):
are like totally different. The way they manage time is very different because AI projects,
they think about them in like five, 10 year, like time horizons. And it's like, oh, well,
you'll just pour a bunch of money into this and you'll develop it slowly. Whereas like,
as Bitcoin miners every day that goes by is a day that you could have been mining. Right.
So the, yeah, there's the kind of the time value there is just very different.

(39:05):
So I guess all of this is sleeping well. Well, I mean, sleeping well in that, you know,
I feel like working on like projects that like really matter in the long run for mining are
important and what you realize is that um the um what's it called the the your time uh preference

(39:32):
there we go uh for miners is often very short and that gets reflected in these public uh publicly
trading companies whereas if you're able to mine with uh low time preference and figure out mining
from a low time preference standpoint,
calculating what's going to happen with the next halving.

(39:52):
I can tell you right now,
the entire mining industry is absolutely terrified
by this next halving.
We're always scared about the halving,
but this next one in particular is absolutely horrifying.
So running like a Wrigley hashrate marketplace,
you're still in the mining field,
but you've kind of separated yourself
from that growing pain,

(40:13):
the never-ending pain of running a hash,
what is it, a mining pool?
Right, a mining pool or a mining farm.
Or a mining farm.
Yeah, a farm.
Right, right.
I'm learning here, man.
Come on.
The different players.
Learn in the alliance.
Learn about upendo.

(40:34):
Learn about the block party.
And then ultimately learn about Wrigley,
I think is the kind of the way you streamline the young plebs listening.
For sure.
Yeah.
I mean, I think part of what Wrigley does is kind of bring more consciousness around mining and access to mining, right, to Bitcoiners broadly.

(40:59):
and part of the way that I really like to think about this probably like from a more philosophical
standpoint is that like oftentimes if you're sitting like on your bitcoin it it's it's kind
of like latent uh voting capital on the network um when you if you convert that bitcoin into
hash rate that then will come back to you in the form of bitcoin you're kind of activating that

(41:22):
into like active voting power on the network that you're still going to get your bitcoin back but
all of a sudden it has this kind of more like active democratic capacity on the network because
you can choose you know how to deploy hash rate which is obviously the like consensus apparatus
and the security mechanism behind the network right and that gives you another kind of tool

(41:46):
in which you can interact and vote on how bitcoin is run right and you also get to choose on what
kind of miners you want to support, right? So, you know, all of the miners that we list on like
Wrigley and the hash rate that we're pointing towards Upendo and the different Wrigley products
are all sourced from small to medium-sized miners that share this kind of like vision, right? And

(42:12):
you are, you know, directly supporting those efforts of those miners and you're using the hash
from those projects according to how you see like fit, right? What kind of mining pool do you want
to be mining to? You know, block templates, you know, you name it. You can choose to mine to a
datum server, right? So all of that is very much in line with what we're trying to kind of bring

(42:39):
about with Wrigley. I've been fiddling with the datum gateway. That was my new thing.
My Canaan Avalon Canon, Avalon 3S comes on Monday, and I'm going to be fiddling around with Datum, Core Lightning, and Bolt 12, and then Ocean.

(43:03):
I'm trying some things out.
I'm just trying to kind of grow a larger understanding of all the different tools that are available for the revolution, I suppose.
So what you're saying is there's an alliance of mining farms out there too, not just solo miners.

(43:24):
Yeah, that's right.
So whenever you...
Ultimately, we share the same vision, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think like when we're buying Hashrate or when you're pointing Hashrate to Upendo,
So you're basically channeling all of that hashrate from these different small to medium-sized mining farms, right?

(43:54):
That are kind of the bulwark of behind decentralization on the network and saying, hey, we're going to grab your guys' hashrate and point it towards the alliance, right?
I didn't see that one coming.
You know, the Appendo, and we'll talk about what the alliance is, but I guess let me pull back.

(44:19):
What's the potential hash rate as in like how much does Wrigley have in the hopper for, I think the last block party we got up to, what was the peak hash?
If I'm not mistaken, we made it up to, was it seven or eight?
Yep, that's correct.
Yeah.
Yeah. And it's funny because I actually directed that to you, Hash.

(44:41):
But because your name's Hash, it sounded like I finished the sentence.
I get it now.
And let's talk about that difficulty that was reached. How far off, Hash?
Oh, my goodness. Like, I had my browser up. I had the raw JSON output from CK pool up.

(45:04):
and it was like refreshing like every, I don't know, five seconds.
It was like, it was going really hard.
And I was just staring at it because, you know, I was out for the day.
I came back.
I was like, what is going on?
You know, and I saw it hit 126.29 trillion difficulty, I believe.

(45:26):
I was like, holy shit, we just, we just mined the block.
But unfortunately we did not.
we came up short and i posted it in the chat i but we were like off by like a couple hundred
billion difficulty but in the grand scheme of things it wasn't very much at all so it was it

(45:48):
was it was both awesome to see that we hit that difficulty but it was also very sad that we missed
it by like a hair essentially. Yeah. We, we, we, we, we, we put our Starcraft in, we had it a 99.4,
uh, downloaded and uploaded, almost installed. And then the computer crashed

(46:09):
is what it felt like. We were almost there. Um, Nico, uh, how does that work? So let's say we hit
the block. What works on the back end? I think that's the part where maybe people have questions
because you typically, technically, Wrigley is kind of the escrow account. Yep. For the pool. Yep.

(46:37):
So there's a lot of math on there. There is. We've spent two years developing a hash rate
accounting system that does all that math using a PhD physicist who's developed it.
Shout out to Asher.
Um, yeah, so I mean, it's relatively straightforward.
Um, and it's all auditable through, uh, CK pool.

(47:02):
Um, the address that we're mining to, uh, is a multi-sig address.
Uh, it's a two of three.
Um, and we basically can issue, obviously if, uh, if UPendo is able to find a block
when Upendo finds a block.

(47:24):
And the rewards go to that address.
We have the list of hashrate that worked to mine that block.
And we basically carve out the rewards
according to how much hashrate everybody on that table contributed.

(47:45):
And right now the process is fairly manual.
We just create transactions for each of those outputs and split up the reward appropriately or proportionally is the word according to what everybody was contributing.
And I know we haven't.

(48:06):
I say we because I participated in the last three block parties.
But just to be clear, there's never been a block found on these block parties yet.
And when it will be, how legendary will that be?
Pretty epic.

(48:27):
I mean, it's one thing, and Hash, you know,
that when you see a solo CK pool or you see, you know,
just maybe just a solo pool in general hit a block on the mempool,
it's just like, oh, we got one type of thing.
It might not have been you, but it was somebody that wasn't the opposition, right?

(48:52):
Yeah, totally.
And when you watch the blocks that CK Pool mines, it's like, you know, we might have a dry month.
And that's kind of why in this last block party, I was like, oh, let's get it, you know, before June.
But typically, you know, looking back on the history, you might get one every month.

(49:14):
But right now, I think it's one every two months is projected.
Last one we had was two weeks ago and prior was two months ago.
So but still, yeah, it's it would be nice to see that tighten up a little bit.

(49:35):
And Nico, the the CK pool.
So talk about what Alliance has done.
I mean, I feel like we've kind of hacked what CK Pool was intentionally for.
Yeah.
And when I say hack, basically, we're just making something work that maybe it wasn't intended for.

(49:55):
Just the definition of hack.
Yeah, for sure.
yeah so I mean I think CKpool is usually the notion was that the address that you mine to
on there would be to each individual's kind of address and that each address would represent

(50:16):
one miner right and the hack here is that that address doesn't represent just one miner but it
represents a shared account or a shared address amongst many different individuals, right?
So in that way, we've, yeah, repurposed kind of their infrastructure in order to coordinate

(50:40):
amongst many different miners, which we call the alliance, in order to mine in a totally
independent way, right?
yeah because you're basically putting two different ideas together that i don't think
can coexist uh without a very intricate pull uh pool you have your let's say your your bounty pool

(51:05):
where you have rules essentially these are rules made by you know consensus among us but if if it's
not a block party time and you and one of us hits a block let's say there's a hundred of us then
one person hits a block, they get one Bitcoin, the remaining 2.15 plus fees get distributed
by hash around the pool. But then in that same pool, you have a pendo. So you turn into block

(51:32):
party rules where, you know, it just surges hash, and whatever hits the block, it gets spread
evenly, there's no more bounty. So how I feel like we're in a we're well, I think we're in the
future with what we're doing. And we have a little bit of, I mean, we're just kind of bottlenecked by

(51:53):
CK pool. And, you know, I think in the future, there's something where, you know, a protocol
could be in place within pools, something like this, that really gamifies and inspires communities
to, you know, get to solo mining and be on the forefront of change. What are your thoughts on

(52:15):
that ego yeah so i think the new mining protocols are all moving in this direction right so strategy
too has the job declarator client datum uses your basically your own bitcoin node to to also create
your own block templates and to produce your own blocks so the idea is we want to push

(52:38):
as much of block production as possible to the edge, right?
So that everybody that is mining is mining according
or is creating their own blocks.
And right now with CKPool,
we're still relying on CKPool's block template production.

(53:01):
I think the idea would be that we can move towards a model
where we can also be producing our own block templates
on upendo and that different parties for example on upendo uh can have their own uh rules so you
can imagine like you know qw and you know heather have recently had different like teams now imagine

(53:21):
that like if you guys didn't agree on you know cats or jpegs on on the on the blockchain that
like hey you know team heather would be like oh no i'm pro jpegs and qw would be like nah no jpegs
on my blocks. And you could basically say, okay, let's have, let's express that difference

(53:42):
through policies, right? Not just at the knots and mempool relay level, but at the actual
block production level, right? And that's where one thing is, you know, it's being argued about
a lot right now that the mempool side is like, well, if I relay, whether I want to relay these
transactions or not. But then the kind of the stronger claim is whether those transactions

(54:05):
actually get included in blocks. So if you have people that are creating their own blocks and
they're the ones that are saying like no we want to filter these like transactions from the blocks
that we're producing well that's a much stronger kind of epistemic claim on the network than just
relay policy. So I'm not saying that relay policy isn't important it would just be another layer on

(54:27):
which you can make that argument right or express that preference
yeah and hash what is the alliance to you uh what's what's solo mining to you um what uh is it
talk about the community i suppose yeah so i suppose in a nutshell it's uh bringing a community

(54:54):
of miners and like-minded individuals together to kind of battle like the centralization that we see
with the you know bigger mining entities right um i think if we reach a certain point where we get
enough following we can be uh so to speak sniping blocks from these bigger entities and i think i

(55:19):
posted a while back like uh even if we get like a thousand people in the alliance you know and they
have you know a gamma let's say that's that's a petahash right that's nothing to scoff at really
um and if you grow that to even like a hundred thousand which is a monumental number

(55:40):
but if that if that's reached that's over a hundred petahash and in today's world that's
roughly every month
you know
getting a block which
that's pretty awesome right so
um
I just think it's about bringing

(56:00):
that community together to
kind of bring it back to the
uh the ways of
Satoshi uh
so I don't know that's
that's kind of in a nutshell what it is to me
I and it's
you know just sniping uh
Nico was explaining how mining companies typically have a very high time preference, might be over levered.

(56:26):
So sniping even 1%, maybe just a little bit.
We as plebs have a very low time preference.
So we have really nothing to lose in this.
And I think that's one of the most powerful parts about solo mining with, let's say, a bid axe.
And by the way in July there supposed to be I think most of the BIDX or solo mining websites are going to be being very very cheap in July So keep your eyes on that I hear that there going to be some deep discounts I don know if something else is coming and they want to move some product or what but July is going to be

(57:09):
a big one. But yeah, it's something where we have the power in numbers, but we also have the power
and we're not over levered. We have nothing to lose. And every time we snipe, every time we,
you know another solo miner joins the alliance uh we're just we have that low time preference that

(57:32):
over time we're just it's it's really just we're dissolving them in in in one aspect i suppose um
yeah i i'm i think it's a powerful idea i think um you know it leads to uh you know direct buy and
in upendo and it's, it's a fun game to play with the block parties. But another thing that I've

(57:56):
noticed is we go all the way back up the chain to Wrigley where, you know, when you do your normal
bounty rules, which is 24 seven mining in the Alliance, people are actually buying from Wrigley
and pointing to the Alliance pool. So, you know, they're not necessarily profitable, but they're
putting, you know, they're, they're kind of YOLOing into the, uh, into the Alliance pool,

(58:20):
which I think is incredible too. Um, it's just interesting to watch it all. Uh, how much are
you seeing, and I know this is kind of a new idea, Nico, but how much are you seeing people starting
to YOLO into the CK pool during the, uh, bounty, bounty, uh, timeframe? Yeah. So recently, I think

(58:40):
we've seen the last couple of weeks since our last block party,
there's been a pretty significant amount of people
that have bought Hashrate on Wrigley and tried to figure out,
okay, hey, how do I buy it over here and just point it back to the Alliance?
That's like a true flywheel, right?
Yeah, absolutely.

(59:02):
So I don't have the numbers off the top of my head,
but it definitely has been quite a few.
It hadn't happened before.
It's a new deal. And because I monitor the hash for the CK pool every day and you'll see it, it'll be, you know, number one, our workers, the workers keep going up. So, you know, I think we're over, you know, 90 right now. That was 20 like two weeks ago. So it just continues to grow. But you'll see these just random surges of, you know, 200 tera hash just jump, you know, now. And you're like, what the hell was that?

(59:38):
You're like, oh, someone's buying on Wrigley and pointing.
Everyone's kind of doing their part in their own way.
Maybe their Jones and because their bid axe hasn't arrived on their doorstep yet,
and they still want to participate.
So there's multiple ways to kind of participate in this,
which is, I think, really powerful.
Hash, you typically are the winner for the most part in the most hash,

(01:00:05):
the total hash for these block parties.
How hard are you in? How far are you in, man?
I'm all in. I have a very high rate of conviction.
And I'm very competitive as well.
I think the one person in the community that's giving me the most competition is probably that Nikola Tesla on Noster.

(01:00:31):
We've had some good battles, but no, I think it's great.
competition is, you know, that, that helps out. Right. So, um,
but yeah, going back to what you were talking about, like with Wrigley, like,
heck yeah. Like, you know, just buy, buy hash on the spot,
point it at the Alliance. There you go. Uh, and that, you know,

(01:00:55):
that kind of drives the initiative, right? So whatever we can, uh,
take we'll, we'll get it. Right.
yeah yeah and and nico uh when we when we delivered the hash i think the last uh
the last block party it came from three different continents uh or you know africa

(01:01:19):
south america and the u.s um how powerful is that yep that's right those are the three places we're
trying to get some new miners onboarded now, actually, from the States. Need to find some
Asian miners. So if anybody out there is listening and you know some Asian miners,
we need to bring some of them on board. Europe's a little tougher. We have talked to a few European

(01:01:43):
miners, but electricity rates in Europe are a little tougher. They're pretty political over
there. Yeah. They're not doing themselves any favors. They're not doing themselves any favors.
But yeah, a lot of mining going on right now that's currently being developed in Africa and in South America.
Obviously, the U.S. after the China mining ban has become the new kind of focal point for mining around the world.

(01:02:09):
It's become a little centralized in the States is kind of the counter argument there.
so yeah we work with
miners from all over the world
I guess the only
places where we have to be
where we can't take miners because we're
a US registered company is from
OFAC sanctioned countries unfortunately

(01:02:30):
just because we're not trying to go to jail
but not anything against those
OFAC sanctioned countries unfortunately
it's just the way US laws work out
but everyone else
we can take
we can take miners from
Um, so yeah, that's, uh, that's part of what, you know, the, the mission here, right.

(01:02:54):
Is connecting people from all around the world, uh, on both sides of the marketplace.
Um, and, and spreading the, the hash.
Yeah.
You know, it's not necessarily good when, you know, the global hash is 60, 70% U S.
Um, you know, if we change our policy, what does that do?
Yeah, and that's kind of one of the original things with Wrigley was the idea of being able to provide some kind of financing for mining companies that want to develop sites, right?

(01:03:25):
So like I was saying before, you know, these huge pubcos go out and, you know, take out convertible notes or debt and, you know, Wall Street banking type of instruments.
international miners like in Nigeria or myself in Argentina or in Peru or anywhere else in Africa
where we're seeing folks as well, you don't have access to credit facilities. If you're from the

(01:03:49):
States, you may not know this, but like the rest of the world does not have access to credit in the
same way as you do in the US. And since mining is such a capital intensive business, you have to
wait to pay back your miners before you go in the green, right? And generate some profit. And then

(01:04:10):
you have to basically take all that money to go kind of expand your operations to build something
new. So if you have cheap power, and you're trying to grow your operations as a small to medium
sized miner in a country that is outside of the US, you basically don't have any tools available
to you. And one of the things that we tried to do with Wrigley was say, hey, we have a whole network
here of people around the world through the Bitcoin network that can fund these types of

(01:04:35):
projects in exchange for KYC free new Bitcoin, right? And there's a very natural swap there in
time preferences, which is that the miner that's trying to develop this new site has this high time
preference for liquidity. And the person that's sitting on their stack is default low time

(01:04:59):
preference. So this, the trade is basically saying like, hey, here's capital to go develop your site
and in exchange you guarantee the future cash flow or sat flow or hash rate of that mining site.

(01:05:20):
And yeah, that's, I mean, I think one of the big, you know, vectors for decentralizing mining
across the globe is allowing for these projects to develop in the first place.
That's the number one blocker for new mining projects is capital.

(01:05:42):
And talk about the centralization of the chip manufacturing.
I mean, from my understanding, and I don't know enough,
a lot of the mining rigs themselves, the big boys, are all centralized.
on the manufacturing side.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
So there are some very nasty games

(01:06:05):
played behind the scenes
with the large manufacturers.
So Bitmain is by far
the largest manufacturer in the industry.
And they have basically pushed out
other manufacturers
like Wattsminer from accessing
like TSMC, for example.

(01:06:26):
So WattsMiner has probably better chip designs than Bitmain, but because they can't make their chips at TSMC, they have to go to Samsung, it means that they can't compete on a level playing field.
That's like one example, right, of like how you see these kind of centralization forces.
not to mention that back in the day like bitmain had basically put a back door into all of their

(01:06:50):
like machines so that if they wanted to they had kind of either like a kill switch or other ways
in which they could basically hack into the machines that they were selling and they were
over 90 percent of the market right um so yeah it a very kind of dangerous like precedent right to have one company that has also you know previously in um in contentious moments on the network tried to sway uh yeah decision making right yeah yeah uh so i mean that sense

(01:07:27):
that that that that issue itself um that friction i i think you know i i saw that there was you know
possibly other chips being developed by other people.
I think even Jack Dorsey's block,
I think Intel came in and they got out pretty quick.
But are you seeing any competition?

(01:07:50):
And I guess, secondly, what does Bidax use?
Yes.
So there are a bunch of new designs, products,
manufacturers coming into the space.
The big one out of the States right now is called Aurodyne.
they're very interesting
seem to be very high quality kind of professionals
ex-intel and google

(01:08:10):
hardware guys that have made
a really competitive product
and I believe everything
that they do is manufactured here in the states
so
they're definitely a player to
keep an eye out
or keep an eye on
and then you
also have so Blockstream

(01:08:31):
works with
they bought an Israeli company
that the name is always very strange
to me and I can never remember it exactly
but in any case
I think about exploding pagers
when I think about Israeli
technology
yeah there's definitely
that in any case
these guys are supposed to be very good

(01:08:52):
literal kill switches
right
but
But that's another manufacturer.
Block does have their own chips that they have put out.
I think that they discontinued that line, though, if I'm not mistaken.

(01:09:13):
So they weren't going to pursue it.
I may be wrong about that.
Because I see this revolution or rebellion on a few fronts,
and it goes all the way down to the hardware.
You can apply yourself to the alliance.
You can rent hash on Wrigley.
You can participate in the block party.
But I think, you know, and what I would love, you know, I'd love to support the decentralization of mining through different continents.

(01:09:40):
I'd love to know which hardware I'm buying that's supporting what.
You know, there's a few different ways.
You know, there might be a pure direction to go with this.
And I just don't know.
It's just a gentle pleb, you know.
yeah so just to i mean hash may know better about the chips that go on um

(01:10:01):
bit axis um so hash what do you know man you're staring at it is it silver your chip
yes it's it's under thermal paste right now i think it did you swap your pace no i have not
done that yet, but I really want to do that,
but I'm too lazy.

(01:10:21):
I think they come from the
S17s,
if I recall.
Yeah, I think that's right.
But yeah.
So the
big thing there, just to make the point, QW,
the
kind of the kill switch comes in at the control board
level, so even if
you're running an old S17

(01:10:43):
ASIC, like the chip
itself that that's not going to be backdoored your your issue would be at a kind of a higher
level there in the hardware um so you know you're kind of repurposing like the you know the empire's
old equipment for the for the alliance and have you uh do you see i take it you saw crypto cloaks

(01:11:06):
made uh made our very own bid x uh frame a stand i did see that yeah it was very cool big shout out
Hash, did you order one yet?
You know what?
I had my finger on the trigger.
I'm going to.
I'm going to.
There's still 15 in stock, everybody.
FYI.

(01:11:27):
Yeah, and there's a pretty good chance that Wrigley will zap you on Noster if you post a picture of that.
So that brings me to another point, Nico.
What the hell was going on during the block party?
I think everyone was getting mega zapped.
So anybody listening, Zaps or Sats, they're basically bits of Bitcoin that were getting sent for posting memes and doing whatever shit posting essentially on Noster.

(01:11:59):
But it was like $10, $10, $10.
What was up with that?
That was a Zap-a-thon.
Yeah, I think that's definitely Heather and Evan going to town on people that are supporting the cause.
Is that a company write-off?

(01:12:21):
You know, I was talking with Evan as well, and he was saying that whenever we do the block parties,
we definitely add some love from our end to make sure that the party gets some extra hash rate as well.
um so yeah i mean i think you know we try and do the best i mean you guys want to hit a block just
as much as us i mean at the end of the day we're all on the same team you know you're not really

(01:12:44):
a company you're you're you're you're actually a customer to yourself you know yeah that's right
um i mean i think everyone wins here right i mean upendo is not something that we're turning around
and making a lot of money on i think it's definitely a community project that we're
really excited to be a part of and support and to facilitate. And we have a lot of the tools,

(01:13:06):
right, that enable us to kind of build this out. And yeah, the idea is obviously to try and bring
in as much hash rate as we can to facilitate that flywheel, right? Because that's what it comes down
to is just making sure that we can one generate drum up enough demand uh to get our odds good

(01:13:31):
enough to get close to you know like what happened last time if we had just been one difficulty
adjustment earlier we would have had a block like hash was saying um don't remind me and then on the
second and yeah and then he's got a poster of that block that he didn't hit on his wall it's like uh
it's like Ray Finkel in,

(01:13:51):
in Ace Ventura,
you know,
he's the Dan Marino.
That's the Dan Marino block.
Yeah.
I looked and it was 689 billion differential,
uh,
that we missed it by.
So,
which,
which sounds like I have no idea what that means,
but if you look at the one points,
you know,
the,
the one,
the 1.2,

(01:14:12):
what was it?
1.7.
What,
what was the difficulty that needed?
I think it was 120,
26.9 or somewhere around there. I think CK said 127 rounded up, but it was like,
it was ridiculous. Just going to put it at that. Yeah. Yeah. And I would never even know any of
this until I started getting involved. And I'm, I'm, I feel like I'm all in at this point,

(01:14:37):
ready to, to keep moving. So those zaps, so those, that, that engagement that Wrigley's been doing on
Noster, when these block parties happen, they're usually on a Saturday. And it seems like if you're
not part of it, you're like, what the hell's going on? Because the energy is so tremendous,

(01:14:58):
I suppose. And it's not just the mining farms hashing energy. It's the human side of things.
uh everyone's excited a lot of uh a lot of hash flying uh human hash and uh and asic hash but uh
when is the next one or talk about kind of the state of upendo right now or and and what might

(01:15:24):
be going on in the uh and on the back end or construction side of things yeah um we broke
things last time let's get real yeah we did yeah so we've had to do you know we're doing some
infrastructure overhauling we're trying we did some stress testing last time and we're trying

(01:15:45):
to make sure that you know we can we can keep everything uh running smoothly for for the next
one um the main thing we're actually kind of from the client side what you guys will see
that we really want to be able to bring back is the auctions.
So I think last time you were only able to do direct sales.

(01:16:05):
And the reason for that was that the auctions kind of had,
it was difficult for us to manage the auctions at the same time.
So what we've been working on now with one of our engineers, Davar,
is so that you can access auctions without having to create an account.
basically you can place a bid deposit for a thousand sats it's really low it's just to make

(01:16:31):
it's just to encourage people like a small speed bump to encourage people to actually pay their bid
and so they're not bidding up the price and then don't turn around and like actually you know don't
buy what they bid up so once you've made the bid deposit then you can participate now without
actually having to give your email address in the auctions and the auctions are cool because
it's like what Hash was saying earlier, you kind of tap into the competitive dynamic

(01:16:55):
and that competitive dynamic ends up having a positive feedback on the actual block party.
Because all the value that is bid over of the actual going hash price for the hash rate that's
being put up for auction actually ends up getting fed back in. So we basically take any excess

(01:17:19):
you know sats that are bid towards a certain amount of hash rate and use that to buy more hash rate to put back into the block party
And that gets tabulated or accounted for according to the team
that wins that auction, right?
According to whoever the bidder is and what team that bidder belongs to.

(01:17:44):
And we just found that that's like a really fun dynamic
that's part of the block parties
and a good way to kind of tap into this flywheel process
and driving competition and giving a mechanism
to bring in as much hashrate as possible.

(01:18:06):
So that's been the main thing.
We're kind of still working on that.
It's, you know, creating,
we've had to remodel a little bit how we manage accounts.
And I think part of that has also been
because we were looking down the line to be able to integrate, you know, things like Nostre signups
and how do we kind of bring the Wrigley experience closer into, into Nostre and into being more

(01:18:26):
accountless. So it's, you know, Wrigley and Upendo kind of, we treat them separately, but they have
these kind of positive feedback mechanisms with how we develop one platform and the other. And
we're just trying to keep whatever we learn from one and bring it to the other as well.
So that's a little bit what we've been working on.

(01:18:49):
It's really just bringing auctions back.
We're going to bring in a new team this time around,
which is going to be Team Argentina,
which I'm happy about because I'm over here in Buenos Aires.
And I know the guys over here are really excited as well to participate
because they're also talking about Hash's point on being competitive
and they want to get in on the action.

(01:19:13):
and what what's your what are you constructing right now hash what are you uh developing a new
strategy for this next uh block party i have no idea right now to be honest i you're just
exactly it's the wild west right now uh and i'm just going with the flow so and how many uh do

(01:19:36):
you have just one bid axe and you would which kind of your your your strategy uh you direct buy
auction or just uh host a few uh asics at your home yeah so and i misspoke earlier i said uh 2023
but i got into bid axe in uh august of 2024 so and i bought a supra then um but since then i've

(01:20:01):
been buying gammas i have four total um i have my eye on some of the nano 3s's that we've been
talking about um but my strategy is uh to get a bit axe per month and also with the uh wrigley and

(01:20:23):
upendo uh direct sales um like right now uh hash rate for the alliance is over a pet hash right now
um and that's from wrigley direct buys uh and yeah that that's kind of my strategy is
off you know off time off season whatever um it's wrigley and then uh when we have an auction

(01:20:51):
coming up. It's auctions plus direct sales.
Yeah, and just try to get as much as we can before the floodgates open.
And Nico, are you participating? I saw you, I think you were one of the Nicos that was

(01:21:11):
in the auctions as well. Are you, what's your strategy?
sort of putting fires out in the farm.
Right, right.
I've sent some hashrate over from my mining rigs
on the one hand.
And then I've participated on a few auctions.

(01:21:35):
But yeah, it's usually kind of manning behind the scenes
to make sure things stay up and running.
The one who really makes sure that everything runs smoothly
has been Evan, the last few block parties.
but I'll be kind of taking kind of over a little bit on the next one.
So we, we, we centralized, man, you got to distribute the, the,

(01:21:58):
the roles. So, you know, we need the sustainable,
we need the sustainable Nico.
That's what we're going for. It's just, it's just been fun. I mean,
this community is awesome. You know, I would love to move, you know,
I keep thinking when we hit a block, it's going to spread from Nostra to X to whatever socials, the Reddits, the Bitcoin forums.

(01:22:25):
The legend will grow.
And I just want to take a moment to kind of cherish the community right now because we're all doing this with hopium.
Once we actually have some proof of concept and we have a block in our belt, things are going to get real.
And, you know, I'd like to just keep steering the community ship the way we can.

(01:22:49):
And the more participation, the better.
And really, you know, at the core of this, the sustainable factor of this is really the community and the heartbeat of us.
and how we, you know, you can have a rebellion and have fun while you're doing it.
Right, Hash?
Oh, hell yeah.

(01:23:12):
As long as the community stays alive, it's not a question of if but when we hit a block.
And I think once we do hit a block, that'll be the tipping point to where everybody will be like,
holy shit, this community just hit a block.
Like, I want to be part of that.
and keep that momentum building.

(01:23:35):
All right.
Nico, to kind of close this out,
is there a target date for the next block party?
And is there a window, a target window,
mid-July or early in next week, whatever?
Yeah, so I think we should be finishing up
the development work that we need this coming week.

(01:23:57):
And we want to do a dry run with my developers
basically to make sure and test everything out
to see if it doesn't make sure things don't break.
I want to say tentatively,
looks like we can probably,
if we push really hard and we're a little reckless,
we may be able to kick it off next Saturday.

(01:24:19):
It would be safer to do it probably the following week.
But I think that's the timeframe we're looking at
between one to two weeks.
I'm all for getting it right, man.
in another week. I mean, we have a very low time preference, right? Uh, we, we don't have, uh,
the mining bills to pay. Uh, so, um, for sure. Yeah. Awesome. Uh, hash, any closing words?

(01:24:42):
Uh, put me on the spot. Uh, no, uh, thanks for having me on. It was, it was a pleasure. This is
my debut on my very first podcast. So thank you for that. Um, I think as a community, as an alliance
moving forward. Like I said, it's not a matter of if but when we hit a block. And once we do that,

(01:25:04):
then the sky's the limit. So and it's great to be a part of this movement. Like I've said before,
back in the day, when Bitcoin was just getting started, mining difficulty was very low.
So now it's extremely high, just like the exchange rate with Cuck Bucks.

(01:25:28):
But it's nice to be a part of that movement now and seeing it kind of transform back to the community.
So stay strong.
Hash on.
Whoa.
Stay strong.
Hash on.
I'm making it a T-shirt hash.
Thank you.
Nico, any closing words from you?

(01:25:52):
No, I just wanted to thank both of you for being so important
and instrumental in building the community here, and I totally agree.
I think both for Evan and myself, one of the things we've loved the most
about building Upendo ad and seeing the impact that it's had
has been the community aspect, and that's really awesome to see.

(01:26:14):
so yeah
the one that we usually use
which I like to hash is
stay humble and hash sats
that's our close out
love it
alright well my son just broke down the door
so I'm going to close this out here
and all these links

(01:26:35):
so whether it's Wrigley
up into
the Alliance Telegram
even Crypto Cloaks
the Alliance Bidax
that he did for us.
I'm going to post it all in the show notes.
Thank you everyone who's listening live right now
on zap.stream or across Noster.
Thanks for everybody that's listening

(01:26:55):
via the podcast recording.
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(01:27:16):
So we appreciate you and we'll see you next Friday.