Ungovernable Misfits

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In episode one of two special episodes, Max sits down with Jon for a candid, filthy and surprisingly moving tour from “pleb” garage miner to genuine pioneer. They trace his journey from a 2012 PC experiment and S9 heat-capture hacks, through the China exodus era, to building community with Ungovernable Misfits, Pleb Miner Month/Monthly, and the Meshtadel. Along the way Jon and Max revisit the friendships, prayer calls, old-head mentors, and on-the-ground graft that shaped his thinking—plus the hard stats that kill LARP-y mining dreams.

We close on the big pivot: site scouting in Western Pennsylvania, dead ends with utilities, natural-gas learning curves, a providential phone call, and the discovery of a coal-bed methane opportunity sitting almost in his backyard—full circle from pleb to pioneer.

It’s an unfiltered story about doing rather than tweeting: heat capture ingenuity, failed deals, community-led breakthroughs, and the relentless grind behind assembling land, power, and gas to make real-world mining work. If you’ve ever wondered how pleb-scale curiosity becomes pioneer competence, this is the blueprint—complete with detours, dents, and a few flaming arrows for good measure.

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 LAKE SATOSHI

Lake Satoshi is a private lake located on 130 acres of land in Mid-Michigan. Originally a gravel pit, Lake Satoshi has since evolved into a tranquil oasis for those who love the great outdoors and Bitcoin culture.

With the growing popularity of Bitcoin, Lake Satoshi has become a hub for like-minded individuals to network, camp, collaborate, and enjoy all that the property has to offer.

The Annual Lake Satoshi Retreat is a unique weekend-long event in August (8/02). Friday you can freelance and enjoy dinner on us! Saturday is the main event, packed full of BBQ and opportunities to learn about Bitcoin.

[00:00:01] Unknown:

Good morning, John.   Hey, buddy.   Joining me fresh as a daisy   after getting up at God knows what hour to go and check on some big machinery and generators and all   sorts of stuff and covered in oil and then scurrying back.   What's happened? You're running some big machinery.   You're a proper   gas man now, proper gas engineer.  

[00:00:26] Unknown:

Yeah. That's what I've become somehow   over the  

[00:00:32] Unknown:

years. When we first met, you had a few machines in a garage. In a garage. You were a pleb minor, a garage.  

[00:00:39] Unknown:

You know, everybody that listens to the show loves garage.  

[00:00:46] Unknown:

You were a proper pleb,   and now I think it's safe to say you're a pioneer.  

[00:00:51] Unknown:

I really thank the Bugle Boys for pushing us out of the word pleb. They were a big part of that, the pleb to pioneer thing. They were. They came up with the pleb to pioneer thing, but we did talk about it a fair few times before then of, like,  

[00:01:06] Unknown:

yeah, I'm not sure I like the word pleb because   most people who have pleb in their bio or think of themselves as a pleb or annoying little cunts, and it was starting to wind me up. Like, every time I saw pleb, I was like, oh, that fucking guy.  

[00:01:20] Unknown:

So they saved us. We kept thinking about pivoting, and then, actually, they, gave us the push. It's always a part of us. You can't cast it away. But I think the whole pleb thing is just not about complacency.   That's the most important thing. You can't just wallow in pleb. Mhmm. Can't wallow in pleb.   That might be something new.  

[00:01:43] Unknown:

Pull yourself out of the pleb.   Aspire to be a pioneer.  

[00:01:48] Unknown:

Yeah. It doesn't just pull yourself up from the bootstraps anymore.  

[00:01:52] Unknown:

So for anyone who   maybe hasn't followed the whole story, you are sending   and pulling yourself   out of the pleb. Can we go back and   tell the story   from where it all started  

[00:02:06] Unknown:

all the way up to Back to the beginning, Vicini.  

[00:02:10] Unknown:

All the way to   where you are today. Yeah. And then maybe a little bit of a look into the future because it's a a really interesting story that people, when they hear us record, they always hear you, like, creaking your way into   the recording and moaning about your old bones and Oh god. How many hours you've done, and   everyone can tell you've been working hard. Yeah. Everyone can tell there's been a huge amount of hours, but I don't think outside of our little, you know, like, me and you and Chet and Basen,   Barn and, like, the closer knit people, I don't think they really have had the insight of, like, the things that you're doing. So I think it's a really interesting story. I think that it's an inspiring   story because   it is a long way that you've gone in a huge amount of risk and a huge amount of work. And I'd like others to hear this and be like, okay. You know that thing where everyone's like You can do things. Yeah. You can just do stuff. And it's like Yeah. Yeah. You can. Or you can say it on Twitter. Oh, yeah. But, like or you can actually do stuff. And it's   very fucking hard and tiring at times, but I'm proud of you, mate. You might be my dad. I'm really proud of, like You can be proud of you, dad. How far you've come. Yeah. I did it as a family. You know? That's true. So let's go back. Let's let's talk about even before we met, like, the beginning of your entry into mining, and then we'll work our way forward.  



[00:03:34] Unknown:

First of all, I can't remember a time before we didn't know each other. I know. You know? It just seems like you've always been there. Yeah. It's now it's such a important part of your life. You just can't imagine it. I can't imagine my life without you. No. That's the same here, mate. Yeah. I figured as much.   Okay. I mean, so listen. We've we've been doing these shows for   four or five years now. And and so if you're a regular listener to Ungovernable Misfits and we're part of the Pled Miner Month and Pled Miner Monthly and Action News and Meschadel shows, you know, the regulars on Ungovernable   Misfits know a lot of this story. But perhaps this can be an opening for people to be introduced to why Ungovernable Misfits covers mining and how we all got into all that stuff. So just real briefly, because I've already told this story on the show and even had a separate podcast that was called Pleb Miner Redux, I think. Crown had made a it was The Flash.  

I do remember the the cover art. I always remember Crown's cover art. It, like, sticks in my head. Yeah. He does some great art. Started mining on a PC that I built in 2012. Sarah used to work here at the house, and she had a home office. And I built her a new PC, and I said, oh, I think I'm gonna do some of this Bitcoin mining because a a guy at work who, I I don't like computers.   Believe it or not, it's, like, not really an interest of mine   It never has been.   And, I was like, hey. You want why don't you go on Newegg there and build me a computer and then order it? He's like, okay. He's like, you should mine Bitcoin on this. This would be a a good, PC to do that. And so I was like, what's that? He explained it to me. And so my first intro into Bitcoin wasn't like, oh, I'm gonna buy some Bitcoin. It was I'm gonna mine some Bitcoin. That that was how I was introduced   into Bitcoin.  

And then, you know, it never really did anything.   Well, because I didn't hit a block. That's why. You know, I just I just thought this was supposed to just be some regular passive income kind of thing.   And now when I think about the chronology, that was still first epoch at that time. So had I, I would have hit, 50 Bitcoin   and probably wouldn't be talking to any of you you people at this point. You never know. That's not true. I I probably just would have sold it in 2017, you know, like everyone else. Exactly what you'd have done, almost certainly. It is. Or you'd have, like,  

[00:05:59] Unknown:

not secured it properly or, like Absolutely. Something stupid would have happened where, like, there's a hard drive failure or some fucking   that's worse having it   and then losing it and then always living with that. It's a bit like losing a lottery ticket.   It's like, ah, because then you always live in the past. Like Yeah. Oh, could have been or could have been. Or at least now you're like, well, I didn't, and now I'm looking to the future. So it's a bit it's actually a better way. Oh, okay. Just so you know. I've never felt better about it.  

[00:06:31] Unknown:

It's a kick in the ass, and everybody that's been involved in Bitcoin long enough has that kick in the ass. So it doesn't matter. I'm in no way unique. Just the fact that I was probably a little bit earlier than a lot of other people, and the way I entered was different. That suits me to mine. To buy, to play fiat games and stuff, you know me, Max. That's like I don't know. This is not my thing.  

[00:06:53] Unknown:

Yeah. You're not a fiat type person.   Uh-uh.   You're more of a, like, physical world, like, fix anything.   Oh, the engine's broken. Yeah. I have a tinker. I'll probably fix that. Yeah. That's or electrics. Oh, yeah. I can probably have a look and rewire that. Yeah. It's not a problem. I'm not gonna say it makes me happy,  

[00:07:11] Unknown:

but it's just the grind satisfies   me. When I'm not grinding, I I get this   sense of impending doom and and anxiety.  

[00:07:20] Unknown:

You should work at Hashlots.   I should. There's plenty of grinding there. But I'm not grinding. I get this feeling of it of doom.  

[00:07:30] Unknown:

Daddy issues.   Okay. Back to the story.   I thought I thought, you know, I had in my mind as in this this podcast could be, like, something that we could, like, involved in this, like, local small business incubator thing. I was like, oh, I I could, like, send this pod to them. Like, nope. It's already ruined.  

[00:07:48] Unknown:

No. No. No. You can. This is a good story. Don't let my filthy mind ruin it. Don't let your filthy mouth.  

[00:07:56] Unknown:

Yeah. Okay. Why did I stop mining? Why because it wasn't doing anything.   And I was like, oh, I don't know. This doesn't do anything. I didn't look into like, I didn't research it, study it.   There was no real social media out there to get a a good understanding   of what it was and what the hell I was doing. Didn't read the white paper. Not that I ever would have gotten past the first couple pages. I'm like, this is a fucking stupid nerd shit. I don't know. I don't care.   Thought it was probably the government spying on my computer because I I have always been that kind of conspiracy theory kind of guy, which fits right in to the ungovernable misfits community.  

[00:08:34] Unknown:

It's a fair assumption.   It was at that time. Yeah. Yeah. If you're not doing the research and stuff, it's like Mhmm. Okay. What's this used for? What's the ethos?   I have to connect my computer to to something that I don't understand. Like,   it's the government, man.   Yeah.  

[00:08:52] Unknown:

Well, it is. And it probably was. Probably invented by the CIA and MIT. Do you reckon? I wouldn't be surprised.   I've always kind of thought. I've always kind of felt. But, you know, the decentralization part of that, and did they expect mining to get so broad and Mhmm. No. And so maybe it's a cat that got out of the bag. I don't know. It doesn't fucking matter. It doesn't matter, but it's it's a bit like tall. You know, they made that, and it's like, well,  

[00:09:17] Unknown:

it's still a public good. Even if they wanted to use it for their own purposes, it's still useful. And so, yeah, it doesn't matter, but I do find it fascinating.   The story of poo and why is like a mythical   tale that I'd love to unravel. I still like, if I had my guess, I think it's how. Okay. I just think it's too perfect that he knew he didn't have that long. Mhmm. Because   anyone who's bright enough to create this also is bright enough to know that if you create it, you're going to be whacked. That's just going to fucking happen. So he had that thing where he could   risk it because   obviously   he was gonna die anyway.  

And then there's the fact that   he had himself cryogenically   frozen.   And I would think I was quite a rare thing to do. And I would think that if you're gonna do that, you may be thinking, like, I really fucking wanna see what happens in chapter two.   Just let let me see what happens here because I have a feeling this could be big.   So there's other reasons as well, but that's why I kind of think it's him. Different kind of guy in general to have yourself cryogenically frozen after dinner.   I don't know anyone who's been cryogenically fried. I know a lot of people have died, but, like, none of them have been like it's always like, are you gonna be buried, or are you gonna be cremated?   I'll probably be cremated for as cheap as easier. And, like, alright. Cool. No one goes, neither. I'm gonna be cryogenic. You're frozen, mate.  



[00:10:48] Unknown:

Off to the freezer with me, pal.   Anyway. Of course, everybody that listens to this show knows that Max and I both have opted for the Viking funeral. That's correct. Yeah. It's the best one.   It's the flaming arrow.   So sick, isn't it? Funeral pyre of pitch on a boat.   Mhmm.  

[00:11:08] Unknown:

It's a nice way to go out. Back to the story.  

[00:11:11] Unknown:

Yes. Twenty seventeen   pump comes along.   Everybody in the world's like, woah. What is this shit?   People getting rich. Not us.   I'm getting regret. Okay. I'm gonna get back in. Get back in. Start mining again. Well, what did I do before? I mined. That seems to make sense. Now this is the age of Asics.   I don't know when it was because I tried to look up my eBay account. I was like, oh, that'd be like a historic thing for me to know. Like, I could print off this, my first s nine that I bought, and I don't have access to that eBay account anymore. I don't even know when it was. Somebody said to me, didn't you ever take a picture? I was like, no. I didn't have a smartphone   at that time either.  

I didn't have social media. I didn't have a smartphone.  

[00:11:53] Unknown:

Could you not look through your   payment records?  

[00:11:57] Unknown:

Oh my god. I don't know. Who knows what fucking credit card I had at that time? That got out of here.   That's the most ridiculous suggestion.   I guess I could find out the date. What I really want is that, like, the listing   thing. Oh, okay. Alright. Yeah. That'd be my suggestion. That away. I I gave all those away. I guess I've given so much fucking stuff away over the years. Yeah. What do you call it? Hash the torch? Was that? Hash the torch. Yeah.  

[00:12:23] Unknown:

Yeah. So you gave away your first ever machine.   Sure. Yeah. I don't think you should have done that. Oh, I'm not sentimental.  

[00:12:31] Unknown:

You're not at all?  

[00:12:32] Unknown:

No.   I would have kept that. I saw someone I don't know whether I saw this or whether I imagined it. I may have imagined it, but when I was working with epoxy resin quite a lot Mhmm. I had this idea of   taking old   s nines because they're basically just door stops now anyway. They have no real use. And   casting that in a nice block of epoxy resin with some nice light built in and just having that   literally as a doorstop.   I just thought it'd be quite cool to have something like that, and then it's a piece of history that's just there forever. Yeah. And if it was your first minor, it's kind of like a nice you're like, look at it. You're like, well, you're not sentimental, but I'd be like, yeah. I remember those days. I've had too shitty a life to be sentimental.   That's true. I know a lot about your life. It's it's a terrible life. But Yeah.  



[00:13:23] Unknown:

You've got good people around you. I do. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I just said, I can't say it any better. I've had too shitty a life to be sentimental.   It's another.   Put that on a bumper sticker.   I got tons of them. That's a Bubba sort of thing to say that is. That's a Bubba one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't wallow in pleb, and I've had too shitty a life to be sentimental.   I can hear Bubba saying it now.   So anyway, bought an s nine. I'm like, oh, this makes money. I'm gonna buy some more. Buy some more, put it in the garage, and then I, you know, I work in a telecom industry, and so,   like, remote deploying   expensive equipment is something I've done for a long time. Even in the military, that's what we did, remote deployed telecom equipment. So I'm pretty used to that. And we have all kinds of, like, cabinets   and, I don't know, like, holders for equipment   that can get rid of heat and, you know, they've got grounding in there and they're on wheels and they roll around. So we we've pivoted in the telecom industry where we used to have these the Fujitsu Flashwave   unit that we would remote deploy at cell sites,   and then they switched over to something much, much smaller. And so we were going around all over the place and taking these giant cabinets, you know, out of cell sites and then just throwing them away. And one was sitting there for a while out back, and I said, you know what? Out back by the dumpster. And I said, I'm gonna take that and put it into the garage. And if I put all of those minors that I have in there,   then I can, like, take the heat out of that, and I can send the heat around to the house. And that's that's when I got in into heat capture.  

And this was about the time where people were doing their cooler builds. You know, maybe it's a little bit before the whole cooler build thing.   You couldn't get fan shrouds. You know, CryptoCloaks wasn't making fan shrouds. It wasn't so easy to get all that stuff. But what I did was I I built this giant box where I didn't need fan shrouds. All the machines were kind of in the box, and then I could suck out all the heat and send it about. So   then I got into heat capture. China Exodus comes about. I decide, oh, I'm I'm really gonna scale up now. The JPRO had just come out. China Exodus was 2019,  

[00:15:35] Unknown:

was it? 2020,   I think. Because that was when I entered   the mining scene for a short while and absolutely had my trousers pulled down. I ordered miners on the news of the China exodus, and I was like, fuck. This is if ever now, this is the time. And then, obviously, everyone knows the story come piss, just completely fucking pulled my trousers down, and I had to wait, like, a year before they came. Alright. I'm gonna actually look it up because I cannot remember at all.   I remember the second of making the decision to do it, to buy them, like, where I was standing. And, like, I remember it really crystal clear and just being like, fuck.   If ever there's a time, it's now. And, actually, it was a good time   if they'd have arrived. Twenty one. It's Probably my first good call, but it was just still fucked up. The hatch rate began to dip in  

[00:16:25] Unknown:

Like, March or something, was it? Or it was, like, spring? May. May. May. May   '21.   I remember because there was some sunshine. And I looked that up on lens.linkcoin.com.   Oh. That's right. Great place to go. That is my preferred analytics   tool. Anyway,   I ordered miners early that summer before the huge price spike. Here's something interesting. And you probably did this too if you were right on when the China Exodus started ordering miners.   So I ordered them, and then that entire summer, I just watched the market go up. And I was like, oh, man. I don't even need to mine any Bitcoin on these things. They were already worth double what I paid for.   I do remember that. I thought I was so smart at that time.  



[00:17:10] Unknown:

Yes.  

[00:17:12] Unknown:

But you didn't sell them. I still have them. They're running now. Yeah. Actually, they're not running now because the generator went down last night at 11:39. I still have them, amazingly enough. Here we go. Over four years later, I have the same miners running. I take good care of my stuff. Anyway, scaled up. I tried to do it in the same way that I did the S9s, but they were kind of bigger than that container, and then I got the idea, the heat capture idea that I'm going to disperse them around the house more. In the same setup, you know, I've described this on the show many times. I like to send the heat   from my miners not directly in a duct and being, you know, sent around that way and depend on the miner to send the heat. I send the heat into a box, like a charging box.  

And then from that box that kinda has   all that trapped heat in it, I ducked it out and in line fanned it out to where I wanted to go. That works for me. Could I set one up in your house? No. This is all in my brain. I'm not trying to scale any of this stuff up, do it for anyone else,   make it open source. It's all too goofy. It exists only here.   Sorry. You wanna come see it? Come see it.   About that same time, I decided   I would like to be more social   and talk to other people about this stuff. Honestly, what I thought what I was doing was really novel and unique.   And then I find this other community, and I was like, oh, other people have thought of this too.  

I didn't know so much because it just wasn't really in the social scene so much.   And one of the first people that I found in that podcasting   space and social scene was my good friend,   Max, bit by bit. That's you, buddy.  

[00:18:48] Unknown:

That's me. Yeah. I feel famous.  

[00:18:51] Unknown:

Mhmm. You should. I've been listening to you for a long time, like, pining for you from afar,   you know, but you were so out of reach. I mean, this guy's a celebrity.   This guy's a celebrity.  

[00:19:04] Unknown:

This guy's a a professional mole.   Yeah.  

[00:19:09] Unknown:

I don't know. I know. There's some you know, in this story, and you know how I work,   it's like, god has always put people in front of me, and I always know I'm so damn good at listening to the Holy Spirit and being guided by that   that I just kind of follow it through. And I'd listen to this guy every week, make me laugh, and I kind of associate with you. And I was like, oh, man. You know? I like this guy. And you guys come out with the mesh to del. I love those mesh to del shows with with SolEx and and Chino. And I was like, oh, the SolEx guy.   I really like this guy too.  

Guess what? One of my best friends now. Oh, the best of the best. You just get guided.   You listen to Holy Spirit enough, he will guide you and put these people in your path and make these connections for you. You just have to have the open heart to see it.   And Chino and Joel   in those early episodes,   and then Soulek used to do one on Twitter. And if you spoke on the Twitter's   spaces, that he would invite you into the Meshedale. This is when the Meshedale was, like, 10 people.   Yeah.   Literally. And I had missed one of the Meshedale calls I had posted on Twitter, like, oh, I I didn't get a chance because   you know, usually, you know, with my job, like, half the time, I don't have really good reception. So I didn't think I had good enough reception in a lot of spaces. So I was, like, getting done real quick. I was working overtime. I was getting done real quick, and I was gonna drive back in to an area that I had reception, but then the message all call was over. So then I put on there, hey. This was a really cool call. I wanted to see if you guys wanted to talk about off grid mining. I was super obsessed. I'm still kinda super obsessed with this is steam engines.  

Kind of a dorky thing. That is really dorky. Yeah. Jeez. If you think natural gas engines are a pain in the ass, imagine maintaining a steam engine.  

[00:20:52] Unknown:

You know the the type of people who have steam engines because they're in The UK anyway, they do, like, steam engine fare   things. We have one in the county. And there's, like, someone driving along with a fucking roller that's, like, steam engine. They're going a half a mile an hour and then broken down on the side of the road, and they're all there in their dungarees  

[00:21:11] Unknown:

and, like, leaning up against it. Oh, do you know that? And they get, like, little little engineer cap.  

[00:21:17] Unknown:

Yeah. And they were always covered in, like,   muck and grease and soot and stuff and just   they're a different breed. So So I can imagine you with that. In town here in Worsham County,  

[00:21:29] Unknown:

PA, we have the steam and gas horse association.   So we've got a whole,   you know, association of those guys.   There's a oil derrick,   like, down the street from me, and that thing is always filled.   And I said to the guy one time, my partner and I were replacing some lines to his property, and, you know, old guys always gotta come talk to a telephone man.   Yeah. Yeah. So that's my job. So I distract the people, and then Andy does the work so we can get the hell out of there because he knows I've got the gift of gab, and Andy doesn't wanna talk to fucking anybody.   And so I always talk all these old heads, I always get stuck talking to the old heads.  

And I said to him, I said, what do you do with that oil there? They never come and pick it up. And he was like, well, I don't know. They never come and pick it up. You know, I get x amount of dollars for this oil. And I thought, I could pick it up. And then I could run it through a diesel engine, and I could mine Bitcoin on that. Like, it's I'm always thinking about that kind of stuff. And so I had mentioned in there that I oh, we should talk about in the message I'll call. That's the scrappy nature.   Scrappy nature.  

Right. Yeah. I suppose you found that interesting.  

[00:22:35] Unknown:

Mhmm. And then you DM'd me. I like diesel. Yeah. You do. And I like anything that you can get for free.   And at the time because I used to run old g wagons on vegetable oil. Yeah. Just like Travis Bidcole.   Yeah. It's such a nice especially if you can get it for free. Mhmm. Or you can get it from, like, a chippy or something and, like, you get   something that people actually see as waste,   and you get it for free, and then you use it on something that would otherwise especially in The UK, like, you fill up a g wagon. It's like a £130.   Mhmm. It's like or or or it's free.  

Like, it's fucking amazing. So when you said that, I was like, I like this. And then there's this, oh, well, not only can you run it on your vehicle, but there's this possibility to run it for this thing that I really wanted, which is just as much Bitcoin as I could get hold of. And I was like, this is fucking smart. So I think that was the, like, switch for me. I was like, I like how you're thinking. I can still do it,  

[00:23:37] Unknown:

technically.   You have Yeah.  

[00:23:39] Unknown:

I think you've gone past that, if I'm honest. I would say I would say so. I have definitely gone past it.  

[00:23:45] Unknown:

Yeah. It doesn't mean it's not a good idea. In the first interview we did with Travis Bickle, who you know? So it I think if it were practical, Travis Bickle will be doing it right now because he already has that experience in running Volkswagen diesels. You know? I I think if it were practical and something he wanted to aggravate himself with, that he would have done it already. But at at that time, there was this usfiltermax.com,   and this guy wrote this book. I think his name was Chastain, was his last name,   on, you know, repurposing   waste oil and a centrifuge and putting it back in a diesel engine. And I was just obsessed with that and and and steam engines  

[00:24:21] Unknown:

and stuff at at that time. You can't do it anymore on modern vehicles.   What? With the computers and shit? Well, you just can't if you wanted to take that oil that you could chuck in an old VW or an old Merc or whatever Mhmm. If you just put that in a modern truck, I don't know what would happen. It would certainly not fucking work. It would be an absolute nightmare. And then you have all the problems with, like, DPF and all these things and all these new ones. I just spent $3,000  

[00:24:48] Unknown:

on my truck because  

[00:24:50] Unknown:

it had two computer codes for the def system, and it should have just done a damn def delete on the fucking thing. But here we go. Yeah. So these modern diesels are I think they're, like, burn it off and stuff like that. But it's, like, especially when you're doing short journeys. I think it's, like, also something to do with the heat. If it's colder, it seems to be more of a problem. But, like,   UK, you've got the mum brigade all drive diesels pretty much,   big diesel trucks. And then they're doing short journeys.   Mhmm. And so it doesn't burn it off. And then you have all these fucking problems all the time. So it's actually really, really annoying. Whereas the older diesels, I swear they were more reliable.  

I swear they were. And you could just chuck anything in there. You're just like, oh, I've got some old oil. Yeah. Yeah. Just chuck that in. It's a bit too cold. I'll chuck some thinners, and that'd be alright.  

[00:25:37] Unknown:

It'd be fine. It's a tall deaf system, but delete it and roll some coal. Oh, yeah.   Rolling coal.   Anyway, this was supposed to be, like, fifteen minutes, this part. Do you realize this? Yeah. Well, you know, it is what it is, mate. This happens to us all the time.   It does. It's our greatest strength and greatest weakness, this ability to just go off on tangents and talk for four hours. That's why you're my buddy. Mhmm. Because we both talk an equal amount of shit.   We're equally retarded.   So then it happens. My friend,   Max, bit by bit, invites me onto the show, and that show aired because Sarah made, like, a little you can get these screen photos screen printed and, like, wrapped around a, a frame Oh. At our local Walgreens, and it's super cheap. Nice. Yeah. So she made one of that first podcast, and that was 12/28/2021.  

Wow. Home Mining   Bitcoin is Punk Rock. That's a great title as well. It is. You're so smart. And, actually, I really like Crown's stuff because he took some, like,   guys playing in front of a trailer, like, two guys playing music in front of a trailer, and then he made it, like, pink. That was really good. I I like that one. I can't remember what it looked like. Here, I'll snap a picture of it. Send it to me. Let me have a quick look while we're live. Yeah. Fuck. I always think, like, the artwork   around what we do at Ungovernable Misfits is a massive part of it. No doubt about it. It's not the whole thing. I don't know if you'll recognize it or not. Signal or you doing Telegram? Telegram. You know I hate signal. I know you hate signal. Mate, I messaged you on signal.   Okay. Let me go over there and see.  



[00:27:18] Unknown:

Yeah. Yeah. That was great. You a member for now.   I remember.  

[00:27:22] Unknown:

I like how it's got dark mode, light mode at the bottom. Oh, yeah. Yeah. She just she just grabbed it off for fun, I guess.   Very nice. The old website. Yeah. So we had a good convo. You know, then it became a deeper part of the mesh to Dell. Realized that, you know, there's a great community of people out there. Just very appreciative to be a part of that. Because without this building of community, without bit by bit and Uncoverable Misfits and doing the pleb minor stuff and the mesh de dell, I I don't see all of this happening because it really takes a lot of people, a lot of connections.   No one is an island unto themselves. I'd like to quote that one   in particular. So we just all started building more relationships   within the mesh to del. And   what happened? How'd that go, Max? We did our first pod.  



[00:28:08] Unknown:

Yeah. Then we were doing all the mesh to Dell calls.  

[00:28:11] Unknown:

Yeah. Then I did a bite sized Bitcoin.  

[00:28:13] Unknown:

Yeah. And then you were gonna do that conference That's right. That's right. Thing. I'm remembering it from all the different desks that I've sat at. That's funny. Yeah. Literally, I'm I'm like, oh, I sat at that desk. That must have been that was after that. I moved before this last final move   since getting involved in Bitcoin. Mhmm. I have moved   12,   maybe 15 times.  

[00:28:37] Unknown:

Jesus.  

[00:28:38] Unknown:

Yeah. And every time, I've got a different desk and a different setup, and I'm like, oh, yeah. I was sat there. Oh, yeah. That was when the Internet was patchy, and it used to cut out, like, 10 times.   So I remember where I was sat. To include your car. To include my car. Yeah. Yeah. Living in your car. Yes. That's happened. Yeah.   I remember   you saying   you were gonna do this thing, and Sarah was involved. Mhmm.   And Yeah. I remember you being quite excited about it, and I was like, oh, that's gonna be really cool. And then, well, you can tell it, but that all started to unravel, didn't it?  

[00:29:14] Unknown:

It did. So the year before, I had gone to a conference, and that was Scott Offord.   So anybody who knows who's been in Bitcoin mining space for a long time and bought hardware, Scott Offord is just a a long time hardware   dealer salesman guy. A lot of the popular Telegram groups that are mining specific   are Scott Offord's. So Scott had a conference   in Kalahari in Texas. That's a a water park, and this is a brand new water park in Texas. And so I took the girl I figured, oh, I could do, you know, get more into this mining community and take the girls down there and have some fun. And we did, and it was a really, really, really great conference. I think he probably spent way too much money, you know, on the conference, but it was really awesome as far as an attendee goes.   And then that following year, Scott was putting out there, like, hey. I'm looking for an assistant to help me, like, run this conference. And at the time, Sarah wasn't working, and our youngest was still very young.  

She wasn't out of the house working. And I was like, oh, maybe that's something, you know, you could do that seemed like a good conference. He seems alright. And so they talked for a while, and she's like, yeah. I'll, you know, I'll I'll help you coordinate that kind of stuff. You know, people that know Sarah knows that she's just very organized,   super mommy mode, and, really, that gives people a superpower.   Running a household like that and and figuring out where everybody needs to be at what time and remembering all these things,   doing them, and coordinating them. She's awesome with that stuff. So that was a good fit. As they worked on that conference, things kinda started to flake out. Just a lot of moving pieces. I'm I'm not here to talk smack on anybody or how that went. It just did.  

Things shit the bed fucking sometimes. You and I make plans to do all kinds of stuff with ungovernable misfits, and half of our plans have gone to shit for whatever reason. Oh, at least. At least half. Yeah.   Yeah. So somebody else had taken over that conference,   Sarah and he, kind of working on coordinating it. And I don't know. They would just suggest all of these, like, Thinkboy things,   what we call it now, plebslop   kind of stuff, or greater crypto bullshit.   The crypto mining community. And I was like, oh, god, man. They need to fucking dump that. Guess what? Whenever you have a conference, if you've got a Bitcoin conference,   the other crypto   people show up anyhow. You don't need to market to them. They're all riding those coattails any. So why are Oh, no. Bitcoin mining? Oh, yeah. I'm really into a XRP, man. Really in the Casbah.  



[00:31:41] Unknown:

Yeah.  

[00:31:41] Unknown:

Fuck off. Exactly. So the I mean, I just kept telling her, and she's like, I told them. I told them. And and and I would just, like, keep barking in her ear, and she's like, do you wanna fucking talk to them? And I was like, yes.   So I had this, like, two hour long conversation   with this kid who ended up taking over the responsibilities from Scott Offord. I was like, listen. I know a lot of these people that are doing really, really cool stuff, not just, you know, finding a a large site and power and setting up. They're doing neat stuff. They're doing pleb mining stuff. You know, I'm getting to know a lot of these people that are innovating things.   And we should have a panel, like, what do you do for home heating? What do you do for pleb mining? This was really early times at that point. I I think people Mhmm.  

Not to say that ungoverned misfits need deserves a ton of credit or anything like that, but we really were early on a lot of that stuff. And so I'm sorry. I keep sniffing. I'm gonna have to, like, take a break and blow my nose.   No. Later. I'll just stop sniffing.   Like Joe Biden.  

[00:32:43] Unknown:

Isn't it his son that does the sniffing? No. It's Joe Biden. Oh, he sniffs children, but his, his son sniffs cocaine.   Yes. Yes. Smokes crack. He smokes crack. And and crack. That's be correct. And, prostitutes  

[00:32:56] Unknown:

and probably underage. And, yeah, he he should be in prison. And you can also thank Jack Dorsey for a lot of people not knowing   everything that was on the Hunter Biden laptop and who Hunter Biden is. You can thank Jack Dorsey, your great sage   of Bitcoin mining and freedom tech. Anyway, nothing to do with this particular show. I we have another soapbox for that.   So that   I had gotten these guys. And one of them My sweet, lovable barn miner. That's how I know him.   I was like, man, this guy's doing cool stuff. We should get him to come over to this conference to talk about stuff. Michael Schmidt, still doing stuff. Building the Libre board, open source control board for miners. Gian Mendoza, I haven't heard from him in a while, but I think he's still in the mining industry,   was one of the guys that we had on. Tech engineer is kinda off the map now. But for a while, he was really doing some innovating stuff with solar and and home heating there and and scaling up and down based on his solar demands. These were some really neat people that I had lined up for this conference. I was gonna run the panel. It was gonna be a different kind of panel, not just, oh, I sit in this seat over here, and you three are over there.  

I wanted to do it, like, old nineteen eighties talk show style where I was going through the audience with a mic and and, you know, ask these people questions and come up on stage and demonstrate the apparatuses that you've built. I wanted it to be really interactive, not just a normal panel.   Had all these ideas. Well, that guy that I made   the arrangements with, he ends up quitting the conference.   And, you know, this guy is not here. This guy quits. Sarah's like, I'm I'm out too because that's who I was doing all the work with. So that was kind of disappointing, and I said, well, the right thing to do is just to not do it. If things don't look good and you're getting a bad feeling about it, time to jump ship. Mhmm. And so she did. And then I told you that, and you said, well, let's just basically do that. Just get those, like, five guys. We'll do a show with them. And I was like, oh, okay. That's a good idea. Well,   you and I can't do anything.  

Just simply,   no. It has to explode into this giant fucking thing where we not only interviewed them,   we interviewed, like, 15 other people. We got, like, thirty, forty people involved in this. We got people driving to to Michigan and setting up minors and yurts and exchanging it for cranberries and nuts and twigs. And, you know, this just turns into this big thing, and anybody that's listened to the show, you were part of it.   So you know the story. But if you don't know the story, Max and I started this whole pleb minor month thing where we wanted to honor   and tell the stories of all of the Bitcoin miners that were small scale and doing innovative things, and it grew into this great community because, naturally,   all of these people were, like, so desperate to be a part of one another's lives. And we still have a very active   and heartfelt   personal chat in that Pleb Miner mafia Telegram group.  

And that just started with us, like, oh, let's get everybody into one place we can schedule time for them to record. Yeah. I remember  

[00:36:01] Unknown:

very vividly,   first, the conversation where you were saying you're not gonna be able to do it, and I was like, yeah, we should do something because I was, like, gutted not to hear and know   what these people were gonna say. Mhmm. And then I remember it spiraling. It being like, yeah. We're gonna do one show. And it's like, hey. You know what we could do is we could do, like, one show every day for a month. And I was like, yeah. Let's fucking do   that. And then and then it was Pleb Miner month.   So it was a month of it. I was like, yeah. That's kinda cool. And then, you know, maybe we can do that again next year because it's like a whole month dedicated to Bitcoin mining because it's such a big part of Bitcoin. I don't know so much about it. This is amazing.   And then the fucking editing and coordination   and everything had to happen   around   a Fiat job on top. And I remember just fucking just, like, working through the night and just being like,   how long until I've gotta be up? I was like, one hour. Okay. And then, like I thought you were gonna die. I thought I was gonna die. Yeah. There's many times over the past since we've met there's many, many times where I probably should have, but I'm here still alive and kicking. I'm glad for it. I'm glad we did it, but there was a reason we never did a second Pleb minor month. Oh, yeah. There's a reason. Yeah. There's a reason it became eventually, which we'll get on to Pleb minor  

[00:37:23] Unknown:

monthly Mhmm. Rather than a month. Just a lot easier. Let's just do this once a month.  

[00:37:29] Unknown:

One time.   Yeah.  

[00:37:32] Unknown:

But it built the community   that is a huge chunk of ungovernable   misfits now. Oh, yeah. The pleb minor mafia. The pleb minor mafia. Everything gotta be PMM.   If you don't know, PMM originally stood for Pleb Minor Month, then it stood for Pleb Minor Monthly,   then it stood for Pleb Minor and Mechtodel.   So when you're listening to our Mechtodel show,   that is a it's a community show of people with vastly different interests and skill sets and locales and mindsets, and those people exist in the ungovernable misfits ecosphere and the play modern mafia and in the Mesh Tadell. So that's what in case you're confused,   even though we've explained it a thousand times born,   PMM   stands for Pleb Miner and Meshedale.  

But the p's and m's are interchangeable for all kinds of different ideas and thoughts and concepts.  

[00:38:26] Unknown:

K? Correct. Okay. Dumbass goat. We're deep. We do things differently. Okay? There's a lot of thought that goes into this.  

[00:38:33] Unknown:

There is. We're the only ones that notice the thought.  

[00:38:36] Unknown:

And it's so confusing that even I get confused by the shows. Like, so often people are like, oh, yeah. So what show? Show? You got so many shows. I went and I'm like,   I can't remember the names. There's no name. Ask Jordan.   Yes.  

[00:38:51] Unknown:

I'm so thankful for Jordan because I used to be, like, the Ungovernable Misfits historian   because I can remember stuff. And you'd be asking, hey. What what what do we do here? What is this? What is this? And I'd remember, but thank Jordan has taken over   that part of remembering everything. Thanks, buddy. You good man. Thanks, buddy.   It was lonely around here before you came.  

[00:39:12] Unknown:

Yeah. Every day I'd be like, John, what did I do here and who did I speak to? Like Yep. You fucking did it. Why are you asking me you can't? And I'm like, I just I don't remember anything, mate. That is for real. That would all happen often. How don't you remember this?   The other day, I was out catching up with some people that we know over here, newish friends. And they were like, oh, so,   when's your first born's birthday?   Oh, okay. Was there. And I was like,   oh, yeah. I mean, it's just been and the the the the the the the. And then   my missus went off to go and get a drink, and I was like, look. I don't fucking know. Don't ask that question again. I I forget this stuff. Like, that's so bad. She'd be so annoyed at me. She's like Yeah. You don't know your own child's birthday. I'm like, don't even know my own, mate. Just just fucking leave me alone.  



[00:40:02] Unknown:

I don't love them less. I just don't know. So we survived the Pleb minor month. You didn't die.   Sarah and Crown didn't die. I didn't die. We did pretty well. We did. It was quite successful. We made lots of great friends and produced lots of content, and I gave stuff away almost every day. Remember that part?   I think I I spent so much money in shipping.   But we had a lot of great friends send us stuff to give away. Hell, Brinkie and the NodeRunner sent a whole giant NodeRunner's   box   of stuff from The Netherlands   to give away. It was really good times. It was. It was. During that same time, I had gotten a cow. And because   through the mesh del, get to know Joel and untapped growth in that community of permaculturalist   and regenerative agriculture folks,   And food security isn't important to me, so I thought that the cow was a good idea getting to know all about rotational grazing, regenerative agriculture from untapped growth.  

Earlier that year, that same year that we did a minor month, I had went to Virginia   to help Joel move his cows from Virginia   to Oklahoma.   So I was part of that community and and the fundraising and everything, and everybody knows that I'm kind of unabashed about my support for untapped growth and,   damn it, and what he's done over the years. But we spoke about this briefly on the last interview that we did with Joel. This guy is now public because they posted on Twitter, so I'm gonna say his name. And, he's been on camera. So Joel's best friend, Daniel, is who he's built all of this with.   And Daniel and I used to do a prayer call   almost every day back at that time when they were moving from Virginia, and they kinda needed, like, that spiritual and community support. And I wanted to be there for them for that. And and through that prayer call, Daniel and I just just become very, very, very good friends. I'm telling you this story because it's gonna come back later. Don't worry. This relates to the whole giant gas well story.  

They were moving to Oklahoma, and I said, well, I can come and, you know, do some stuff, help you round up the cows, get them on the trailers, you know, help you take down fences, you know, whatever you need to do there.   And so we went to Virginia Beach and got a condo, and I set Sarah and the girls up in the condo. And I said, I'm gonna go be a cattle man for for a couple days. And they're like, okay. Well, we're at the beach. We   don't go on with you. Yeah. Yeah. Have fun.   Yeah.   So I I went and played cattleman for a while.   Just built up that really deep personal relationship with Daniel. I really love that guy. What a special human being, really spiritual guy, great connection with the Lord. He's my dude.  

But that happened all around that time, and and then I felt, like, confident enough. Okay. Well, you know, I can be I can do cattle stuff now. We've talked about this on the show, the relationship that I built with John Lindley. That's kind of that time was my my cattle. That's one of my favorite stories, actually. It was very  

[00:42:56] Unknown:

moving,   and I think if you can  

[00:42:58] Unknown:

go back and have a listen, they should. Yeah. That was, like, PMM episode two or something like that. Mhmm. Just look it up. Wanna hear the story. Yeah. Ask Jordan. That also brings another thing, like, I really love   old head.   You know? What what do you call them? Geezers.   Dude, like, a geezer is my favorite dude.   You know? They don't give a fuck. They know what they know. They're tough. You you're not gonna get their information out of them, you know, unless you've kind of earned that information from them. Mhmm. And so I've always been fascinated with dudes that just know their shit. Old heads that know their shit. Like, that was always my role model of who I wanted to be when I grew up. Just that old head, you wouldn't look twice at him walking down the street.   Yeah. Then you get to know him. You're like, that fucking guy knows everything.  

He he is really an expert in his field. I got a thing for that. You know? Maybe that's my daddy issues.  

[00:43:52] Unknown:

That's your kink.   Your kink is Jesus.   It's listen. I don't judge. I don't judge. Everyone,   you   you do your thing, whatever makes you happy as long as it's essential.   I'm cool with that.  

[00:44:13] Unknown:

What's a kink?   Like, some of these old heads, if you were to say that to them.   Talking about boy, what the fuck is a kink?   Yeah. The kink in this hose and the oil wouldn't make it into the pot.  

[00:44:32] Unknown:

That sounds like a kink all of itself.  

[00:44:35] Unknown:

Yeah. Your mind. Your freaking mind.   I know.  

[00:44:39] Unknown:

So Again, a gift and a curse.  

[00:44:41] Unknown:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, anyways, we decide that this is a good idea. And then shortly after that, I think the first of the next year, we came out with Pledmoner monthly.   Mhmm. We got sponsors   at that time who who are original sponsors. It was Fix Rigs. Remember them? Yeah. Since out of business.   Mhmm. You don't make good money fixing rigs, I guess.   Nope. And, Peach, Bitcoin, they're still in business.  

[00:45:06] Unknown:

They're still in business. Yeah. And  

[00:45:09] Unknown:

Alex,   when Alex was at Kaboom Racks.  

[00:45:12] Unknown:

Yeah. He's certainly still in business. He is business.  

[00:45:15] Unknown:

He is business.  

[00:45:17] Unknown:

He Andy is one of my best friends, and I love that man. Yeah. He is, again, one of the best of the best. And just Yeah. It's like, who who are you sponsored by? Oh, just Alex. Like Yeah. Just Alex.   Just Alex? Like, what what's the company? It's like,   just Alex. He is business. Yeah. Just yeah.  

[00:45:38] Unknown:

Thank you, Alex. That was very kind. Since Alex and Nick have left Kaboom Racks, I can say this. Kaboom Racks did not sponsor the fucking show. They wouldn't. Alex went to them and said, hey, will you sponsor the show? And they said, no. Nope. So Alex was like, you know what? I'll do it. Alex is like, these guys are doing something really cool. Like, it's gonna really align. Like, they've actually got a lot of listeners. People are actually doing stuff and buying stuff. Like, just listen to one episode.  

[00:46:03] Unknown:

No. Just do one call. No. And then we got that back, and we were like,  

[00:46:07] Unknown:

oh, fuck that shit then. They're gonna listen to one fucking episode. So Yeah. Yeah. There we are. Look what these guys did over this one month period. Holy shit. Anyway, now now that Alex and Nick have started up Mega Miner hey. You need miners? Go ahead and look at Mega Miner, by the way. It's a free plug. Our good good friend,   Mehdi Nasseri   from Lincoin.  

[00:46:27] Unknown:

First sponsor. Big fridge stepped in, didn't they? Still a sponsor. Good dude. My dude met him. I remember that call. Yeah. We're like, yes. We think about doing this thing, but we need, you know, some money to, you know, cover the cost and hosting the editing. Like, do you wanna do it? We could, like, this long, like, chat. And he was like, yes.   I'm like, really? But yes. We're like,   ah, okay. Amazing.  

[00:46:49] Unknown:

I was going to call you about sponsoring.  

[00:46:51] Unknown:

Yeah. Yeah.  

[00:46:53] Unknown:

That's our dude from OG. We love you, buddy. By the way, sponsors, guys, we have done nothing but lose money on all of our shows forever.   So don't don't think we get fucking rich off the   literally is to barely cover editing.  

[00:47:08] Unknown:

Yeah. Literally.  

[00:47:10] Unknown:

Anyway, we went a year with those sponsors   and just build a great community. Every time I'd see somebody doing something neat, boom, invite them into the Plugminer group. Of course, at that time, we became really good friends with Baseload,   still also one of my best friends. And he and a few of the other guys, I think it was him and Barn and maybe Alex were down at Nashville one year, and there was this   big giant Sasquatch   dude there just complaining and bitching and being generally miserable   about all the LARPs that were at the Nashville Bitcoin and Energy Conference.  

[00:47:43] Unknown:

Was it bass   moaning?  

[00:47:45] Unknown:

No. Bass was not moaning. It was Oh, it just I thought it must have been bass,   but there's other moaners. No. He he doesn't moan. He's got a man. He's not got a monopoly on moaning.   No. No. But if you know, somebody that would be calling people   LARPs and how dumb this is would be Aaron Hall. Aaron and Base met each other at that time, and then Base was like, this dude's really cool, man. We should get him into our little private chat. Maybe we got a little private chat, me and my buddies. And so we brought Aaron in to the chat, and it turns out Aaron's a super cool dude. We even did, early Pleb Miner in the Wild interview with him a couple years ago. So if you wanna get to better know Aaron Hall from Sundog Mining and Bifrost Manufacturing,   you can. Just look back in our we talk about all kinds of shit.  

Mhmm. So where am I gonna go with this? Oh, ice fishing. So now we've done the show for a couple years now, and Bifrost comes on as a sponsor because we lost fixed rigs in Peach. Peach was like, we don't wanna pay for this. We don't think it's worth our our money. We're like, dude, it's like   a $100, $200 a month or something like that.   I don't know what it was.   It was like an introductory   price because you guys just started as a company, and we just   whatever whatever. And then fix where he's going out of business. And I was like, shit. This is not gonna pay for editing. See if another sponsor, and Aaron was like,   oh, we'll do it. So he's sponsored. Yeah. Then he does this ice fishing trip, and I figured, well, I should definitely go on the ice fishing trip. In that way, I could see Bifrost Manufacturing, what you could do, and, like, my ad reads will be better.  

And, anybody that's listened to the show, of course, would know Bifrost Manufacturing was a sponsor for about a year. They're doing really, really, really well now. Because of the sponsorship? Yeah. We made everything happen for them. It's not down to Aaron Hall's business acumen   and skills and everything else. It is just our ad rates because they were phenomenal. Aaron will let you know that whole company is carried by his engineer, Killian. So he's blessed to have a good team.   No. Aaron does great things.   So, go to Bifrost   and tour things around. And, Aaron, before we actually go out to Devil's Lake to go fishing, Mining Misfit and I drove around with Aaron. He showed us all of his mining sites. I was like, wow. This is really cool. And at that time, Aaron was working a deal with Baseload   in Texas, and they flipped this site   and, you know, got a power purchase agreement, got a tenant there on-site to mine Bitcoin, and did well with it. And so that deal was kinda coming to fruition at that time, and Aaron tells me, you know, well, you could do stuff like this too. You know, you've got lots of experience. So if people don't know, I've been doing telecom construction projects for thirty years.  

In the military, I used to work for a company called MCI WorldCom, where I I did, like, interstate large telecom projects. I was a project manager when I was 24 years old for that. You know, everyday engineering,   building telecom projects, like, to find a site and figure out how to get power to it and transformers, that's, like, well within my wheelhouse of things that I can do. And Aaron's like, you know, you got all this experience, and you can do it, man. You can do this too. And so I come back from that fishing trip, like, yeah. Aaron's got me all pumped up. I remember that. I'm gonna find a site here in in, yeah, in Western Pennsylvania. And, you know, with his kind of guidance here, yeah, we I can figure this out. I got any questions. I could just call him or, you know, where should we go from here? Especially with base load on the team too with his ability to understand energy markets, we just really had a great team there. Sats Misfit, to let you know something about him. Like, he I don't think I don't know how much he wants he he's in the energy in the he's in the and I hate all this. You you know what I mean? Like, I wanna just wanna tell you his real name and what he does and the name of his company and shit. Yeah. But but he's in the energy industry, and he he's got great acumen with talking to energy companies.   And also on the team, this is, like, my core group of best buddies, Barn. You know, he's he's a real estate guy.  

He's got an appraiser's license in in multiple states. So he he knows the real estate industry. He's like, boy, what better of a team to assemble   for finding sites and building them up and not mining there because don't wanna do that. Just flip it to some doofus with a bunch of money who wants to decide that they get into mining.   Let me get my cut and get the fuck out of there. So that   that's what you really wanna do, guys, by the way.   Yeah. Yeah. Don't want to run machines.   So we did that, and and one of the first sites I looked at was just downtown here, down the street from me, and this was an old   glass   foundry.  

So the original industry here in this county wasn't steel. It was actually glass.   And this was called it was a glass mold company. And so that glass mold company was there, and then across the street from that was a Coca Cola bottling plant.   So there was a lot of electricity usage out of this substation that is right behind this glass mold plant. And the glass mold plant has been closed down for, jeez, probably fifteen, twenty years now at this point.   So I saw the leasing sign, and there was another tenant in there that would order things off returns from Amazon, and they would resell them in, like, an auction house kind of thing. So it was just a big giant warehouse, and they were moving out of there because they moved to our Macy's at the mall.   And I was like, oh, it's finally for sale. Like, this has been one of my many dream you know, I have all these dream mining locations.  

This was one of many dream mining locations.   I called the number for the realtor, and I met with the realtor there,   explained to him   and the owner, actually, the the owner's grandson   because this was a generational business that, of course, went out of business when the grandchild got it because he's spoiled brat.   And these people are just super rich now. I was like, you know, the substation is here, and it had, like, a little back area where you didn't even need to put minors in there. You could just throw down a couple of containers   and consume enough electricity where you can get a good power purchase agreement, and you could move another tenant in here. And I just was going off on all these ideas   about what you could do with this site. And the realtor was like, man, this is some interesting ass shit.  

Can I buy  

[00:53:39] Unknown:

lunch? And I was like, yeah. You can fuck me. I remember this. I remember where I was sat with this conversation. I was sat on the M 4 Motorway in a van   having a conversation with you. You're telling me all about this guy. I was like, this sounds amazing, like, getting this guy involved. This is this is gonna go somewhere. I had, like, a real,  

[00:53:56] Unknown:

spike of energy. I was like, this is the one for you, mate. I thought so too. I definitely thought so too. He even called me, like, a couple days after, and he's like, you know, I was sat in prayer, and I had just thought to God. And I was like, oh my god. Christian too. Like, let's pray together. You know, maybe this is, you know, ask ask for God's guidance, and I always do that. So worked with him for a little bit. Even baseload came to Pittsburgh, and we went down to the strip and we had breakfast with this guy, and base load's doing his base load thing. You know? Yeah, man. You you can, like, buy energy from from this company. Yeah. Yeah. I can even do it. You can get, like, coal and the price of it in coal for the before it even gets turned into electrons. And, you know, you know, base is doing his base thing and just blowing this fucking guy's mind   with base load stuff. So he's like, yeah. You know? So   I am friends with the CEO of Duquesne Light. That's the electricity provider in Pittsburgh. And I'm friends with the operations manager, and I'm gonna get you guys in front of them, and we're gonna have a meeting. And and so this guy, this realtor guy works for, like, the largest industrial   real estate company in Western Pennsylvania. They actually have a ton of warehouse space, and there's already a Bitcoin mine in one of their industrial parks. They kind of experienced all this.  

And so we had a meeting with Duquesne Light, not with the CEO, but with the operations manager and their head of engineering. And, they were like, yeah. This is our rate. You're straight tariff. We've got a number of substations which you think are are good fit for you. And, we'll give you that list of substations, which   probably isn't allowed. But they were willing to, like, I don't know, not just give us the list of substations, but maybe you could look here, you know, kind of thing. That was my impression at the time.   That was a really good meeting. About a week later, I say to this guy, the realtor guy,   I need to sit down with you because he just kept saying certain things like, this is my retirement plan. I was like, oof, maybe he's got some ideas that may not be particularly accurate about mining.  

So I sit down with him, and I explain everything I could explain in an hour without frying somebody's fucking brain about Bitcoin in general as a technology and then about mining and how it works and then mining   economics   and do my statistics  

[00:56:02] Unknown:

thing with him. And, I could just see the guy glazing over Mhmm. You know, after about twenty minutes. The exhausted look on his face when I was done talking. I know that feeling because I've recorded a lot of statistics with you, and I I feel much the same. Just this glaze over, just this shutting down of the brain. It's like you're trying to insulate yourself from the pain, and so you shut yourself down. And then as soon as it finishes, you sort of pop your head out, and you're like, is it safe to come out now? Is John   finished?  

It's a scary time. So I understand this guy. You don't I don't need this.   I don't need this shit. Like a turtle popping its head out of a shell. Like, is it safe?   Have my eyes taken out by this crow? It's because it's painful when you listen to the statistics.   Yeah. If he'd have gone to a conference and there is someone on stage   waxing lyrical about how mining has made them a multibillionaire   and how they've driven   in a Lambo, and you can do this, you do that, and they're talking about these figures. And you're like, wow. This is like the best business on Earth. Why doesn't everyone do this? Then you speak to you, and it's like, well, here's why. I'll tell you why. Because it's not always the best fucking business.  

[00:57:15] Unknown:

Let me give you the stats. Whether you guys liked it or not, my exhaustive   analysis   of Bitcoin mining statistics over the year, I hope, has dissuaded   many of you from getting into Bitcoin mining.  

[00:57:29] Unknown:

You've saved people you haven't made people millions or yourself, but you've saved people Yes. Millions and millions  

[00:57:37] Unknown:

and millions of dollars. And I can rattle them off. Yeah. I always thought people just hire me as a consultant to explain statistics.   Maybe that's how you make money. It ain't mine and tell you that.  

[00:57:48] Unknown:

You'd be a consultant, and it's like, yes. I was thinking about doing this plan, and then, let me show you all my notes, and this is what I'm thinking of doing. I'm gonna have to get this place. I'm gonna put the money from here. What do you think? And then you just say, listen. This consultation is gonna be a thousand dollars just for this half an hour session. Half an hour. And here's my report that you just slide over a little sticky note that just says no.  

[00:58:11] Unknown:

No.   First, I'm gonna do a little performance. I'm gonna say, I'm a tell you the basics of hashing with ASICs,   Bitcoin mining statistics.   It's simple mathematics.   Check it   out. Then I'll get into it.  

[00:58:26] Unknown:

Yes.   It's a good plan.  

[00:58:29] Unknown:

Alright.   So this guy's fucking eyes glaze over Mhmm. And don't really hear anything from him ever again   after that meeting. Yeah. I can understand. Face   fucking   melted. Yes.   At that time,   my buddy down the streets from me,   old Mikey, he was an oil and gas guy for a while, like, going around and negotiating   gas leases with people when the fracking boom came about. So he's a real estate guy and an oil and gas guy, and he got in with a group that was jeez, at this point, I think they got, like, 220   wellheads   up in North Central Pennsylvania   and was talking to him. And and also at this time so what I'm doing is I'm just, like, gathering lists of substations   in Washington County and Allegheny County and Beaver County in Western Pennsylvania.  

And so I'm looking at these substations,   and I'm kind of examining the area around it. Like, ah, okay. Much like down the hill here, there used to be a glass mold plant and a Coca Cola bottling plant. And now those two plants are shuttered, but the substation is the same size. So I'm thinking, ah, there's capacity in there, because they won't tell you. You can't call up and say, hey, I noticed there's a substation there. How much you got? No. They wanted you to pay $10,000 $20,000   for a detailed load study, where they go out and write down some information.   During the time that I'm looking for all these different substations, and like I was saying, I would look for here's a substation. Here's the outline of an old steel mill. You know, there were there was one that was really, really good. It was a substation somewhere, and right next to it was an outline of an old steel mill.  

And the parking lot   for the employees   was right next to the substation.   So I drove there, and it's, like, perfectly graded. It's right next to the substation.   It's not actively for sale, but you can't really do anything with that site because it needs reclaimed because it had been a steel mill before.   You know, I I just found a ton of these   types of sites.   And when that realtor kind of ghosted me, it's like, well, that was, like, my ability to find out what's going on with that site because they have such pull, that company that he works for. And I was, like, looking up who the landowners were and writing them letters. It would be like, oh, some holding company in Texas   actually owns this piece of property. You know, I was going on the county tax assessor's website and trying to find out who owns the property and write them a letter, and it just was not really going well. Without that realtor, I was getting shit traction   from anybody about these sites. Was getting shit traction from Duquesne Light, getting shit traction from anybody I was trying to contact about. So I got my buddy Mike after that guy went ghost   because Mike was a land man in oil and gas, and he's got a realtor's license. So there was one site in particular   that has been my dream site for years and years and years. It was a substation that fed a coal mine portal   not far from it, and this is a few miles from my house. Andy and I were building out a fiber print there, and this substation   that used to feed it a coal mine portal that has since been closed down, I know that because I when I'm on call outs with a power company, I talk to them about stuff. So I got the story   of the substation from the guys instead of spending $10,000   for a detailed load study, while I just talk to the guys that I'm on a call out with, you know, replacing a pole and down wires. Don't worry. I get the scoop wherever I go, especially if it's utilities in this county. I got the fucking scoop. But, anyway, we were doing a printout there one time, and it's like, you know, you finish 02:00, but you don't have to be back   at the garage until four. You can just park somewhere for a while instead of starting something new. The saying in telephone company, nothing new afternoon,   which isn't true for me, but a lot of people are like that. But, anyway, Andy and I used to park at this substation.  

And so we get out, we're walking around and and, like, one side of this field has cows there, but they're not running them really well. It's like it's all rutted out and shitty, and they used to have, like, this 500 pound pig that was there. It was they're not very good farmers.   And on the other side of that, they own that land too, but it's fallow. They haven't run cows in there for years from what I know. This family used to own all of this property. It's, like, 300 acres,   and the dad drove over the mom in a tractor and killed her.   Shit. That's this family story.  

I believe it was an accident, but it's, like, right at the top of this road, and I now drive it every day. And I could see how that if you had a hay bale on the front, your old lady was in the front, that you could just run her over. You'd have no idea. That's this family's history.   And a while back, I had had my buddy, Mike, I said, can you write them a letter   if I could lease that land for running cows? This isn't even nothing had to do with Bitcoin mining. It's just that that substation was there,   and I'm like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if I could run miners there someday?  

But this is really a great piece of property. It's already fenced in, and nobody's using it for cows. And I could just lease it like Greg Judy style.   Like, listen. I'll lease it for cheap. You're not doing anything with it. I'll improve the land. You know, maybe we'd put a pond there or something or do something with water to get water up to that prop you know, that's the whole Greg Judy model of leasing land. So since Mike was a realtor, I said, can you write me a letter that I could send them to propose this lease? And he's like, sure. I'll I'll write it up for you. Mike's a good dude. If ever he needs wood chopped or tractor work or something, I'm always over there for him. So he writes this letter, and nothing came back. It was like, the guy's in hospice, and he's about to die, so he's not too interested in your lease.   That didn't go anywhere.  

But Mike was quite familiar with that I was trying to do something more. You know? Mhmm. Mike's always been down here looking at my builds and seeing what I do in the garage and the house, and he's kinda fascinated by the whole thing. So he got it. So it wasn't working out with Duquesne Light and West Bend Power, and Mike's like, well, we just we got all these wells now, and we're rehabbing all the wells and the previous owner. And this is what happens with gas is you don't produce on it or you overproduce on it, and then it fills up with water.   And then you need that well bailed or swabbed to get the water out. And if things aren't running for a while, the pump jacks go bad. You know, just all kinds of things can happen if you're not properly maintaining your gas assets, and that's what happened with what they had. So they were running gas to a a stripper plant,   which strips off the propane and sends the rest of it on pipeline, but they had, like, really, like, three or four big screamers   that they couldn't get on pipeline.  

It was like the last two mile kind of deal.   They couldn't tie it up   for just really negotiating right away with landowners.   So Mike's like, well, could we do Bitcoin mining there? And I was like, yes. But I honestly don't know a lot about natural gas Bitcoin mining. But I do know a guy, and that's my buddy KT.   And so I I called KT up, and we we didn't really know each other that well, but kind of a friend of a friend kind of deal. And I said, hey. I've got this opportunity,   and I wanna kinda bring you in. And can we take some meetings   with these people, and we can help explain Bitcoin mining to them? And you can explain, like, the natural gas side of things and those economics because I did not know them at the time. And we had a lot of meetings with them, and and everything went pretty well, and they were interested. But they were doing pretty well on pipeline. When a Bitcoin miner wants to use natural gas, he's gonna want it basically for free because there are so many costs involved in just getting that out. It's just a different revenue stream for the gas producer. Maybe a stranded asset, maybe you just have a lot of gas, and, you wanna do something different just to diversify your portfolio, so to speak. So KT and I had a bunch of meetings with some really good guys. Still tight with that team. And, of course, I'm still tight with my buddy, Mike. So we had one really good meeting, and it was before Lake Satoshi in 2024.  

I was actually late going to Lake Satoshi that day. Had a long meeting with them, go to Lake Satoshi, come back,   and we had another meeting with them, and they were like, we think we're not gonna do this. It seems like a lot of capital investment, and we're probably just gonna leave these wells not tied in   and just vent because so it's an oil play up there. It's not a gas play. So when they're getting the oil out, any gas that they get, they're just, screw it. We're just gonna vent. It's gonna blow it off. So we had a meeting with them, and KT's on the phone with me, you know, and it didn't go well. And he calls me back, and he says, what do you think of that? And I was like, really, KT? I'm I'm just kinda, like, dejected   and miserable about this whole thing, like, the way these past six months have gone. And you know this, Max. It's just like, I'm just trying so hard to get something going,   and nothing fucking seems to be getting any traction. And he's like, hey. You know? Don't worry. Things will catch on.  

By the way, one time at KT had taken a really long call with me. I was like, hey, man. I I just wanna show my appreciation. If you need anything from the Ungovernable Misfit store, I can give you, like, a shirt. I'll buy you a couple shirts or a print from mister Crown or something like that. Then he then text me a picture of his office, and he's got mister Crown's Game Boy Bitcoin mining print. Nice. So he had already had Ungovernable Misfit stuff. I thought that was cool. That's cool. I had no idea he was really, like, into our ecosystem.   Are you really a miner if you're not? Yeah. Great question. And the answer is no. Are you really a man if you're not? Yeah. Right. It's a better question. You're listening to. You you're listening to. So KT calls me, asks me how things are.  

Sucks. I get off the phone with him because I had a prayer call with my friend Daniel set up. The week before, Daniel had text me, and he said, hey. You know, the Lord put your name on my heart. I really wanted to see how you were doing. We haven't talked in a while. And so I already had this prayer scheduled.   That's why I had to get off the phone with KT. I get on the phone with Daniel, and we catch up with each other. Hey. What's going on? Oh, you know, we we're spinning up this farm, and things are tough. And, Daniel, I think we even talked about this on our interview with Joel. Like, Daniel worked, like, ninety days in a row or two months in a row or something like that. No break whatsoever. Just fourteen, sixteen hours a day of running cows and trying to build fences and spinning up all the stuff that they have spun up on that farm. So he had a lot more to bitch about than I did, but he's just one of those really caring people. He's concerned for you. He would say, I've worked for, like, sixty days. So, anyways, how are you? You know? Like,   he's just like that. Yeah. Just a really, really just wonderful guy. I mean, I can literally can't say enough great things about him, and he he felt some message from the Lord as he does. He's very in touch like that, that I may needed some prayer. And so we get together and we're talking about all these things, and I kinda say, you know, I just feel like I'm swinging a hammer at whatever nail's in front of me and not hitting any of them straight on. Just bend it, bend it, bend it.  

And, he's like, well, let's pray about that, you know, and let's just put that on to God.   And so we do great prayer call. Remember almost every word from it, and it was a year and a half ago. I get off the phone, and the KT calls me the second I'm off of that phone and says, hey. Yes. Just sent you an email   about some opportunity in your area. Now I never ever tell people we say Pittsburgh. You know, you don't give the exact city because people don't know, well, where's that? Oh, well, it's South Of Pittsburgh. Why didn't you just say Pittsburgh in the first place? Okay. So everybody just always thinks that I'm from Pittsburgh. This is 35 miles South Of Pittsburgh. So he's like, I sent something that was in your area to your email, and they open it up, and it's like some $2,000,000 mansion   that's got free gas and a generator in the garage. And I was like, oh,   You know? Obviously, this   this is not an opportunity for me.  

And then the other part of that email   was   a coal bed methane well   that's like as the crow flies, it's five miles from my house. And I was like, oh, what what is this? This could be really interesting. I look up how much gas it produces. It's like a 120 MCF a day. It's got all this gas treatment stuff on it. And, we'll explain coal bed methane and the layout of the well here in a little bit. And so I call the number on the email. No. I didn't call. I I said I replied to the email. I'm interested in that. I'm John, and this is a little bit about me, and, let me know. So I get a call about twenty minutes later from this guy named Jim. Jim says, hey. I'm responding to your email. I actually looked you up on LinkedIn and saw your website there, the Ungovernable Misfits, and I went to that. And I really think what you guys do is cool. I'm a libertarian, you know,   anarcho capitalist kinda guy. I'm I'm really into that stuff, and I just read through your articles and looked at your shows and stuff like that. And and I had to qualify, you know, who you were, and you definitely, like, think like I do. And I was like, oh, yeah. That's That's cool. That's so cool that we have, like, a a place that shows the characters, the people, the crew of Ungovernable Misfits. And there's, like, it's got the history of or not all of, but it's got a lot of the history of what's being done and and how it's been done. That was before Crown redid the website. It was, I think, was probably just articles and shows at that time. I'd love really like our about page. I'm gonna say, oh, like, my friend my friend Q. This is what Q does. Boom. Here's the bio. So Jim's like, I had to qualify you because you'd mentioned Bitcoin mining,   and everybody that I have spoken to has been a total scammer fucking piece of shit.  

And I was like, oh, yeah. You figured out the Bitcoin mining industry.   Like, Aaron and and base always say, crypto bros, don't crypto bro me. So they say   Jim had clearly been crypto broed a time or two and because he's he's a land man. So he got lots of experience, and he he's a land man. He, like, finds sites to build out storage facilities. He's in the rental storage business and a land man and a gas guy and a realtor. He's very much like my buddy, Mike. So he had been down this road before.   And, he had also said that somebody was interested   in this deal,   and it was company in California that was just gonna flare everything off and get carbon credits.  

Fuck's sake. So he had had crypto bros and carbon credit scammers   as interested parties. Carbon cunts. Carbon cunts. Yeah. As interested parties. So I asked him all these questions. Where is it? It's over here. It's, you know, like, five miles from my house. Wow. This is fucking crazy.   I said, well, do you mind if I, like, drive on the property and look at it if you can't meet me for a couple days? He's like, yeah. Go ahead. I had to drive down the access road. So I find out where it is, and lo and behold,   wouldn't you know   that it is right by that substation   that feeds that coal mine portal, the one that I had sent out an offer on the land to see if I can't lease it for running cows. It is right literally across the street. As a matter of fact, now I own 300 something acres of gas leases, and one of my gas leases, which doesn't have a well on it, but I own the lease, borders that property. The right of way that comes out of that substation   runs right along the backside of one of my gas leases.  



[01:13:22] Unknown:

Perfection.  

[01:13:23] Unknown:

Don't blow your mind.  

[01:13:25] Unknown:

Well, I've already had my mind blown. I think I was on the phone to you while you were, like, posted out, like, sat in your truck getting a recce   and telling me about it. Getting a recce? A recce. Like, having a look around. Oh, like a reconnoiter.   Recon. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. You're just getting a a feel for something.  

[01:13:44] Unknown:

Yeah. I believe so. Max already knows this entire story. He's, like, been on the phone with me half of the time for, you know, literally while it's happening.  

[01:13:52] Unknown:

Yes. Yeah. I don't wanna play the audience member. Like, oh my God. That's amazing, Joel. Really?   Really? I didn't know that part of the story. I wasn't literally on the phone to you as it happened   as it unfolded.