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partner of Bridger Solutions, joins hosts Seth
DuCharme and David
Shargel to discuss crypto mining, including public
perceptions and its place in the future of the energy
transition.
I think most of our audience probably has a pretty good grasp
on what crypto mining is, but for those who don’t, could you
give us just a few high-level points?
Bitcoin, which is what we’re mining, and now the industry is
going to collapse down into almost only bitcoin, is the
cryptocurrency that is mined using what’s called a proof of
work mechanism. At a high level, what that is, is the use of energy
that passes through now purpose-built computer processors
distributed, decentralized, all over the world wherever they are
attached to electricity in order to secure the monetary network so
that what I send to you and what you send to me and then send to a
friend or to someone in China that you don’t even know, is a
real transaction that represents the value that was agreed upon
originally. You need energy to do that, which is processing power
to cross this huge network of processors which are competing to be
the first to secure the latest block of transactions on that
ledger. A block of transactions in the bitcoin network happens
about every 10 minutes. There’s a lot more there in technical
aspects, but hopefully that’s helpful.
Can you give us an explanation of when Bridger was launched and
why?
I come from a background in the Foreign Service and spent the
last 15 years or so working primarily overseas. I skipped around
the North Africa, Central Africa, Middle East, South Asia, and
along the way met the two co-founders, Jake and John. They were
both in the Special Forces community and we were working on a
number of projects actually in a couple of different places, first
in Afghanistan and then more recently in Africa. When we were
working in Africa, we realized that we were all interested, at
least at the surface level, in crypto and what was happening in and
around that ecosystem I think it was Jake who said then the market
just crashed. This is early 2020. He sparked my interest and so I
bought two Bitcoin when it was around $5,000 and really had no idea
what this thing was. Maybe it was something that was interesting to
watch and then trade. But that is how I dipped my toe in and I
pretty quickly got whisked down the crypto bitcoin rabbit hole with
lots of weird bumps along the way, exploring other
cryptocurrencies.
A lot of our clients and a lot of the marketplace is focused
these days on the concept of ESG, which is the principles and
values that reflect an importance on corporations focus on
environmental, social or governance issues. What’s your view on
whether companies can mine or can you expand further on the
renewable point and still maintain or advance these ESG goals?
Bitcoin mining has gotten a bad rap simply because it consumes
energy. If you’re not convinced that there is an intrinsic
value proposition in bitcoin itself that consumes energy, then
that’s a poor use of energy. But in terms of the market
incentives that the bitcoin ecosystem is putting in place around
the Bitcoin mining part of the ecosystem, what I strongly believe
we’re going to see is a quickening of the energy transition
away from, not eradicating, but away from and toward renewable
energy and renewable energy sources. Bitcoin miners and mining
companies are getting squeezed and you can’t just plug into
anything and make a profit. It’s determined in large part by
the cost per kilowatt hour, as well as the bitcoin price. What
we’re seeing unfolding right now is this market incentive to
push bitcoin miners to lowest cost energy possible, and that lowest
cost energy is almost always renewable energy.
If you step back from the clear focus and mission that
you’ve identified to try to be successful with what you’re
doing with Bridger Solutions, do you see particular risks in that
landscape that our audience might be interested in?
It’s not an easy time to try to convince folks to invest
in crypto and in your projects with all the headlines that are
going on. There are snake pits and risks everywhere. But with the
collapse of FTX and now that we’re learning about what Sam
Bankman-Fried was up to all along, it really exposes to the broader
world what are the opportunities for fraud and scams in this
space.
And essentially, you’ve got and I’m going to be a little
bit provocative and what I’m about to say is maybe not 100% the
case, but it’s very close. You’ve got Bitcoin and
you’ve got something like 22,000 other cryptocurrencies. Most
of which are what I would call an affinity scam. Then it becomes a
Ponzi in most cases along the way. This isn’t the case with all
coins. But I would say it’s like 99 percent of those 22,000
other cryptos in the ecosystem.
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