Speaker 1: It's a big super cycle and I think that quantum
Speaker 1: will come along. I think it's very very premature, it's
Speaker 1: extremely expensive to what it's going to do.
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Speaker 2: the biggest players in crypto trust Bitgo. Hey, folks, welcome
Speaker 2: into the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host Tony Edward,
Speaker 2: and join me. Today is Frank Holmes, who is the
Speaker 2: co founder of High Blockchain Technologies, the CEO and CIO
Speaker 2: of Macro Global Investors. This is not Frank's first time
Speaker 2: on the pod. Frank, it's great to see you again.
Speaker 3: That's great to be with you, especially when we get
Speaker 3: a relief bitcoin rally, we get a relief enter in
Speaker 3: the Straits hormage and we get a nice rally and Bitcoin.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you know, Bitcoin trading around seventy three thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: So do you expect this really f rally to continue, Frank.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, when we look at previous downdrops from
Speaker 1: designsters like October the tenth that took place with different
Speaker 1: nexts with an Algo blowout, and that really capitulated nineteen
Speaker 1: billion dollars of selling a Tolaro damage the spooks markets. Historically,
Speaker 1: when we've see these things, they fall up to eighty percent.
Speaker 1: So this one's like fifty two percent. And I think
Speaker 1: that the bottom is here. And I think a big
Speaker 1: part is the growth of ETFs in the past year,
Speaker 1: so rebuffers that type of decline that all of a
Speaker 1: sudden people become bottom fissures, they come out, they look
Speaker 1: for bottoms they think it's bottom. Whereas before we had
Speaker 1: a very small bitcoin ecosystem and now has grown dramatically.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And an example would be like the black Rock
Speaker 2: Bitcoin ETF the IBIT. Even though there have been small outflows,
Speaker 2: you know, doing this downturn, the majority of the holdings
Speaker 2: is still their frank right, just sitting there, unlike anything
Speaker 2: we've seen in the past bear markets.
Speaker 1: Yes, and it's absorbed. When you look at Russia, China,
Speaker 1: China mining again, but that's probably for the government and Iran.
Speaker 1: The collections. The three were grued about thirty percent of
Speaker 1: the world's Bitcoin mining hashing Power Index, so they are
Speaker 1: blowing out all to get us dollars that are bitcoin,
Speaker 1: and that really sort of accelerated. I think some of
Speaker 1: us declined, but it was well absorbed, this supply coming
Speaker 1: from these three countries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's we know, there's almost I guess now
Speaker 2: it's less than one million bitcoin left to be mined.
Speaker 2: Just recently they hit that one million number mark, but
Speaker 2: folks have been mining since then, including high and we
Speaker 2: have another one hundred years, which is you know, when
Speaker 2: you try to think about it, it's kind of crazy, but
Speaker 2: that's how the algorithm is programmed, So do you believe
Speaker 2: there's going to be more competition to mine bitcoin from
Speaker 2: nation states and even energy companies and things like that.
Speaker 1: I think the global network, a decentralized network, is very significant,
Speaker 1: especially in a turmoil world. And we're seeing this in Iran.
Speaker 1: You know, this is a classic where they had a
Speaker 1: central command, but they broke out into thirty two different
Speaker 1: areas bases around the country, so that the central command
Speaker 1: got killed. That the other ones can all of a
Speaker 1: sudden operate at their own will, and that's made up
Speaker 1: more challenging even taking out the central core. So you
Speaker 1: can see that in war, and you can see that
Speaker 1: the importance of the bitcoin network is so global, so
Speaker 1: decentralized that it's like watching those Star Star Trek movies
Speaker 1: where the force shield gets hit and it bends in
Speaker 1: and it comes right back out. It bends in, it
Speaker 1: comes right back out. So I think that that's what
Speaker 1: we're living with in the bitcoin ecosystem. And I think
Speaker 1: that all these data centers that are focused as Tier
Speaker 1: one data centers in the ecosystem, they will want to
Speaker 1: become very important for moving capital around the world.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And the next bitcoint having is in April twenty
Speaker 2: twenty eight. Is it too really to answer this question,
Speaker 2: but I'm curious how high is preparing for that and
Speaker 2: as the difficulty increases, and.
Speaker 1: So well, it's an ongoing question because when we look
Speaker 1: at ACY chips, they do have a declining value, and
Speaker 1: the only way to resuscitate an old chip is to
Speaker 1: get cheap electricity, and usually you have to get government
Speaker 1: subsidized electricity to get that cheap two cent electricity. So
Speaker 1: bitcoin itself, you have to always be investing in new technology.
Speaker 1: We don't like this binge buying. We're always buying and
Speaker 1: upgrading our chips. So that's been our strategy. And I
Speaker 1: think I've learned this in South Texas fracking. So you
Speaker 1: can hit a well and you get one thousand barrels
Speaker 1: a day, but a year later it's only one hundred.
Speaker 1: So you have to maintain that consumes drilling to maintain
Speaker 1: that thousand barrels a day and to maintain your efficiency.
Speaker 1: Where what we witness was really incredible that the ACY
Speaker 1: chips were originally almost like three hundred jewels per second
Speaker 1: consumption of electricity and now they're pushing ten and eleven.
Speaker 1: So you've seen Moore's law basically show up in the
Speaker 1: acy chips and so will they get down to five
Speaker 1: or six jewels per second. So what we've been doing
Speaker 1: is buying some of the new ones that have very
Speaker 1: low consumption of electricity. And during this past quarter it
Speaker 1: has been really difficult. If you'd notice that most of
Speaker 1: the bitcoin miners have stopped giving it their monthly production
Speaker 1: because we had a freeze in North America, we had
Speaker 1: a heat wave in the southern hemisphere, so we had
Speaker 1: all these sort of outages, and you also had the
Speaker 1: difficulty rising. And so what we found we had to
Speaker 1: do was retool our firmware so that we could become
Speaker 1: or energy efficient because hot does function over nine time zones,
Speaker 1: five languages, and three continents. So we still drive every
Speaker 1: day to meet are we being efficient? Every morning we
Speaker 1: meet around the world to make sure what machines are
Speaker 1: plugged and plugged out and when is the delivery of
Speaker 1: one hundred new name machines coming in.
Speaker 2: Pardon the interruption. Hi, I'm Tony. I'm the host of
Speaker 2: the Thinking Crypto podcast. I wanted to ask you if
Speaker 2: you can please support the podcast by hitting the like
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Speaker 2: the five star rating. I'll let you get back to
Speaker 2: the content. Thank you so much, And are you leveraging
Speaker 2: AI in any way during the mining process?
Speaker 1: You know, when we first launched Hime, being the first
Speaker 1: cryptal mining company, it was really originally GPU chips were
Speaker 1: using from AMD and we were mining ethereum and at
Speaker 1: one time we became six percent of that network. So
Speaker 1: we understood GPU chips are much more like driving a
Speaker 1: Lamborghini Ferrari than a AC chip is like a Bronco
Speaker 1: or a jeep in the difficulty. So we became quite
Speaker 1: skilled on it, and in twenty two we start to
Speaker 1: pivot away to buy Nvidia chips to mine ethereum antil
Speaker 1: Etherorum went away and we started going into AI. So
Speaker 1: in fact we're the first to really go into AI.
Speaker 1: And now we have a run rate pushing about three
Speaker 1: million a month and we see that that will scale
Speaker 1: another five hundred five fold this year. On the transfer
Speaker 1: and the other big learning curve has been a tier
Speaker 1: one data center cash about a million dollars of megawat
Speaker 1: with your ACIC machines in them. When you go to
Speaker 1: Tier three, which Video likes to call an AI factory,
Speaker 1: which I totally agree with this concept, you're talking about
Speaker 1: thirty three million dollars per megawat. It's thirty three times
Speaker 1: more expensive. So some of the companies say they're jumping
Speaker 1: into it and they're partnering with hyperscalers to go use
Speaker 1: a repurpose their their centers. I think that's great. What
Speaker 1: I'm going to share with you is that it's much
Speaker 1: more difficult to build those Tier three data centers. Just
Speaker 1: the air conditioning is forty percent of the electricity, and
Speaker 1: there's a big backlog of fifty weeks to get a
Speaker 1: lot of the HVAC equipment. So it's not so fast
Speaker 1: like getting an adminery showing up at the door, and
Speaker 1: it takes us six hours to unwrap the plastic cug
Speaker 1: it in and as mining, when we get a chip
Speaker 1: that's GPU chip, it takes us six weeks to get
Speaker 1: it working. It's so sensitive. It's like, like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: a Lamborghini or Bugatti going over a bumpy road and
Speaker 1: you need a wheel alignment right away. The GPU chips
Speaker 1: are much more air conditioning consumed because you're built of
Speaker 1: brain and the costs for overall running them. So we
Speaker 1: know what we're doing in that end of it, and
Speaker 1: we're really excited about what we've been able to show
Speaker 1: that Tier win data centers transform into Tier three data
Speaker 1: centers faster than starting from scratch for a Tier three
Speaker 1: data center. And that's what we've seen in America, and
Speaker 1: we've seen this in Canada, and we've seen in Abilene,
Speaker 1: Texas where they were sourcing classic bitcoin minors, sourcing surplus electricity,
Speaker 1: can some power from solar, from wind and flare gas.
Speaker 1: Now it's a five hundred billion dollars spend for chat
Speaker 1: GPT because they secure the energy and the land. So
Speaker 1: if you're in the data center business and you're in
Speaker 1: the AI factory building, you have to go in source electricity,
Speaker 1: then the land. And who did it first? Bitcoin miners.
Speaker 1: So bookliners are all of a sudden going through a
Speaker 1: new generational leap of going into the AI infrastructure buildout,
Speaker 1: in particular these concept of AI factories. The reason why
Speaker 1: I say that is that most data centers report it
Speaker 1: to the CFO, and the CFO always wants to drive
Speaker 1: down costs. Today you're seeing that the AI factors report
Speaker 1: the CEO, who wants to use it to drive revenue
Speaker 1: and to drive cash flow. So the mindset is totally different.
Speaker 1: And so that's what HIVES basically has been. This twin
Speaker 1: engines to monetize the same megawatch through different cycles. A
Speaker 1: six produce institutional great horsepower. And that's the other part
Speaker 1: we found is that we don't have an ATM machine
Speaker 1: and a data center spinning out little gold bitcoins. It's
Speaker 1: just like, I can't believe sometimes these government agencies think this.
Speaker 1: We sell hashing power to Foundry, which is SOCKS one
Speaker 1: and two compliant in America, and they then pay us
Speaker 1: in uncirculated or virgin bitcoin. When it comes to AI,
Speaker 1: we sell our computational power to users that run their
Speaker 1: big language, large language models and they pay us in
Speaker 1: US dollars. There's really no that none of that data
Speaker 1: or bitcoin is in our data center or in our
Speaker 1: wallet near our facility. It's always done in the cyber world.
Speaker 2: It's very fascinating, Frank to your point, bitcoin miners rate
Speaker 2: of pioneers in having this dual model if you want
Speaker 2: to call that right, the bitcoin mining operation side of
Speaker 2: the business and now AI data SAT center support a
Speaker 2: type of side of the business. Is the model moving forward,
Speaker 2: you know, as AI is becoming more prominent, obviously is
Speaker 2: part of our economy and so forth.
Speaker 1: Oh, there's no doubt. And then and the other part
Speaker 1: I share with you a lot of government policy makers
Speaker 1: and agencies they think that this streaming is free. They
Speaker 1: think that Netflix is free, YouTube is free. It just
Speaker 1: doesn't happen without data centers. And what we're also witnessing
Speaker 1: is the huge spend in military for sovereign security by
Speaker 1: nation by nation. So when you look at the NATO
Speaker 1: spend in the past few years, and you take a
Speaker 1: look at America that when they went in under Royal
Speaker 1: Reagan to go after Noriega in Panama, twenty three American
Speaker 1: soldiers were killed going after Maduro, not one. Why is that, Well,
Speaker 1: it's about AI, and it's about the synchronization of AI
Speaker 1: with a satellite, with an aircraft carrier, with an F fifteen,
Speaker 1: with a helicopter, and with special forces and soldiers. I
Speaker 1: was reading that they were able to find that one
Speaker 1: of the pilots that was lost in Iran last week
Speaker 1: they can detect a heartbeat forty miles away. That's AI
Speaker 1: and so we just have to recognize that it's going
Speaker 1: to be a game changer for MRI for looking for cancer.
Speaker 1: It's going to help us lived longer how they analyzed
Speaker 1: blood tests. In addition to national security issues at concerns,
Speaker 1: it's really significant game changer. So I feel excited that
Speaker 1: we're helping humanity when we think of what we're building
Speaker 1: out and transforming bitcoin data centers, not all of them,
Speaker 1: but several of our data centers into sovereign data centers.
Speaker 1: Of particular in Canada on the border of Maine and Brunswick,
Speaker 1: it's seventy megawatts will become fifty megawatts of high performance compute.
Speaker 1: And then in Toronto we have other assets which work
Speaker 1: in the transformation. And then northern Sweden we're going through
Speaker 1: another transformation of a bitcoin mining facility to go into
Speaker 1: high performance compute.
Speaker 2: And I read on hives website some major news items
Speaker 2: I think some of you alluded to. Just recently. We're
Speaker 2: high reaches at AI coll milestone in Paraguay and the
Speaker 2: expansion of the data center footprint in British Columbia, AMC
Speaker 2: Robots and Hive Announcer collaboration to advanced EI driven robotics
Speaker 2: compute infrastructure. Do you guys are doing a lot?
Speaker 1: We are, And when you look at a simple small
Speaker 1: new NASDAC company, I think they were spending a million
Speaker 1: dollars a month on accessing those types of Nvidia chips
Speaker 1: we talked about. So for us to go and get
Speaker 1: that business directly, you know, we have built it up
Speaker 1: to about ten thousand customers in eighty countries are renting
Speaker 1: our power. You call that compute power. Because we take
Speaker 1: electrons and run them through these GPU chips and someone's
Speaker 1: renting that. It's really quite significant. So I'm really thrilled
Speaker 1: that high business. I mentioned earlier a dual engine digital
Speaker 1: infrastructure platform which is converting low cost clean power into
Speaker 1: two institutional products r GIN bitcoin from sok to one
Speaker 1: and two US audited pool and then contracting with our
Speaker 1: GPU chips for our compute how are sold in dollars
Speaker 1: and multi year terms. Sometimes people will rent for a
Speaker 1: week from us and other times they can rent for
Speaker 1: a year. Are very excited. And what we partner with
Speaker 1: in Canada in particular is Bell Canada, which is the
Speaker 1: largest telecom and they've done an incredible one eighty pivot
Speaker 1: into these this concept of AI factories from having a
Speaker 1: data center expense so now generating revenue. And so we're
Speaker 1: a their strategic partner in Canada in this conversion and
Speaker 1: we're using some of their data centers as fast as
Speaker 1: they're up. We're putting in our GPW chips to get
Speaker 1: a running and generate compute.
Speaker 2: Pal Frank, There's been a lot of talks about quantum
Speaker 2: computing is a threat to bigwoin bitcoin mining and potentially
Speaker 2: to the AI side of the business as well. Is
Speaker 2: this simply a narrative? You know, maybe short sellers are
Speaker 2: pushing this narrative because they you know, they want prices
Speaker 2: they go down, of course. Or is there a little
Speaker 2: bit of a threat and companies like yours, like Huys
Speaker 2: will eventually upgrade the equipment to have quantum resistant technology
Speaker 2: and things like that.
Speaker 1: I think it's early to say we jump into a
Speaker 1: quant that tech knowlogies very early. It's it's evolving quickly.
Speaker 1: It's just the same as saying that AI is all
Speaker 1: the negative narratives so often is always negative negative. When
Speaker 1: I watch all the guys shorting the stalks and coming
Speaker 1: out on CNBC, why it's a bubble, uh, not recognizing
Speaker 1: that that anthropic comes out with a run rate of
Speaker 1: thirty billion dollars. Uh. You know, that's an incredible growth.
Speaker 1: And we look at chat GPT, how fast it grew
Speaker 1: to a biggion dollars a month in revenue. So it's
Speaker 1: it's a big super cycle. And I think that quantum
Speaker 1: will come along. I think it's very very premature. It's
Speaker 1: extremely expensive to do what it's going to do. But
Speaker 1: I think what if you think about VideA in particular,
Speaker 1: and Vidia was a gaming company. It made ships for gamers,
Speaker 1: and their real inflection point was two thousand and ten
Speaker 1: when they started focusing on taking those GPU chips for AI.
Speaker 1: And so now where are we today. We're twenty twenty six,
Speaker 1: so we're talking about sixteen years later. So when we
Speaker 1: talk about quantum, it's like it's going to be tomorrow. Well,
Speaker 1: it's just not true. It's a long way off. And
Speaker 1: how things will evolve. How to show far shown has
Speaker 1: been able to go through two havings, Pivot, have the
Speaker 1: first AI platform where we're generating high barger revue ourselves
Speaker 1: and now we're scaling that business. Like last year we
Speaker 1: scaled our bitcoin four hundred percent of revenue and cash flow,
Speaker 1: and now we're going to scale the HPC business. We're
Speaker 1: in a nice position for growth. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And I've been telling a lot of people I
Speaker 2: feel like this is just narrators being pushed. You know where,
Speaker 2: what was this narrative before our bitcoin went to one
Speaker 2: twenty six last year? All of a sudden the price
Speaker 2: starts going down, and they're in this. They're pushing this
Speaker 2: quantum narrative very strongly.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's always looking for something negative. And AI has been,
Speaker 1: like I said, has been around for hedge funds that
Speaker 1: have been using it for a long time. The number
Speaker 1: one profest performing heads front the world mathematician was using
Speaker 1: uh these GPU chips built Jim Simmons for renaissance technology,
Speaker 1: and no one's ever come close to his returns of
Speaker 1: what he did generated for investors. So I think that
Speaker 1: that the evolution for everyone to grasp us the fact
Speaker 1: that we got open chat a few years back, and
Speaker 1: that was the wake up call to wow, this is
Speaker 1: quite incredible. And I use all four of them. I
Speaker 1: use Perplexity, I use rock, I use clode UH and
Speaker 1: I use shot GPT and they're all different. They all
Speaker 1: give you different information and nuances. And the biggest thing
Speaker 1: I shoul share with the listeners you really have to
Speaker 1: dig down with the quality of your prompt, the depth
Speaker 1: and breadth of your plant. And I sometimes find myself
Speaker 1: writing an essay of two hundred and fifty words in
Speaker 1: a prompt so that I can get great data coming
Speaker 1: out of it. And then I was reading that a
Speaker 1: person that created a claw, which was really highlighted by
Speaker 1: Jensen at his big conference a couple of weeks back,
Speaker 1: was a basically self taught coder from Vienna, and he
Speaker 1: changes the whole world that you don't have to know
Speaker 1: how to code these five languages. You have to know
Speaker 1: how to write a language that is English Spanish. Usually
Speaker 1: got to be able to type in a great prompt
Speaker 1: and it will then turn around and start in that
Speaker 1: language you want. If you want it in Python, it
Speaker 1: will all of a sudden create a whole compliance system,
Speaker 1: the whole sales and marketing system for you in Python.
Speaker 1: But before you had to go hire a three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars Python coder. Now you and I can do it.
Speaker 1: That the game changer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's incredible the amount of power you have
Speaker 2: at your fingertips with these AI programs and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's very, very exciting to be part of
Speaker 1: this change for humanity. The infrastructure that we're putting in
Speaker 1: around the world.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Frank, here in the United States, we are trying
Speaker 2: to get crypto legislation passed. It's being held up a bit.
Speaker 2: You know, the banks are fighting back on stable coin yield,
Speaker 2: but it seems like we're going to get something potentially
Speaker 2: this year. What impact that you think this has on
Speaker 2: the adoption of bitcoin and the growth of the bitcoin
Speaker 2: mining industry that you know, we have the kind of
Speaker 2: the guardrails in place, and not necessarily a bigcoin needs
Speaker 2: much of that, but rather to allow more capital innovation
Speaker 2: to have.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a tension between what is a micro phenomenon
Speaker 1: and what is micro. So when I talk about micro's
Speaker 1: specifically your question in America, but if you are in
Speaker 1: the Beltway in DC, you have to wrestle with China
Speaker 1: has weaponized gold as an alternative acid class and to
Speaker 1: de dollarize and get petrol dollars to be converted into
Speaker 1: Chinese wand as they buy more gold to say we're legitimate.
Speaker 1: There's this big battle. And what you've seen now is
Speaker 1: that Chinese have invested are loaned seventy five percent of
Speaker 1: the United Nations countries. There's one hundred and ninety three
Speaker 1: countries in the United Nations. They have invested in one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty of them. So their tentacles are into
Speaker 1: don't trade in dollars. So all comes to this incredible
Speaker 1: company called Teather that shows you that people in emerging
Speaker 1: markets they want to own US dollars. And it's a
Speaker 1: stable coin system. No America is to own it, No
Speaker 1: Europeans own it, but it grows to a population of
Speaker 1: about four hundred million wallets, it trades that it's the
Speaker 1: most profitable group of software coders you can think of.
Speaker 1: I mean that we're talking thirteen bigion dollars of profits
Speaker 1: for the one hundred and seventy five employees is really
Speaker 1: quite amazing. And what I think Washington is looking to
Speaker 1: try to do is to embrace this technology, to embrace
Speaker 1: the stable coin because they want the rest of the
Speaker 1: world to own US dollars because it helps fund all
Speaker 1: the deficits and it helps fund liquidity around the world,
Speaker 1: and so we are going with some of the big
Speaker 1: money center banks trying to stop this because they're worried
Speaker 1: about money market funds would leave the banks and then
Speaker 1: go to go to this stable coin paying rewards or
Speaker 1: a coupon, and that's your battle that's going to take place.
Speaker 1: But I think the macro dynamic is probably more significant
Speaker 1: of pushing back the banks of saying you know what,
Speaker 1: we're going to pit because strangely enough, the Chinese came
Speaker 1: out with their stable coin and their PEG rewards. They're
Speaker 1: doing everything to undermine the global network of trading in
Speaker 1: US dollars. And so that is the macro thesis where
Speaker 1: Teather shows it works. They also have a very successful
Speaker 1: gold stable coin. It's really profound how much as grown
Speaker 1: and significance. Then, so I think the US government wants
Speaker 1: to have their stable coin and to be able to
Speaker 1: pay those title rewards, and that means that US dollar
Speaker 1: is able to continue to be the dominant keep rates lower.
Speaker 1: Some people believe that masks inflation. If we go to
Speaker 1: the basket. Inflation came out this past week. If you
Speaker 1: looked at the basket in nineteen eighty, some economists are
Speaker 1: saying inflation is nine percent, it's not three point sapat,
Speaker 1: so you have a negative real rate of return. So
Speaker 1: I think that this debate goes back and forth, and
Speaker 1: goal bumps like to jump on and bitcoin fanatics like
Speaker 1: to go jump on the same part because they really
Speaker 1: don't like the government deficit. But what's different is that
Speaker 1: the US dollar is global and bitcoin is global, and
Speaker 1: as we get more tethers or US comes with their
Speaker 1: own and more stable coins with US dollars, then it
Speaker 1: becomes the centralized like bitcoin, and it creates us that
Speaker 1: either you buy this stable coin with US dollars or
Speaker 1: better liquidity and stability. And if you want to move
Speaker 1: other assets that you want to have the ultimate of
Speaker 1: scarcity is bitcoin, then you go on bitcoin. So bitcoin
Speaker 1: will become wealth preservation like goal is, and trade will
Speaker 1: be come stable coins. And I think we're witnessing is
Speaker 1: coming back. Is the big money center banks want to
Speaker 1: slow it down so they can run as fast as
Speaker 1: they can to get their own stable coins out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I've been telling a lot of people
Speaker 2: about that. Look, their need incumbents and they feel threatened
Speaker 2: right disruptive technologies at their doorstep, But many of them
Speaker 2: have talked about launching their own stable coins, and to
Speaker 2: your point, the geopolitical landscape, the US is trying to
Speaker 2: push US duller stable coins across the globe. So I
Speaker 2: think that, you know, factor that catalyst outweighs what the
Speaker 2: banks are trying to do as far as slowing things down.
Speaker 1: Yes, freak.
Speaker 2: You know here in the United States we've got some
Speaker 2: level of a strategic bigcoin reserve. We're still ironing out
Speaker 2: a few details, and some other countries across the globe
Speaker 2: have also started doing this.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that that's going to further grow?
Speaker 2: You know, more countries is going to look to establish
Speaker 2: a bigcoin reserve, you know kind of they have their
Speaker 2: gold reserves at their central banks and things like that.
Speaker 1: I think it will accelerate if the Republican Party wins
Speaker 1: the next big election that you need the sort of
Speaker 1: an eight year run to get the rest of the
Speaker 1: countries really buying into it. I think the most technology
Speaker 1: advanced leaders in the world will take a look at
Speaker 1: having that. And so if they do catch illegal trades
Speaker 1: and they confiscate that wallet, they're not going to really
Speaker 1: sell it right away. They're going to start building a reserve.
Speaker 1: I think that that will be the first step, because
Speaker 1: what often you know, they go confiscate cars and these
Speaker 1: things where they arrest are Narco and they took away
Speaker 1: all of his toys and they have a big auction
Speaker 1: and the real estate and Texas they're going to have
Speaker 1: a big auction. Well, I think that you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about the auction to get those dollars. You
Speaker 1: just turn around and convert those stable coins from one
Speaker 1: controlled entity into the government's stockpile and they start to
Speaker 1: collect it that way. I think that that will be
Speaker 1: a journey that will be easily adopted by countries. Then
Speaker 1: you will take a look at it as being like goal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I often have to remind myself like bitcoin
Speaker 2: is still a teenager for just sixteen years in and
Speaker 2: sometimes you want things to go faster, but it does
Speaker 2: take time. In governments, they don't move very fast.
Speaker 1: Yes, And I can share with you in our experience
Speaker 1: in Sweden with government agencies and in Canada, like I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, they think you have this ATM machine in
Speaker 1: your data center and it's just not so. And you're
Speaker 1: selling a compute power one is harsh power and is
Speaker 1: recognizing that and it's also recognizing that countries like Sweden
Speaker 1: and Canada they never they really would after their fintech business.
Speaker 1: And bitcoin is a critical spoke in the fintech ecosystem
Speaker 1: and it's recognized as stable coins is another spoke in
Speaker 1: that wheel. And when we talk to Canadian banks, oh,
Speaker 1: we would like to do your data center business, but
Speaker 1: you'll have to go to New York City because that's
Speaker 1: where fintech analysts are, that's where the fintech conferences are.
Speaker 1: And in Sweden they go after their biggest unicorn as
Speaker 1: a fintech company with all these incredible overreaching that they're
Speaker 1: not doing their aml KYC correct, which is just nonsense
Speaker 1: because it's all automated, it's all with AI and so
Speaker 1: it's just the banks in those countries are oligopoly. So
Speaker 1: Canada has five banks and they blocked out they controlled
Speaker 1: ninety four percent of all savings and investing, so they
Speaker 1: basically block out adoption, innovation, and the same thing happens
Speaker 1: in countries in Europe. It's predominantly we always think of America,
Speaker 1: it's it's banking. No, it's the beer business. The beer
Speaker 1: business in America is an oligopoly. There's only a few
Speaker 1: real brewers. You know, you take a look at how
Speaker 1: much they control all the network. The banking in most
Speaker 1: other countries is an oligopoly, and there's so there's this protectionism,
Speaker 1: and I think with America it's not. I think we have.
Speaker 1: When I first moved here thirty five years ago, there
Speaker 1: was like fourteen thousand banks, and now they're down to
Speaker 1: seven thousand. But still there's many state charters and many
Speaker 1: federal charters. So it's a it's more decentralized, dynamic ecosystem
Speaker 1: in America, and so I think it will come through
Speaker 1: and America will show that leadership with other countries over
Speaker 1: the next six to eight years. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Great, great insights there, Frank, you guys are doing a
Speaker 2: lot and we covered a lot. But anything else that's
Speaker 2: on your roadmap that you want to highlight, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's just treaty for people to be thankful
Speaker 1: and grateful that we have this incredible country that that
Speaker 1: rewards innovation. Everyone wants to have the story their kids
Speaker 1: in America that Steve jobs in the garage in Ben's Apple.
Speaker 1: That sort of dream is very much instilled, and we
Speaker 1: see that not so in other countries because we function
Speaker 1: these other countries. So we are trying to do as
Speaker 1: much as possible in education and Paraguay, and we started
Speaker 1: with kids schools, so every kid's school within one kilometer
Speaker 1: is getting new air condition because it's very hot there,
Speaker 1: and they're getting new lighting, new chalkboards, new bathrooms, everything
Speaker 1: new and starlink. We're bringing in starlink for the for
Speaker 1: the principals and teachers so that they have Wi Fi
Speaker 1: in those schools. Wherever they're here are our facilities. So
Speaker 1: we're doing everything to try to instill that American dream
Speaker 1: and the same thing. You know, you go to northern Sweden,
Speaker 1: the big thing is hockey. Everything is hockey. It's interesting,
Speaker 1: but still the idea that you could be another Steve Jobs,
Speaker 1: it's not totally there. They're going to relate to, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I could be Spotify or maybe I could be
Speaker 1: a gamer, but that idea of inspiring that is something
Speaker 1: that we feel pretty good about what Hive does. Wherever
Speaker 1: we put a data center.
Speaker 2: I love it, Frank, that's amazing. I love the work
Speaker 2: that you guys are doing there and helping folks in
Speaker 2: these countries.
Speaker 1: Frank.
Speaker 2: Always a pleasure, and I'm sure we're going to do
Speaker 2: another episode later this year, and now looking forward to
Speaker 2: seeing you maybe at another conference here. But thank you
Speaker 2: so much for joining me.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you and buy the dip in Hotal.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, thank you so much for tuning in. Please hit
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Speaker 2: Thank you so much