Fin Creighton: Welcome back to the show. Today we are joined by Daz, co-author of Beers for Bitcoin, co-founder of Looking Glass Education and someone who spent a lot of time studying the intersection between Bitcoin and energy. I'm really looking forward to this conversation because we're not just going to talk about Bitcoin, but also Bitcoin mining, energy grids and why Bitcoin might actually be helping energy rather than harming it. thanks for joining. How are doing?

Daz: Do it well, mate. Thanks very much for the invite. Super pumped to be chatting to you today.

Fin Creighton: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I guess if we start right at the beginning, before we get into it, what was it that led you to Bitcoin in the first place?

Daz: Well, that journey is largely, you know, I think a lot of people can relate to it. My main job is an electrician. I've got an engineering degree in ⁓ electrical and electronic engineering, but found myself having a second or third even part-time job and that was learning how to invest. Wasn't enough that I had to go out and grind and earn the money. My next job was learning how to keep it and grow it. that's really my arc into Bitcoin was as an electrician, I get paid quite well. ended up the hustle and the grind and working overtime and working away and making those sacrifices. ⁓ sort of found out that my money wasn't really serving me. Couldn't it, therefore how do I invest it? That's typically in Australia through real estate, but I'm not a real estate investor. I don't like real estate as an investment in general, never have. For a number reasons we can probably talk about, but I went down the rabbit hole. ⁓ taught myself how to basically just read every I got myself on ⁓ hold of every podcast, YouTube clip, real vision subscriptions, just trying to learn how to invest. So I gave myself a task to give myself a full 12 months before I invested a single cent because I didn't know what I was doing, didn't know what an equity really was, ⁓ a dividend really was, ⁓ bonds work, none of this stuff that an electrician ⁓ have to know. But the arc that I took. Took myself, read a heap of books and then sort found my around COVID, around that 2019 into 2020 era, have done the homework and was really ready to put my capital to work in investing and then was looking around and realised that there was nothing of value to purchase. I was a value investor. And ⁓ you it's a really long sort of short. What I now know backwards looking is that all other assets, when your money doesn't work, all other assets attract a monetary premium. And now that we are trading in all asset classes to multiples of what we could otherwise consider fair value, and now we know that to be monetary premium.

Fin Creighton: Lots to click on right there. So when you did then find Bitcoin through all of this study and research before actually investing anything, what or how has Bitcoin changed the way you think about money and think about the world as well?

Daz: Yeah, it's a really good question, mate. And really the crux of the argument, right, is what is money? That was the big arc, the big finding was getting to this discovery that attracted now a monetary premium. I didn't really understand. that solution. didn't understand that explanation until I understood what money was. So of the catalysts for me ⁓ down that rabbit hole was to understand the why other things are now trading at a multiple above fair value and what it really boiled down to was the discovery of what money. ⁓ Asking question, I was more of a gold bug firstly before I was a Bitcoin bug. But then logical question sort of come up. The gold thesis rung true for me, it's right, ⁓ is that they can print fiat currency, at a thin air. That was a big revelation that this thing even existed, right? I sort of took money for granted, didn't really understand what fear currency was or how it worked. all of that was intertwined, this discovery around markets, bonds, how bonds work? How does money actually come about? ⁓ How it get injected into the economy? What are the byproducts of that process? ⁓ Finding that hang on, this thing we call money or we're told is money is not really money at all because it doesn't some of the properties that historically, when you study monetary history, there are a few properties that a good money should be able to solve, and one of those is a store of value. And when you look at fiat currency and how it works, was a quick realization that, on, that's not ticking one of the main boxes for what money is for, and that is as a worker, right? And this is why second job was to try and learn how to invest, right? It's because simply, money should be the savings vehicle, right? It's a battery of your time and energy. So I, as an electrician, go out and I... you know, swap my time and energy, blood, and tears for money. And that money should serve me into the future, but it doesn't, right? So when your money doesn't work, us as humans turn towards any other thing that's not nailed down in order to try and store value. And that's now expressory, real estate, equities, basically any other asset, because fundamentally, our money doesn't work. So the thesis for me was then, well, why doesn't our money work? And what did we have beforehand? And that's sort of where journey sort of went through with the gold market and I became a gold bucks going well gold works right that's that's the store of value that's been the store of value for 6,000 years but guess the intellectually curious person that I am ⁓ ask the next question as well, why did it fail? So if gold is so great, how did we end up on this fear currency path already? And quite simply, think Lyn Alden puts it best if, those who aren't familiar with Lyn Alden, she's probably one of the best writers in the space. She's written a phenomenal book called Broken Money. It's dry, it's a tome, it's tough to get through, but well and truly worth your time and effort if you're interested in monetary history. But she sort of outlines the fact that gold couldn't keep up with technology. we sort of hit the digital age, ⁓ early back as the 1970s, we started globalization, we started capitalizing on cheaper labor in various countries, which meant imports and exports started to accelerate. ⁓ And simply, gold is not a very good way to communicate value between and settle value, settle trade when you in a global world, because it an inherent amount of trust ⁓ in in receiving into that, do you trust that metal? Do you trust the face value? No, you've probably got to go and do some sampling, melt it down, recast it, whatever the case may be. So gold didn't stand up as a very good medium in order to exchange over a globalised and increasingly expanding world. So that's really of the prime drivers for the introduction of the Fiat currency system, particularly the digital version. of that fiat currency system and then basically when you look at what made gold good looking at all these properties like store of value medium of exchange fungibility durability transferability ⁓ of these ⁓ things that if you've been in the space of Quite long time ⁓ you already know what most of those things mean but ⁓ Bitcoin then stood out to me as being ⁓ hang This is a type of currency that ticks all the boxes that made gold good But it also ticks all the boxes that made gold fail in the initial and why we ended up on fear currency So if you can meld those two worlds together then bang you've you've solved money So my whole core thesis in and around Bitcoin is that we will extract the monetary premium out of all other assets now if we look around globally we look at something and there's many arguments around what the actual world's value of of Investable assets is but it's something in the order of 900 trillion dollars, right? Now out of that 900 trillion there is a level that is fair value all of these things are worth a certain amount But it's not 900 trillion. So the whole thesis for Bitcoin is if we solve money Then it's fair to say that that money will extract some of that monetary premium out of that 900 trillion dollar basket now I don't know what that is, but I guarantee you it's not 1 trillion or 1.2 trillion wherever we're sitting right now. We peaked at 2 trillion You know, is it 20 trillion? Is it 40 trillion? Is it 100 trillion? I don't know, but I tell you it's not one. all you have to do is look ⁓ the world and you can see that there's a fixed finite supply of 21 million Bitcoin. That can't be changed. can't be created, can be destroyed, right? But it's a pretty simple thesis that if you solve money and you can convert that money, you can convert your time, energy, sweat, tears, time away from your family into a monetary good that will store value over time, then it makes sense that people will just naturally turn towards that. No one wants to be a finance guru. No one wants to be a real estate investor, really. Like my job, I enjoy being an electrician. and grind and be an electrician to be what I train for and what I'm good at. I don't want to spend my night time reading fricking 401ks and sorry, you know, the Q statements of these financial companies, the cashflow statements and reading through boring finance literature, that's what, you know, lo and behold, that's where I ended up turning to over these last couple of years. And Bitcoin's given me that freedom back, man. Like I don't waste hardly any time anymore and grinding against these financial statements. I don't need to because now I've got something that stores my value and it just so happens to outperform just about every other asset on the planet so why look elsewhere?

Fin Creighton: completely agree with you man and I'm the same as you most perceive Bitcoin as risky but I'm quite risk averse so once I understood what Bitcoin was then that was my ability then to be able to ⁓ not have to about anything for the future because like Bitcoin sorts that I can just save in Bitcoin and get on providing value to the world rather than having to, like you said, have a second part-time job of being an investor full-time. last thing I want to touch on that you've just ⁓ and you mentioned right at the start before we move on is ⁓ said you're not a massive fan of real estate and you and I both know that it's massive in Australia. It's also massive back home in the UK. What is it that you don't like about real estate?

Daz: Again, it just comes to the of the valuation. Like, real estate to me, it has a utility value, right? It provides me shelter, warmth, somewhere for my kids to sleep at night. That's definitely got value. But, you know, I'm sitting in this brick and mortar house here. It's probably worth a million bucks. Is it worth a million bucks? No. utility value is probably a couple hundred green. Right? And this is where, you know, us as Australians, we don't have a big, huge stock market like the US does. ASX is pretty small in comparison. We've got access to those other markets, but again, you're introducing extra risk when you start exploring those due to currency drift and all those sort of things. from an investment standpoint, the ASX isn't actually a huge available market for all of Australians to pile their... poll their capital into, plus it's a little bit riskier than the US being so small, and it's hard to understand. So through decades long government policy to support that real estate market, what we've now done is a huge extraction and a huge abstraction rather what is fair value and fair utility value and basically just a monetary premium. So ⁓ can talk to just about anybody in Australia. How do you get ahead if you ask them that question and number one, one response is buy an investment property. So if all of us own an investment property, we're starting to really, this monetary premium is really now starting to grow too large in order for most people to be able to afford a home. So if you've got to go and put in, it used to be 20 % savings deposit. Now there's all sorts of government incentives to make it just 5 % deposit rather than 20 % deposit. When you're dealing with the average median home, I think in every capital city is well over a million dollars now. That's crazy. Up in Cairns here, in Farnall, Queensland, it's a tourism and hospitality based type of environment. And most median house prices are probably well over 800,000 now. So you can't tell me that the poor old checkout worker at Woolworths, earning minimum wage, how can they afford a million dollar property? Like it's just a crazy, crazy notion. And it's just debt enslavement, right? It's like, you know, you'll be a debt slave right up until your retirement.

Fin Creighton: Yeah, you've hit on some amazing points there. I have conversations with people all the time because it's ingrained, into people that real estate and investment properties are the way to get ahead. And ultimately, one of the things that led me to Bitcoin because I couldn't even work out how I was meant to save for a deposit, let alone get ahead in life. Just before to finish up on this on real estate and on property, If someone's listening here that is considering or weighing up their options, obviously without any financial advice, but what questions would you pose to people that are considering getting into real estate to just ask themselves and look into before pulling the trigger and maybe considering?

Daz: Well, one of the biggest things to push back on, right, is that, and unfortunately, history has proven to be... to be true to push back against this point, right? But at some point, you reach maximum escape velocity, right, of real estate, which I would argue we're at now, but there is a peak, right? It'll start to roll off. So are you actually investing for cashflow? If you read one of the most famous real estate investing books of all time is Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. he been noted ⁓ on Australian podcasts that laughably looking at our market, ⁓ to say it is an absolutely batshit crazy notion to celebrate negative gearing. And what that means if you don't know, if you're not deep down in the weeds. ⁓ as an investor you want to increase cash flow. You don't want to negatively impact your cash flow. In the Australian real estate market it is very, very, very rare to get something that's cash flow positive. Therefore you are ⁓ banking on capital appreciation. So you are buying now in the hopes that it is worth more in the future. and that's investment in general, right? However, when you are already trading at multiples upon what we know as would be utility value of a real estate market, and again, that's hard to quantify, right? But again, the house I'm in now, it's not worth a million dollars. That utility value is probably, I don't know, 200, 300, maybe 350, it's stretched, like to me, that's what I would look at at a property. So the other 650,000 is monetary premium. So now when you are multiples of multiples, to multiples upon your wages to service a property. This is where the chickens come home to roost. At some point we will reach maximum demand there. We will reach, and then we'll be met with excess supply. People will not be able to service it any longer. what people really have to worry about is inflation again. So as inflation rises, which we are hand fist experiencing right now, mainly due to Iran war and increased petrol prices. and so forth, but that leaks into other parts of society as well. Your production costs go up, your cost to deliver goods goes up, so slowly everything starts to rise purely just from one input which is when the only way that governments and central banks can control inflation is through interest rates and that is your mortgage. The only way they can stop that is to ⁓ you spending. And the only way to stop you spending is to one of your biggest outputs every month is mortgage. So I would definitely not want to be over encumbered by levered to the requirements to service that debt because we will experience ⁓ interest rates. It's the only lever they've got to pull in this ⁓ inflationary environment. Now when I look forward ⁓ the next sort of 12 to 18 months, That's really as a wage earner, right? That's your forward looking sort of mark, right? Is my serviceability over these next sort of 12 to 18 months. And I don't see inflation coming back anytime soon. Therefore, we could expect interest rates to try and catch that because the only way they can curb inflation and therefore, you wouldn't want to be too over encumbered with debt because the other thing you've got to bear in mind is that there's so many controls from a government level and we will see things like Canada. Canada have moratoriums on rent price increases. So they have fixed controls on how much you can raise rent and having a Labour government who's already displayed lots of, you know, communist traits, I would say that's not too far from being implemented as well, where if you're... service ability, your mortgage rates are starting to rise, that you naturally want to, if you've got an investment problem, you'll naturally want to raise your rents to try and cover your increased costs, but the government can step in at any time and say, no, you can only raise by 5%. Your repayments might be going up 10 % a year, but they're only gonna allow you to increase that by five. So that's probably another reason why I don't like real estate, is because there's so much government intervention into that market, At any time, it's really hard to navigate, right? It's like, will interest rates rise, will they not rise? No one's got a crystal ball. But when you look around the interventionist type of approach that most of ⁓ state governments and federal governments have, I it's just too hard. It's not a fair, equitable market to navigate.

Fin Creighton: There's a lot to go and think about there for those that are listening considering real estate and perhaps it will lead you to think a bit further and answer some of those questions internally first. We are going to hard pivot, slightly less hard pivot because you were talking about energy, sorry, oil, which leads to energy. But most people think that Bitcoin mining wastes energy. I'm pretty green in this area, I'm looking forward to actually learning a bit and picking your brains here, but you've spent a lot of time understanding Bitcoin mining energy grids. So what are the biggest misconceptions that you see out there and what's the truth to those misconceptions?

Daz: There's no sugar coating. Bitcoin mining is an energy pig. It loves energy. The misconception is that it's competing for other demand sources of energy. So it's competing with regular customers, regular mom and dads trying to heat dinner for their children at home. ⁓ What does really, really well, ⁓ and probably, you know... why I spent so much time thinking about it is it's a game changer in terms of improving the economics of energy grids. So if I take a little bit of a step back and just to give people a general understanding of how energy grids work is basically we have generators spread, we'll use Australia for an example because it's one that I understand the most and it's very... I guess energy grids work very similarly, regardless around the world, right? So we've got transmission networks that connect lots of generators spread out geographically. ⁓ in Australia, we've got the whole Eastern seaboard is interconnected with a grid. ⁓ So means we can send electrons from the very top of Queensland all the way down to Tasmania and all the way over to South Australia. So all of that is ⁓ interconnected ⁓ we generation across this massive transmission network. Now, energy grids are not efficient by that nature. The very nature of having to send electricity long distances creates losses. But probably the biggest area misunderstanding is ⁓ the of ⁓ generation demand. ⁓ So got to have generators available with enough spare capacity to be able to provide the maximum load that people are going to draw on. ⁓ So Australia, our maximum demand, what we call the maximum, ⁓ just a term we use for the maximum load is normally in the afternoon when everyone comes home from school, they turn on the TVs, the air conditioners, their mom starts dinner. That's our peak demand period. So if we've got peak demand, we have to have generation capacity available to meet that peak demand, otherwise we have rolling blackouts. Now that's real time generation. We don't have a lot of storage mechanism. We can't store massive amounts of energy. We don't have enough big batteries or hydro schemes and all that sort of thing to store enough capacity at that time. So what it normally looks like is you've got real-time generation with big masses electrical conductors spinning in magnetic fields. So they can be coal-fired generators, they can be gas generators, they're our main ones. We do have solar, we've got hydro schemes, but you've got to have those machines running. at the same time that people want to flick the light switch on so that energy is available. Now where the inefficiencies lie is in what we call the minimum demand, maximum demand, and maximum profitable operating region. Okay, so you can imagine, we'll just use round figures. Let's say I've got 100 gigawatts of generation capacity the day through minimum demand period might only be like 10 gigawatts of that 100. And that might be fine, right? And then maximum demand might be somewhere in the order of 70. And then we have some peaks right up there. But out of that 100 gigawatts of installed capacity, obviously if you're an owner of one of these generation facilities, you wanna be operating profitably. So there is some line between zero and 100, where is your maximum profitable operating region, right? So if I spend most of my day down at 10 gigawatts, and my spare capacity is 90 gigawatts. my maximum demand is somewhere around that 70 mark, what do I do for the other? And that maximum demand might only be for a few hours a day. So the other, if that's three hours a day, the rest of the day spent somewhere between that delta, between 10 and my maximum profitable operating region. And that's where Bitcoin mining comes in. We've never had in the past the ability to directly turn energy into a monetary good. So what that means is Bitcoin, because Bitcoin mining is such a money, sorry, an energy pig, is we can slot right in there and soak up all of that excess demand between your minimum demand and your maximum profitable operating region. We can soak all that up. But the real kicker between what makes Bitcoin mining unique versus, you know, there's a lot of talk around data centers being able to play this role, AI training ⁓ being able to play that role. They can't in a nutshell. Bitcoin mining is interruptible. So it doesn't matter if I tell a Bitcoin miner to shut down right now, it can do it within a matter of seconds, it can stay off until ready to again and it doesn't affect the broader network. Because we are so decentralized, so distributed and so geographically dispersed around the world with Bitcoin mining facilities, it doesn't make one iota of difference if my facility goes down for a number of hours to cater for that demand because the rest of the network can pick it up. contrast that with AI data centers. Now there's inference and there's training and a lot of the time these AI data centers get poised as being one of these flexible loads, they're not really flexible. They're not as interruptible. If you're training an AI model from scratch, you want 100 % uptime. You don't want interruptions there. You've got corruption. The interruptability of that model is not there like it is with Bitcoin mining. Same with inference. So inference is you've already trained your model now it's sitting there in the backend waiting to pass through the information from all of your users. That again is not as interruptible as the Bitcoin mining. So that's where I think there's an overlap and there's a marriage between those because there's a real demand. I guess the... The other important thing to note is that moving forward when you've got these in your grids where you've got this maximum operating region that you can soak up, there will be a marriage between AI and Bitcoin. And that will be in and around. ⁓ I've got short of demand to train my model and then it'll roll off. So again, Bitcoin mining comes in. It turns off, allows the more profitable operating model, that AI training model will bid for energy. It's more profitable to, you know, to an energy grid to sell that energy to an AI because there's a lot of funding, there's a lot of capital sloshing around for AI. But again, after that 12 or 18 month period where that model's trained, you've got all this excess demand now. So Bitcoin mining again will come back in. So Daniel Batten is a really, really clever commentator in this space, spends a lot of time looking at energy grids guys. I ⁓ start to weed in through all the cracks and fill up all that excess capacity. And then if you have another demand center that comes along, you simply tip the jar out and you start filling it again, right? And then when you're maximum full and you've got another large pebble that comes in, like another data center comes in, ⁓ take some sand out, you put that pebble in and then you fill it up again with the sand. So ⁓ probably just pause there if you've got any questions about that because I could go on all day about it.

Fin Creighton: Yeah, that's really interesting. So in layman's terms, what you're saying is there's energy requirements for everyday energy use and then AI data centers and things like this. But Bitcoin can come in and fill that void that isn't being used. And then when excess energy is needed, you can turn off the miners and that energy can be redistributed effectively.

Daz: 100 % now that

Fin Creighton: It's really interesting. And then I guess to pull on the thread a bit more, we've seen Mara dumping a bunch of Bitcoin and then a bunch of other Bitcoin mining companies kind of leaving the Bitcoin world and heading towards the AI data center world. Why is that and what are your thoughts around these companies ⁓

Daz: It's basically. more profitable. So the nature of Bitcoin mining means that it seeks out the cheapest source of energy. When you've got actual competition for demand, like I was sort of alluding to before, these AI projects are very well funded, very well capitalized. It's been a ton of money, trillions in the order of trillions of dollars flow into that space. So if you've got all that excess capital ready to go and deploy, you can then go and outbid basically the Bitcoin mining operators for that energy and you can pay a lot more. So there's a price floor in Bitcoin mining depending on where you're at, but it's in the order of something sub six cents per kilowatt hour, right? as an AI training center, you're probably gonna bid more than that six cents per kilowatt hour. So a lot of these companies Mara and Iron, most of business, it's not necessarily Bitcoin mining, their business is more in the space of ⁓ power purchase So they go to these generators. They go to these markets, go to these regulators and they say, hey, I can come and soak up 10 gigawatts of your 100 gigawatt load, guaranteed 24-7 you let me have it at the right price. they buy power purchasing agreements. How these power purchasing agreements work is that the real-time flows for energy are a ⁓ market like anything else, right? ⁓ So those flows a In Queensland is a really good example. You can go onto our website, AEMO, A-E-M-O, and also Open NEM, ⁓ and can actually have a look at some of these. money flows in terms of energy demand. So crazily through the day in Queensland we have what we call a duck curve effect. We've got so much rooftop solar that's uncontrollable, that's basically just mum and dad trying to pump into the grid, that we actually have an issue where we don't have enough load, don't have enough people using energy at that time and it actually creates a negative impact on the grid. so much so that through the day those market flows can turn negative. So if you're a generator, if I'm a hydroelectric scheme, I've got a reservoir and I'm ⁓ through, I can actually be charged to generate through that time if that market flows negative. That's how crazily inefficient these markets are. So these companies come in and say, hey, I will soak up all that excess demand and make sure that I've got enough load when you need it so that your market never goes negative. And that's a really attractive proposition to these operators right so they say yes I'll guarantee you can buy this 10 gigawatts at Let's call it five cents per kilowatt hour naturally because that's a market right at night time We get spikes into the hundreds of dollars per hour believe it or not Which translates to well shit? ⁓ I'm actually to turn off now, and I'm going to sell that energy ⁓ I've bought energy I've bought the ability to generate or sorry to to introduce load say that 10 gigawatts ⁓ But now market is so inefficient. I'm actually happy to sell that energy back to the grid. actually make money by turning off their machines probably more than they would to mine. so the power purchasing agreement, that's really what these companies are, is they're buying up these contracts for energy and then they're going to sell that to the highest bidder. So if they can turn on their Bitcoin mining machine at five cents per kilowatt hour but then you get ⁓ AI data center knocking on the door saying hey we've got some load we'll pay ten cents, of course you're going to sell that. You're buying it for five, you're gonna sell it to them for 10, and you're gonna scrape the profits on the top, right?

Fin Creighton: So interesting. So effectively there's an abundance of energy in Australia that they're trying to find or at least store as a minimum the energy to not waste. This might make me seem incredibly ignorant. So apologies if it does, but with everything going on in Iran and all of the oil and energy disruption that's going on at the moment, how does that actually come or link to this abundance of energy that you're talking about versus all the scarcity that the media is talking about.

Daz: Yeah, that's actually a really good question. I haven't spent too much time thinking about it, to be honest. I guess we don't rely too much on oil for our generation. With the exception of some really remote areas like in Far North Queensland we've got a whole heap of diesel generation up in some of the remote communities and islands. They're not connected to the grid whatsoever, they're little micro grids. So it them a lot. However, the question from electrons versus oil, ⁓ it's really all the prime mover. So in Australia we rely on coal and gas primarily as our prime movers, as the energy source for the prime mover to spin these big flywheels and these magnetic fields to create the electricity. We don't really rely on oil all that much. there's a bit of a disconnect there but it's still... It still raises the interesting question in and around, I think we'll see a drive for EVs and that's going to have a direct impact on the grid. have a direct impact on how we go about providing energy. There's a few good news stories out of that in terms of trying to encourage people to charge through the day. ⁓ with these EVs, it actually introduces a bit more of a problem. People think it's a solution, but it's ⁓ more impact on the grid than what we, know, because you're normally at work through the day, you don't have your EV plugged in. ⁓ come home and you plug it in, is only adding to our maximum demand problem. So they're looking at ways to try and incentivise people to charge through the day. again, that's as where Bitcoin mining is just the perfect marriage for that system, right? It's because, hey, I've got a dirty big load here I can plug in through the day, ⁓ your duck curve problem that you're experiencing through the day. And I'm more than happy to switch off at night time ⁓ put it back to the grid. ⁓ it's a shame in Australia, we don't actually have more Bitcoin mining. It's actually quite terrible.

Fin Creighton: Mm.

Daz: and I put that down to the fact that a lot of the overseas markets where we see a lot of proliferation of Bitcoin mining, it's their private markets. So Texas is largely privately run. ⁓ their bottom line is shareholders and profits. In Australia, it's not economical to run our grid. It's actually a really bad ⁓ model. Therefore, as a lot of government intervention, a lot of government oversight, we've got regulations and most of the utility grids throughout the country ⁓ and owned. their major drivers not always profit ⁓ crazy as that is, ⁓ crazy as that sounds. ⁓ it's actually really hard to get a seat at the table and be taken legitimately. There's not through lack of trying. There've been quite a few big players come in and try and tap into the Australian energy market and I just think it's too immature right now. I think we really need to see more happening in the Bitcoin mining space overseas, unfortunately, until Australia really wakes up and says, ⁓ this actually does make sense. It's not just some crazy internet people trying to tell me it makes sense. It's, ⁓ you know, hats off to again, ⁓ know, Daniel Batten is ⁓ a big champion for that effort. There's been a lot of you know, peer reviewed papers and journal articles starting to support. how efficient Bitcoin is in both promoting renewables as well. That's one of the biggest challenges. All governments around the world at some stage have said we want to go to net zero. Practicality of that's a different situation. But Bitcoin mining plays a massive role if they're actually serious about getting to that point.

Fin Creighton: It's so interesting and there's so much work that I need to do to bring up to speed, but what you have done is distill this into a much simpler way of understanding in the book that you co-authored, Beers for Bitcoin. So do you want to talk a tiny bit more about that? I'll make sure to leave it in the show notes for people to grab a copy. It's an amazing book. I gifted it to someone actually. I orange-pilled them to let me pay for it. some clothing at a local market here in Australia. She said she loved Bitcoin. She bought some at the last all-time high at 67 and then never looked at it again because it crashed straight away. And I was just thinking about it the other day, but I paid her for the shirt when Bitcoin was at 120,000 US. So she's just had the same experience twice. I gave her the book. So I've not heard from her since, but hopefully she's at least got through the first page and we'll make our way through it at some point soon, but it's an amazing, amazing book for helping people get a wide understanding of really what Bitcoin is and showing the value propositions in multiple areas. led you to co-authoring the book and how was that process and what you say to people?

Daz: Yeah, I appreciate the support firstly. It's amazing where you can put something out there and it's amazing where things show up and how it gets into people's hands. It's really quite humbling. I mean, the process was us, it was solving a problem that existed. It wasn't really a book like it. There was lots of books. on why Bitcoin a variety of different angles. ⁓ there wasn't really a book that distilled down how it worked. For I had to read Mastering Bitcoin by Antonopoulos. It's an book and really well written. ⁓ And it's good guide on trying to take a very complex ⁓ subject ⁓ people don't know how to code. If you want to know, if you do know how to code and you're interested in it, it is definitely in there. But he also puts a lot of narrative in and around trying to explain what each of these concepts are. ⁓ But that was the book that I read to get a deeper understanding of Bitcoin. I find it's actually really quite a contrasting experience to look at. think most blokes come to Bitcoin for number go up. Most women want to know how it works first. So we actually get really good feedback from the female cohort of our community and our audience as it being potentially one of the first books that they give to women friends to and understand it. So what we try to do is take a really complex topic and distill it down ⁓ into language. So, ⁓ you ⁓ I through the process of, you know, I mentioned earlier, ⁓ spent good, you know, read over 60 books on finance and used to write articles to try to distill down what I'd learnt to help friends and family because I knew that they probably didn't have the time or capacity or inclination to go down that route of trying to understand how the world works. So I was writing articles in the same vein trying to explain these complex financial concepts into simple ⁓ everyday ⁓ language. a sparky, I'm a wage earner. I go grind every day so was trying to talk to my people. So was the same aspect with Beers for Bitcoin. Seb and I started looking glass education, we wrote a course trying to again distill down the why Bitcoin into layman's terms and then the real missing key for us is Bitcoin is volatile, there's no way to sugarcoat that. So how do we as Bitcoiners show up psychotically every day and talk about this as being the best savings invention of all time? It's how you deal with that volatility, it's actually understanding what you own. And that's probably the next step for most people. If you buy a little bit of it, you're gonna need to know how it works. Otherwise you're gonna get shaken out. We've just dropped that poor lady, sold a t-shirt for 126 grand or whatever the... and now it's sitting at 66 US, right? So, gonna struggle with that concept until she understands what she owns. in order to, we often say, if you're gonna invest in Bitcoin, it needs to be a long-term decision. years minimum, right? Anything you put in, ⁓ you're at least four years till you take it out. That's the whole, that's the whole sort of proposition, right? Long-term savings. So, but are you gonna stomach the 50 % drawdown? during that period, you need to understand how it works. So that was really the concept was to try and give a nice brief, not ⁓ heavy, too technical background into what Bitcoin is, the history of it and how it works. And Seb and I work really well together. We both ⁓ have ⁓ strengths. I'm very at taking stuff out of brain around everything I've learned and putting it to paper. He's very good at coming behind me and shaping the narrative and building out a of a flow. So that whole book was probably written and rewritten 10 times from start to finish in terms of do we go to next, what do you explain next, because it can be a very complicated thing to sort of ⁓ everyone just enough to understand without going into too much technical detail around the mechanics under the hood.

Fin Creighton: That's super cool, man. And it's really interesting that you mentioned that the women are actually the ones showing the most interest with the best feedback. I've well, month is nearly April. I'm actually a group, a women's only group, self custody implementation sequence with a of locals, actually, they're in the, the, well, they're in Australia, but predominantly they're in Queensland area. So I'm going to

Daz: Awesome.

Fin Creighton: batch by a bunch of them and give them to each of the people because didn't even consider that but it makes a lot of sense now what you're saying with regards to the women wanting to understand more of the why beyond just the number go up. We're getting towards the end. I just want to hand the mic over to you if there's anything perhaps that you to finish us off with. But before I do, I started the podcast predominantly for helping Gen Z. Now it's kind of changed of direction slightly since I've been doing it. But I always like to ask one question ⁓ at to keep it somewhat related to Gen Z, my generation. If there's a Gen Z listening right now and some of this is making sense, but perhaps they've not pulled the trigger or they're still not quite sure beyond getting your book, which I'll put in the show notes, what would you, where would you guide them to go and help them come to their own conclusions of what they should perhaps be doing to get ahead and start looking forward to a brighter future?

Daz: Yeah, such a great question. Look, not to just plug our own products, but ⁓ Looking Glass Education is the course that we put together. It's basically for that target audience. It's for many people, right? It's kind of age agnostic, but it really does look at what the world we live in, the history of money. how we got to where we are today and more importantly, what are the impacts of that environment on you as a person, as a wage earner, as somebody trying to get ahead in life. And I really feel for Gen Z as man like real estate out of question. The only really way to I can see for most people is to either inherit a property from their parents if they're lucky enough to be in that position or they're to have to learn Bitcoin or both. I think Bitcoin plays that role right and we and we've spoken about it already today but I just can't harp enough like it's Bitcoin is money how grandma promised you it would work you work hard you put what you can afford aside for the long term and you come back and you buy yourself something pretty a few years time so ⁓ look just ⁓ real question is you just need to ask yourself what is money and what do I what do I work my butt off for each week what is this thing what is this ⁓ lobster $20 bill that I got in my wallet does it actually mean? And if you're curious enough and you start asking the right questions, it's inevitable that you'll end on Bitcoin anyway. you may as well just do yourself a favour and ⁓ yourself short and just go straight to ⁓ how this thing works because ⁓ will save you.

Fin Creighton: Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that. What a great way to finish. I will make sure to put a Beers for Bitcoin link in the description, Looking Glass Education as well. But if there's anything that you want to finish us off with and also if you could let us know where people can find you specifically, that would be awesome.

Daz: Yeah, thanks so much, Finn. It's been great convoy, man. I appreciate you having me on. Look, yeah, you've mentioned most of the places. You can find me on X and on Primal, D-A-Z-B-E-A, on X and just at D-A-Z on Nostra. I don't post there much, but... I tend not to do too much social media, but you can find me DMs are open if you ever want to reach out and yeah, I appreciate the support and everything you're doing too, mate. So we need more Bitcoin voices in the space and hats off to you for standing up and having a crack.

Fin Creighton: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Thanks so much for jumping on. have to catch up and do another one perhaps later in the year or early next year. Yeah, yes, great shot. Let's do that.

Daz: Let's make it in person. Be good.

Fin Creighton: And guys, we'll see you on next one.