YouSaid · the spoken record

Austin Mitchell

lines on the record: 54
first: 2022-11-02
most recent: 2022-11-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“This has been a real pleasure. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to talk about just really love everything that's happening in this space and excited to now be a part of it. So thank you very much.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Along the way, not the full network, of course, but like the transactions volumes that we're talking about, the amount of liquidity that's going to be required, the reliability. So one difference is Not paying for podcasts, we're paying for a critical service. So if people's energies bills don't get paid, well, then their energy gets shut off. And that can be a big issue. So we need to push reliability to 99.99%. And it needs to be that high for very large transactions as well. So it's things like that which haven't been done before that we're going to have to do and we know we're going to have to break things and then build them back better. And so that's sort of the mission that we're on. And why we get really excited about the tech and where we're at today.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Heck out in the open as well. So as a new company, we're still figuring out exactly what that means in each facet of it. But some of our core technology is open source today because we think that this is not, it's not going to be denoted that brings the whole energy economy to the Lightning Network. It's going to take a lot of people doing that. And it's going to be done through integrations. And it's going to be done through partnerships and finding new ways to sort of connect people because there is really an opportunity for a network effect here. And that's what we want to see happen. Because if you have two parties transacting together, now let's think about, okay, well, somebody who's then upstream says, hey, I want to also get paid right away. So there's really sort of a very natural network effect that we want to create, but there's definitely some big challenges to solve, and that's what we're excited to do. We tell people with what we're doing today that we fully intend to break the lightning network.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're happy to tell you what we're doing. This is really just for us in a really exciting time to be getting our start and putting ourselves out there as here's a really important and potentially huge use case for Bitcoin. It's not the case that we're trying to sort of solve a problem that doesn't exist or anything's a really big problem of financial inefficiency and financial inflexibility. And we have an opportunity to use the things that the tools, the technologies that are being built to solve those. And what it does is it's better for energy companies and it's better for energy consumers. So it's a win-win there. I mean, I think we all know who loses out in that equation, but it's not the consumers and it's not the energy companies. And so we get really excited about that and we hope others see that as well. We also think that one of the core things in how we're building is we're also doing the”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so as a company right now, we are right at the very beginning of our seed stage. And what we're doing is really kind of focusing on commercializing our initial product, which is going to be tailored to the Bitcoin mining space and can talk about that certainly. But what we're going to be doing is from there, moving out into other industries and into other sort of segments of the energy space. And one of the things that we're looking to do is bring people on board. So we have a great team today. Our technology is being headed up by Max Stignan. He's an incredible talent. And we can sort of see as we move from Bitcoin mining into sort of the other areas where we want to go. We're going to need to find additional folks. And so obviously, as a Bitcoin-only company, we are trying to attract Bitcoiners to the mission. And so that's how we're approaching this. And so we've got a couple of postings on our website. We invite anybody to go check those out. Or if, you know, just any general inquiries.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Previously worked at Strike, he's an incredible developer and he's building a great team around him today. And one of the important things about how Max and I connected, which I think is just a true Bitcoin community story, was at the meetup. And being at the Columbus meetup, talking about, hey, here are these problems. And then Max says, hey, we can solve those. And we can use the Lightning Network to solve these. And we don't need to do a smart contract to do it. I still look at the technology and I think, hey, And it's Bitcoin, it does things that you can't do with other technologies and it does them faster better and cheaper. It's just really a kudos to the team because I'm just one part of what Snowda is and what we will be with the talent that we have.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so the team is incredible. It comprised the folks that I've met throughout my career and people who are open-minded in the energy space, but also bring just a wealth of knowledge. So we have folks who have been on the front lines fighting for energy equity. We have folks who are on the front lines fighting for deregulation. So collectively, we have over 125 years of experience in the energy industry throughout the value chain. My co-fund releases, Scott. She is a JD and a CPA and really sort of brings that back off as her experience. She's seeing sort of how things look when it's not sort of operationally on the front line of energy. It's sort of dealing with things as they come in in paper form and across the financial platforms of the back office. So we have that experience and what we've been able to do is really combine it with lightning expertise. And so Max Signan, our head of technology, he was pretty”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Price sensitive supply, et cetera. So here we can sort of link those two things up. We can provide that transactional flexibility, provide instant settlements. And what it ultimately would do is I think it will change sort of the narrative around Bitcoin mining because now the energy suppliers are not going to sort of view all Bitcoin miners as a credit risk because now they're going to be able to be paid more frequently. So we think it's a really big opportunity to really demonstrate what's possible in this space and at the same time grow and scale our own technology.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, Preston, thanks for the question. I think where we're going to be focused is in the Bitcoin mining space. We think that they are the ideal energy consumers to really initiate this innovation. And the reason being is because A Bitcoin miners understand the technology. As we readily admit, there's areas in terms of on-ramps where we don't have all of the solutions yet to do that seamlessly. Bitcoin miners being able to pay in Bitcoin really sort of streamlines and we can build a frictionless payment flow around that. And it's really also a sort of a good for the goose is good for the gainer because now we're talking about bringing significant scale into the lightning network and really helping us sort of evolve and mature the technology. So we're definitely starting there and it's ideal because Bitcoin miners more than anybody have understand the value of sort of price response of demand and”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've grown accustomed to all my years in the energy space and even in academia where it was like you didn't want anybody to know what you knew you wanted to find the best location to drill your well or you wanted to publish your paper first i feel very differently being in the bitcoin space and and i think that's very freeing because then you know i can go into conversations with my team you know can go into conversations and just talk about what we're doing and you know for some people it really resonates and we've you know gotten a ton of great feedback to help make what we're doing you know really enhance what we're doing”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's exactly right. Once the light bulb went off, I think I was a changed person. I remember coming home and after that same plane ride I talked about where the thing I spent three hours with my wife just downloading everything and it's just the excitement that I have has carried with me since that moment and really the community then has just further reinforced everything because not only have I experienced people who see I think as you know Jeff talked about in the podcast with you recently you know it's about you know abundance and hope and just that mindset shift that's that that you see in people in the space but the other thing too is just you know along with open source just people who are open”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And just continue to sort of optimize and maybe maximize really the opportunities that are there. So it's just one example. I mean, we've talked a lot about the US, but here's where it's not only Bitcoin mining, but Bitcoin mining is a piece of the equation, but it's how we can transact across borders, really open up markets. And now we can really envision a whole new future for what it means for energy equity and energy access.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In, they can lower the cost of the community. And because if you want to go back to creditworthiness or creditworthy customer paying instantly, the mini-grid operator themselves is really happy to have us as a customer as well because they're not worried are we going to pay the bill in 30 days. So everybody is better off in this equation. And just as another example of a productive use of energy. So there is a whole series of things that folks call productive uses of energy. Coin mining belongs in that space, belongs in that, it fits in that definition for me. And it's truly transformative in what it can mean, but it does go beyond that. And it goes to how do we think about just investing in energy infrastructure generally. And so what we've done is we've run the numbers, we've built the models to say actually what it really now enables us to do is build bigger mini grids. So now we don't have to just think about where the community is going to be in five years. We can think about where that community will be in 10 years.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so that led to just incredible conversations, not only about the US, but globally of how we can sort of change the narrative, change the dynamic. And so, you know, one of the cool things which we're going to talk a whole lot more about as a company is just that of some partnerships that we formed in Africa to do that, to basically say, hey, we're going to help seed mini grids there with Bitcoin mining. As I sit here today in Columbus, we're going to be paying for the energy that's being consumed in Africa. And so we're mining Bitcoin in two places in Africa today and paying for it in Columbus, Ohio. And what it does is it creates this win-win-win scenario where not only are we able to get the Bitcoin at a good price, a good price for the energy, but now we've added increased revenue for zero costs to that minigrid. And so that minigrid is now benefiting from more revenue coming.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was incredible, and a lot of the folks are on the team today, either as advisors or full-time members of Sonoda. And they all saw it the same way. They saw, hey, this is transformative. You can really truly reimagine the energy system when you aren't sort of tethered to a one sort of viewpoint on how it should exist. And one of those people was my friend.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was like, that's the efficiency we should be seeking is that. And the financial system that we have today in energy finance prevents that. And it is an absolute barrier to that. But if we can get to a point where energy is freely traded at a granular level and the true cost and the economic value are known, that transparency is going to do wonders for not only the efficiency of the market, but just wonders for how people use energy. And I think it's just going to open up unreally unleash innovation, unleash investment, not only locally, but globally. Because as we know, you can send Bitcoin anywhere in the world instantly. So I think that's really sort of the transformation. One of the other things that happened shortly after that was I started to talk to people that I also knew in the energy space. And people that I knew had open minds and would be willing to say, okay, well, how does this change thing?”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kicked off. That plane ride home. I can't even describe how I felt sort of jotting down everything that I had learned and all of my preconceived notions of energy and things and how they could be changed. Because what I saw was, hey, not only was this, as the quote says, people who are seeking wasted-strained energy, but I thought about how much more efficient. So you talk about efficiency as reducing consumption. But I thought there is an even greater efficiency that's possible if we have just a flexible grid where supply and demand can be constantly tugging and pulling at each other with price going up and down to reflect the true dynamics of the market.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so it really was. So for me, it was actually attending Bitcoin Miami 2021. So I attended that as a representative of the utility I worked for at the time. I saw Bitcoin mining. I knew about Bitcoin. buying Bitcoin on Robinhood through my weekly DCA, forgive me for using a non-custodial solution. But that was what I knew. I knew enough about it to like, and I was really intrigued by Bitcoin mining, the growth in the US. And since I worked for an energy company, I said, hey, there's certainly maybe some risk here, some opportunity. I was in charge of risk for that utility, so I really wanted to go understand this. And being down there, a couple things happened. Number one, I got a math lesson from Greg Foss. And that sort of pushed me really close to the rabbit hole. And then I spent a dinner with the Ibex team. And I can just tell you, I just instantly sort of saw the mindset shift. It just started just.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'll tell you, I'll own the fact that two years ago I was one of those people who thought we needed to consume less.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so we only expect that once the cash app strike, et cetera, are going to continue to progress as they have, and we'll be able to continue to tap into what they're building to really provide good on-ramps, good off-ramps to really sort of round off the full user experience. So yeah, part of everything that we're doing is anticipating the growth in key areas that today are not as mature as they need to be to get sort of mass adoption. But we think in a short period of time they will be.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. So I think the big thing for us, a part of how we view our company in the progression that we're going to make in the development is we're leveraging third parties. We're integrated with some of the leading companies in the space, and we expect them to continue to advance just as we will. So, as an example, we're not focused on building that off-ramp. We're leveraging a third party to help us do that.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Energy companies today do not want to receive Bitcoin, but a company like Strike has opened the door to say, hey, But they can receive USD in that transaction. And everything can still be the same, but just as Jack says right before it gets to their bank account, it flips to USD and everybody's content with how the transaction went.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I understand what all this is about, and that's why I know that the solution is perfect. It's just making it so that way adoption is easy. And I think that's where going back to strike.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I think that we need to talk with when we talk with executives and things like that, what we really are talking about is cash flag, credit risk, and the barriers, the inefficiency and just the inflexibility of the system. It's not easy to change the billing system today. Now you can. So those things resonate top to bottom with everybody we talk to usually the feedback that we get when we talk to the energy executives is more of just like a skepticism around Bitcoin still at this stage and but hey you're solving some of our biggest pain points and and I know it because I've been on that side of the equation I've had to manage the credit risk I had to track the cash flow”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, so I'll tell you that part of our vision is that really the entire energy economy is going to, I mean, that is our vision. The entire energy economy is going to settle on the lightning network. So every energy transaction in your bill, B2B, when you think about one of the, there's a number of platforms out there where wholesale energy trading occurs. Those platforms will be a perfect use case for, hey, everybody who's trading energy, let's be linked into the lighting network and let's do the financial settlement right away. And all of those platforms where to be a participant. Or collateral to be a participant. So now we can expand access to those types of trading platforms if you don't have those barriers in place.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It doesn't change value for the last bit of the value chain quite a bit. And there's usually a number of parties involved in the transaction. So now instead of the utility paying the supplier, supplier paying the transmission company, et cetera, et cetera, now everybody can pay to once. And so that's where you start to see enormous savings come to bear. And that's what we get really excited about because now everybody in the equation is happier. It's everybody from the energy broker who can say, hey, I had a part in this Safi deal. They're the last people that get paid in a lot of transactions. Now they can get paid right at the very front with everybody else. And so it just really changes the dynamic.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's exactly the idea. And what's interesting is there are actually a number of companies that have sprung up with that same approach, sort of pay as you go, but it's all tethered to the way things work. The only difference is just that it's really they're called pays as you go, but really it's just a prepay. So I think with Bitcoin and Lightning, you can actually have a true pay-as-you-go option where it's your money until you're using it to pay. And so I think that's really what the big change is and cutting out all of that financial inefficiency. And one of the other really big opportunities, Preston, is that back to that sort of daisy chain of payments that's out there today. What we can do now is think about split payments. So I know many of you are familiar with the value for value model that's out there where you can have multiple people receiving instant payments at the same time. Well, energy has this property where it doesn't change.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't even need to understand it, and ultimately what we want to see is just as Jack says, a better user experience. It creates a whole different, you know, the landscape will completely change in terms of the products and services that people can be offered related to energy because there's going to be no limits in how they transact.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So number one, Jack Mahlers and what strike has done has absolutely been an inspiration for us. I think that was one of those light bulb moments through the progression of Sonoda in how we got to where we are today was Jack Mahler's talking at Bitcoin 2021. Jack Mahler's being on CNBC telling the world how we can really change, use the lighting network for payments, but in a way that sort of meets people where they are, meets them where they're comfortable. And so we really embrace that concept of our vision is that people will sort of interact with their energy payments and will have the opportunity to interact with it in just the same way they are today. It's fiat leaving their bank account, but it's really leveraging the lightning network as the payment rails and then having decentralized processing connected into that network to really make it be more complex and dynamic.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now we can sort of solve the differences, and that's sort of an easy example. I think the more the biggest opportunities are going to exist in terms of how we actually reflect the true cost of energy. Because most people today, they're just assigned a specific rate. And that rate is, you know, I'm a residential customer in southern Ohio, so I pay this price for this month. Well, we all know, and in Bitcoin, the Bitcoin community knows better than I think most industries that energy is not the true cost of energy. It's not one price over a broad service area that's fixed for a month and actually goes up and down. So now we actually have the processing capability through decentralized, you know, through decentralized, through how we built the software, then say, no, we can do real-time pricing at a very granular level. And Preston can pay differently than his neighbor.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The data that's out there push that through those centralized systems. Because if you think, you know, went from one data point per customer per month to now thousands of data points per customer per month. That becomes a big data problem. It becomes an issue with processing that. And so what we can solve by decentralizing the whole system is now we can actually handle the data in its entirety. And we can process in a decentralized way and really open the door up to now more flexibility in terms of how we transact. So you, Preston could choose to pay your bill. You could choose to do streaming payments. Maybe you want to pay every 10 minutes for your energy And you like to open up your phone and see money come out every 10 minutes. But maybe your neighbor says, no, I'd actually like to pay once a month still.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But what it also does is it opens up the world of possibility in terms of how energy is priced and structured. So much of the system that exists today. So part of what I would say in terms of the background for where we got to today is the fact that everything was built at a time in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, a lot of the infrastructure and the energy space was built then. And it was all centralized. And it depended on somebody reading your meter once a month. The whole energy system has changed over the last 20 years to be digital. Now most people, their utility knows how much energy they're consuming the moment they're consuming it because we have smart meters on most homes in the US. So that's changed. There's no more meter readers. But the financial back office systems, those are still stuck in that era. And so what that does is it makes it very difficult to now deal with the richness, the abundance of”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so what do we have to do from there? Is we just have to figure out well, how do we use those properties? How do we use the features of the Lightning Network in a Bitcoin peer-to-peer payments and apply them to energy? And so what we've done is we've created a programmatic link between energy meters, IoT devices, et cetera. Anything that is part of the energy system, hardware that's associated with the energy system, creating that programmatic link between that hardware and the lightning network itself. And so what our software does is it's really that intelligent bridge, that programmatic link, so that as energy is moving, now we can be using that as a trigger to then send payments going in the opposite direction. So what we like to say is, hey, it's energy or money moving at the speed of energy. And that's really sort of the view that we want to create.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've talked a lot about the problem, and I think it's because it's so big. So, how do we solve it? I think the very first thing that we would really focus on is just the instant settlement aspect of it. So if you go back to somebody, you're paying your bill two months later. So not only are you consuming energy that entire time, so you're waiting, you know, here we are in October, and you're paying your bill, let's say, from August or September. So by the time you pay that, now you have two additional months of consumption, et cetera. And so that whole thing, what we want to do is sort of realign the cash flows and how we're doing that is instant settlements over the lightning network. And what the Lightning Network gives us the opportunity to do, I mean, I think everybody understands the benefits of the Lightning Network, the features. So low cost, instant payments, finality.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's not the case that this is one of the things that we can certainly talk about. It's not the case that folks not paying their bills is there are solutions to that available, but they're inaccessible today, again, because of the financial inefficiency that's out there.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so the other thing, too, that when you go back to the fact that President, I'm sure you always pay your bill, but there's a lot of people that don't. And there's a lot of businesses that go out of business, especially in tough economic times. And so one of the things that we just published an article in Bitcoin Magazine that we talk about, it's a perfect quote from McKinsey, where they say, hey, five to seven percent of people don't pay their bills. And so that cost doesn't get eaten by utilities and energy companies. That cost gets passed on to you and me. So not only are we paying for the inefficiency, but we're also paying for the people who don't pay their bills.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that our conservative estimate is 10%. Of the cost of energy, so your bill, 10% of that is likely to be just financial inefficiency, back office overhead. Fees from intermediaries, it's really sort of a poster child for inefficiency”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cash isn't coming back on the door until you pay them two months later So there's that lag that is not free. So initially when we started talking with folks about the problem you were trying to solve, they would say, well, hey, I like the float. And in our response is always, well, the float isn't free. You're getting a loan every month, but you're paying for it. And it turns out that it's actually quite costly. So the last couple of companies I worked for, there was sort of a And then the utility then pays the supplier. The supplier then pays the producer. And so it's just these big chunks of money that are sort of piecemealing in large chunks their way through the energy economy. And it's just really inefficient when you really sort of step back and see it. It's huge.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's exactly right. So when you go to pay your energy bill today, what you're going to see is that you're paying for energy that you consumed in a previous month. So it's often the case that we're paying for a bill weeks, if not months later. And by the time that the money then moves to the other counterparties upstream, it can be months to, in some cases, we've heard 120 days. So it's that cash flag which is really sort of, I think, the starting point of the issues. It's sort of one side of the problem that we're working to solve. And it's significant because so when you think about that, what's happening is the energy producers in the utilities, they're providing that energy to you as a consumer. They had to buy that. They had to produce that. So that was cash out the door to bring that to you.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So how the Bitcoin miners were still paying the energy producers wasn't changing even though everything else about the equation was changing.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Ohio, that's why I say Ohio. But there's so much of a disconnect today between physically and financially that that's really sort of where I was like, hey, there's something here that we need to that I wanted to dig into. And it was a Bitcoin mining specifically when you think about the fact that going back to Bitcoin miners moving to the energy itself, you see them eliminating so many pieces of the puzzle in doing that so much of any inefficiency they're cutting it out by cutting out all of those middlemen saying, let's go directly to the source. Let's reduce that waste. And what sort of struck me was that even in those situations, and these are the conversations that I had with the team in the very early days of forming Sonoda, was that everything was changing, but the one thing that was saying the same was how they were transacting with their counterparties.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And consumption in your home. But what I saw was that as I progressed in my career, there were instances where we're managing risks of things that had to do more with the financial side, had to do with the fact that it was actually inefficient to move money from the consumer back up through that same value chain. And so I think that's really kind of where the light bulb went off on, hey, here's this problem of financial inefficiency. There's actually a lot of costs associated with just the financial side that doesn't add any value to the energy itself. And in fact, when you think about the inefficiency, it distorts the price of energy, distorts the cost of it. And it leads to things like aggregated costs and socializing of costs to sort of a broad swath of people. And what we don't see is really the granularity that exists. Energy, the price of energy is going to vary across space and time. In one part of Ohio is going to be different than North Ohio is going to be different from southern Ohio.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so what's really interesting, Preston, is that in my career, I've had the opportunity to really experience the full value chain of energy. And so after I worked in upstream oil and gas, I then worked for an energy retailer. So that's where it's electric and gas and it's trading and it's basically selling in deregulated competitive markets directly to consumer. And then I moved over to utility where now it's sort of soup to nuts. You're seeing how the infrastructure gets put in place, sort of that whole centralized mindset in terms of how energy is procured and distributed to homes and businesses. And in that experience, I think the thing that really stuck out to me was, hey, we're really good at moving energy. Energy moves very efficiently through the system, whether it's natural gas or whether it's electricity, it's efficient. And you can have multiple companies sort of in that value chain, each touching that energy from the point of production to the point of distribution.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think so. I mean, it's been a while since I've sort of had the spreadsheet open looking at Bitcoin mining in the economics. I know it's challenged right now. But I think that anytime you provide more options, it's an option that didn't exist. And so at the very least, when you think about how can we keep more methane in the pipeline, prevent it from leaking into the atmosphere, then now you have another option to do that. And it doesn't have to just simply be sended to a market where it's unprofitable.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think what's great is that the incentive structure is changing and it's partly top down, but also sort of bottoms up, companies wanting to change the way that they operate. And absolutely. I think that's one of the things that really drew me into Bitcoin mining in this whole space was seeing an industry that had a wholly different view of what energy means. And whereas sort of waste and shane energy was something that companies, you know, people don't really want to talk about. The Bitcoin mining industry wanted to talk about it. They wanted to find those sources of energies. They could use them to mine Bitcoin. And for me, that was just, you know, sort of that mind-blowing event where I was like, hey, this is different. This represents something, this is an innovation that I had never come across before in my entire 15 years.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And sort of the lesson that I learned there was okay, well, there are problems there, but there's things about the business that I need to understand to really change the business. I've always wanted to be somebody who's creating positive change, working to accomplish whole things, protect the environment, but also grow the economy. I have always sort of tried to strike that balance. And so when I sort of heard that, I realized, hey, there's something I'm missing here. Time to go really dive into business. And the very next thing I did is go work for an upstream oil and gas company. And laying pipelines and drilling wells was probably one of the most fun jobs that I've had.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And in the feedback was well, no, it's not. And the operator at the time actually took the time, we went, we dug into the actual ROI of fixing things. And for that next dollar that the company had, it actually provided a better return to put it into drilling a new well.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Coming out of that wasn't necessarily that hey, we have to change things in some giant way. It was, hey, we can, back to the 80-20, we can solve 80% of the problem with just going after 20% of the issues. And one of the other interesting things that happened there, and this actually led to me really wanting to pivot into the industry itself, was the fact that almost on one of our last sites, we pull up to it and it was like 10% of the methane was just spewing into the atmosphere. So much so that you could actually see it just pulling up. You didn't even need the equipment to measure it.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fun, five natural gas companies, Carnegie Mellon, Colorado State. I basically spent a year on the road with the team. We were driving around a band that said Carnegie Mellon on the side, but it really didn't look like much. And what most people didn't realize when we pulled up to rural hotels in western Oklahoma, et cetera, was that in the back of that van was a half a million dollars of measurement equipment. So we got to go to all these different sites, really see parts of America that folks didn't folks don't typically see energy production in ways that folks don't see. And that study was really interesting because one of the key findings was not that there was sort of widespread pervasive issues with methane emissions. It's that, hey, there's a few sites that on a given day a ball gets stuck open or one particular site that maybe was poorly maintained, those are really what we identified to be the issues. And so it wasn't my view.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Supportive of what the natural gas industry was doing at the time. Another paper that was sort of painted a different picture talking about ways that they can do better. And then a third that was saying, hey, it's the regulators that are screwing this up. And so it was sort of in that experience where I think I saw, hey, there's credibility to sort of being this neutral person, somebody who's being a scientist, not with a bias, but just saying, let's let the data do the talking and let's figure out how we can structure policy or make regulations to keep everybody happy and protect the environment, but also enable economic development to occur. And it was from that experience that I was given then an opportunity to join what was this nationwide study of methane emissions where we were basically trying to understand at that time throughout the value chain for the natural gas industry, where was the methane coming from? How could we address some of the things? What were going to be the quick wins? So leading this nationwide study with environmental defense.”
2022-11-02 · We Study Billionaires · BTC102: Bitcoin Lightning Network Changing the Energy Sector w/ Austin Mitchell (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT