#608 Building a Vertically Integrated Bitcoin Mining Business

Greg Beard is the co-founder and CEO of Stronghold Digital Mining, a vertically integrated cryptocurrency miner. He previously oversaw Apollo’s investment activities in the energy, metals and mining and agriculture sectors. In this conversation, we discuss bitcoin mining, environmental impact, coal waste energy production, vertical integration for miners, and Stronghold’s future plans. ======================= Did you know nearly 338 million dollars worth of NFTs were sent last year? And in 2021 that number is growing faster than ever. Looking to make your first NFT? Check out NEAR’s fast, scalable, low-cost, open-source platform. Learn why NEAR is the infrastructure for innovation at near.org ======================= With 10M+ users, Crypto.com is the easiest place to buy, and sell 100+ cryptocurrencies. The Crypto.com Visa Card gives you up to 8% back instantly, and 100% back on Spotify and Netflix. Also, Crypto.com lets you earn up to 8.5% p.a. on BTC, and 14% p.a. on stablecoins. Get $25 when you download the Crypto.com App with code "pomp". Download the App now: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/pomppodcast2021 ======================= Cosmos is building the Internet of Blockchains, marking a new era of interoperability, scalability, and usability. The free flow of assets and data between blockchains with bridges to Ethereum and Bitcoin will unleash the potential of DeFi, NFTs, and much more. Dive into Cosmos at cosmos.network/pomp

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Greg Beard is the co-founder and CEO of Stronghold Digital Mining, a vertically-integrated cryptocurrency miner. He previously oversaw Apollo's investment activities in the energy, metals, and mining and agriculture sectors. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin mining, environmental impact, coal waste energy production, vertical integration for miners, and Stronghold's future plans. I really enjoyed this conversation with Greg, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Near. Near is an open-source platform that accelerates the development of decentralized

• 0:46Anthony Pompliano?

  applications overcoming high fees and slow speeds with its fast, scalable, low-cost, and climate-neutral blockchain protocol. This is why Near was recently awarded the climate-neutral product label from South Pole. One transaction on Near consumes about 1,300x less carbon than a similar transaction on other chains. Learn why Near is the infrastructure for innovation at near.org, N-E-A-R dot O-R-G today. Near.org. Go check it out. Next up is Cosmos. They're building the internet of blockchains, marking a new era of interoperability, scalability, and usability. The free flow of assets and data between blockchains with bridges to Ethereum and Bitcoin will unleash the potential of DeFi, NFTs, and much more.

• 1:29Anthony Pompliano?

  You can dive into Cosmos at cosmos.network/pomp. Again, cosmos.network/pomp. Last but not least is crypto.com. Crypto.com is the easiest place to buy and sell 100-plus cryptocurrencies. Their crypto.com Visa card gives you up to 8% back instantly and 100% back on Spotify and Netflix. Also, they let you earn very high rates of return on various assets in their yield products. You can get $25 when you download the crypto.com app today with code POMP. Again, you can get $25 when you download the crypto.com app today using code POMP. Go download it by clicking on the link in the description. All right, let's get into this episode with Greg. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:38Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Greg here with me. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  You bet. Happy to be here.

• 2:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Greg, you've got a really unique background in the natural resources space. And now you run what is probably one of the more unique Bitcoin mining operations. Maybe let's just start with kind of your background, where the interest in natural resources come from, and then we'll get into kind of what you guys are doing in the Bitcoin mining world.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  You bet. Thanks for that. Yeah, I've spent most of my career as an investor in the energy space. The past 10 years, my last job was running the natural resources group for the private equity firm called Apollo. Before that, I was 10 years at Riverstone, another energy-focused private equity firm. And I started in the energy group in 1993 at Goldman Sachs doing investing and banking. So energy is really all I've known, and mostly from the investor standpoint.

• 3:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And when you're at Apollo, if you're the global head of like natural resources or energy, what do you do all day? Right? Is it just you're just looking through and kind of evaluating various businesses to buy? When you talk about it from like the investor seat, just maybe explain what that is on a day-to-day basis?

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it ends up being a relationship business. So I was mostly, you know, on good weeks traveling to Texas, meeting with colleagues and friends and investing in prior investments that I had made. And then you're always looking for new investments to make. So you're, you know, a little bit of studying, a lot of networking. And then obviously, you know, leading a group, you end up doing quite a bit of administrative things as well. Apollo is a big firm, so there's a little bit of that. There as well, but you know, in the good weeks are spending time with really great entrepreneurs in the space. So I would say I've had the privilege of finding and working with just some fantastic talent

• 4:34Speaker 02

  that in an entrepreneurial way has been able to make money, a lot of money in the energy space over 25 years.

• 4:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And so as you're doing this, you're doing it in a pretty traditional kind of environment, right? The various firms that you've worked at, they're world-class at what they do, but but most people would kind of put them in the incumbent or the kind of the top of the legacy financial system. At what point does Bitcoin and kind of the cryptocurrency mining come on your radar? Like, at what point are you like, hey, this is interesting use of of energy?

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think the background with Stronghold is Bill Spence is my partner in Stronghold, and he was one of those talented CEOs and entrepreneurs that I had come across during my Riverstone time. That was I left Riverstone, you know, more than 12 years ago. So I've known Bill, you know, it feels like almost 20 years now. And because Bill has been an expert on the fuel management side of this type of power plant, he was able to acquire the plant and then he brought me in as a partner. And just because we had had a lot of inbounds from Bitcoin miners looking to buy power from us,

• 5:48Speaker 02

  and we began to appreciate if you're mining Bitcoin, it's really difficult to get access to cheap power. And most power providers are big utilities and are tough to reach and tough to deal with. And getting the power down to the right voltage is not easy. You know, we'll generate power at 13,000 volts plus, and then Bitcoin miners use it at 415. So power plants aren't really set up to have local users. So after the, you know, 10th phone call from people looking to buy power from us, and we sold power to a few guys, and then in doing the math, just to make sure, hey, is this customer going to go bankrupt? bankrupt or how does this business really look?

• 6:32Speaker 02

  We studied it from the vantage point of, hey, what if we mine Bitcoin ourselves? And it turns out it's much more economic to mine Bitcoin than it is to generate power and sell to the grid. And it's more economic to mine it yourself than it is to sell power to other Bitcoin miners. So it's really a, uh, I, I wish I could say that we, we, um, just, you know, woke up and said, hey, I want to be Bitcoin miners. Um, that's almost how it happened, but I would, I would say it's a, it was a, a road that we traveled thinking that maybe we'll sell, sell power to them. Or, uh, we figured it's just better to do it ourselves.

• 7:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And you guys with Stronghold are building a vertically integrated Bitcoin miner, meaning that you own the power source and then you've got the equipment, uh, itself. Uh, but the power source specifically is very unique. Um, I was reading up on, uh, what essentially is coal waste. And, uh, there, there's a tier structure. It's considered this like tier two alternative energy source. So maybe just talk through like, how do you generate power regardless of if you're selling it to the grid, using it to mine Bitcoin or anything else? Um, it's just such a unique, uh, process, uh, kind of, how do you describe that to people?

• 7:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I think, uh, first of all, first of all, this is not a coal fired power plant. What we're, we are burning a, a waste material. That is, it's toxic to the environment that it exists in. Um, so, but, and here's how it happened. So we've been mining coal in Pennsylvania, in West Virginia. Um, you know, the sort of the coal belt of the United States for more than a hundred years. The good product, uh, metallurgical coal or thermal coal was used to make steel and used to make power. And that's the steel that built New York City, built Pittsburgh, you know, the steel that built the tanks at World War II. You know, that's, that's, uh, that's why we needed all of this, this coal.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  When the good, good coal was mined, um, it wasn't all good. So some of it was close to the, the, uh, the, the edge and there contained a lot of rock or other materials that, that couldn't be used. And so instead of disposing of that properly, they put that bad material just next to the mine mound. And those piles filled valleys and created new ridge lines and mountains. So it's just literally hundreds of millions of tons of this material was mined in addition to the good stuff that was used. And the bad news about these piles, there are more than 700 of them in Pennsylvania alone. Ninety of them are currently on fire, burning without any emissions control on them at all.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  It's the biggest source of water pollution in the state. And it's really, in my view, it's sort of a form of class warfare. We went in, we stripped the area of all the resources. We then left town and left a big mess behind. That's messing with the water table and people's ability to have a sort of good quality of life in those areas. And there's only one way to clean it up. You can't, I think, you know, some might say, well, you can spread some fairy dust or beach seed grass on top of these piles and pretend they're not there anymore. But that doesn't really clean it up.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  The only way to clean it up is to load it up in excavators and burn it in a controlled way with emissions controls and re contour the land to its original contours and replant properly. And then you'll end up with revitalized communities with, you know, with ball fields instead of ash and smoke and contaminated water. So I think if you showed you pictures of what these, you know, they're called piles, but that's really make you think about something the scale of like a pile of leaves in your driveway. These are literally mountains. And the water that's coming off of them runs red.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  It's sulfuric. It's essentially equivalent to having battery acid leaking into your water table. So.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  If it were, if this were happening in more wealthy communities, they would have already been cleaned up. So because it's a, uh, it's such a big environmental problem and the only way to remediate it is to gather it up and burn it. The state incentivizes us by giving us renewable energy credits and giving us grants to clean up these sites. Um, and there's, there's more than 30 years of this stuff out there at the current rate that we're cleaning it up today. So, um, if we were, it's, it's not economic to burn it, um, and gather it and do all this reclamation without those renewable energy credits, which is why the state, uh, put them into place and that they just reaffirmed it and made them

• 11:30Speaker 02

  uh, more valuable even this January 1st. So it's, it's a really, it's on the radar of the state of Pennsylvania legislative body, you know, the, and the, and the governor. Um, because if, if we don't do it, if these, if all of these, uh, reclamation plants went away, it, it's a thousand year problem. Um, and it ought to be cleaned up. So it's really a, it's a, uh, it is putting, um, carbon into the atmosphere. That's the knock on it. But the, the reality is that carbon would end up in the atmosphere anyway, because these piles burn even, uh, if they're not put into a plant, they'll burn, you know, lightning will hit them and they'll, they'll combust on their own.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Um, and if you do it in this way, you're then eliminating all of the, the nasty sulfur and mercury that ends up in the environment if it's not done in this controlled way.

• 12:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And, and so when you think about, uh, going to the actual pile or, or kind of this mountain, uh, of toxic material, do you take like, uh, like a dump truck and like literally put it into the dump truck and then take it to the plant? Or like, how, how do you get from where it is to, uh, actually generating the power?

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we have employees locally at these sites that run excavators and loaders and will have local guys contracted to move them in trucks to the reclamation of such at the plant. So it's a, you know, all in, we're employing a few hundred people.

• 13:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And then when it gets to the plant, is this a process that would be similar to kind of traditional coal, like burning type power plants? Is there something different that happens there? And I think that where some of the misunderstanding happens is, one, taking the material out of what I'll call kind of the natural environment in which it lays today, has a very material kind of environmental impact. A lot of people, I think, kind of ignore that or don't understand it. And then you basically bring it to the plant, and what happens at the plant?

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, so by the way, it's a specialized plant that can burn this material because it's really low BTU. And so we have a fluidized bed that allows, that's the technology that's used to essentially suspend this material with limestone. We add limestone in, and that lets it combust and make a beneficial ash out of it. But the difference between this plant and regular thermal is, one, is our material needs to be sorted out, it needs to be dried out. Sometimes it'll have metal in it because this was an industrial process that created in the first place. You can't just, you're not getting a, a regular thermal

• 14:18Speaker 02

  plant will have a contract to have thermal coal delivered on a certain BTU spec and a certain dryness associated with it to make it burn kind of easily. Our material needs to be dried out, needs to be sorted out. Some of it's low BTU, some high, some has other material in it that needs to be sorted out. So it's a, it is a, it's a big project and a big job to handle this material and make it burn in an efficient enough way to make it worthwhile to do it. It's not, you just can't show up and expect it all to go with ease. It is a big sorting process to get to handle the material. So if the facility...

• 15:03Speaker 02

  And we're choosing to to, you know, partner with the state to clean up these sites. But we could, we could burn other waste as well as it's, it's a um, it's a multi-use facility that we're, you know, just given the scale of the problem locally for Pennsylvania, we're choosing to, uh, to burn this whole waste material in it.

• 15:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so then, once you have the kind of power generated, if you will, what you do with it, I think is also unique in that. Um, the plan here is to mine Bitcoin. Uh, maybe you can talk a little bit about kind of where you all are in the progress of setting up those uh, mining operations, but then you also have the ability to, uh, sell the power into the grid uh, or kind of provide power to the grid in times of need. So maybe talk through just like the decision-making framework that you all have in terms of when you mine versus when you support the grid. Um, and then kind of how you think about how that could change throughout the year.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so we're vertically integrated miner, which means we own our own power asset, which we think is a huge advantage for us. Uh, one is our cost of power and our future is in our own hands. Um, so I think if you looked at us compared to others, I think our cost of power is going to be, you know, on an all-in basis, you know, CapEx and, uh, and variable cost is going to be lower. Um, but right now we have, we own, we own one power plant called Scrubgrass in Western Pennsylvania. We're contracted to buy a second power plant called Panther in Eastern Pennsylvania. And we've ordered enough Bitcoin mining equipment to fill

• 16:45Speaker 02

  the capacity of both plants, or maybe about 70% of the capacity of both plants. And the idea is we'll run the plants and when the grid needs the power.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  To power homes because there's a heat wave or another plant went down. We are going to deliver all of the power to the grid. And shut down the Bitcoin mining operation for whatever period of time that that power is needed. We're earning capacity payments from the grid to provide the grid that that's the building that service.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  So in a way by running the plant. As really a baseload facility, we're reclaiming much more land. And we're making the grid more stable by having a an asset that's already up and running. That can have all of that power be switched back over to the grid. If needed with a few minutes notice.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Before Bitcoin, we would need to have the plant running. You know, at least 12 hours before it could make enough power to be delivered to the grid. So it really wasn't great for. An emergency of a moment, it'd be fine for a like next day power. But not for power needed in a very short timeframe. Interestingly, the way the United States is building out a renewable energy infrastructure. Having baseload plants running. That can deliver power in seconds to the grid. Without having this this power and the ability to divert it back to the grid. You'd end up with a much less reliable grid. So we're seeing, you know, brownouts in California.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Brownouts now and and blackouts in Texas. I think we can make a more stable grid. As we as we're smarter about using the existing baseload assets that we have. And doing this kind of load curtailment. Rather than relying on really expensive batteries, which is sort of the. You know, kind of a low tech way to do it, do it. We're all going to end up paying, you know, five times the price for power. If we continue down the path that we seem to be going down now.

• 18:54Anthony Pompliano?

  What's fascinating to me about this is you essentially have the ability to mine Bitcoin. If the grid needs the power, then you can switch there. And I'm guessing because it's in a moment of need, there's an economic advantage as well, right, of being able to kind of go back and forth between Bitcoin and the grid depending on need. Now, it sounds like you all have kind of a non-economic commitment to the grid of just, hey, if you guys need the power, we'll send it to you. How often does that happen? Is it for long periods of times? And also, I guess, what is the economic impact, either good or bad, for stronghold in those moments?

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's actually, that's a great point. Like mining Bitcoin, you might make around, you know, $150 a megawatt hour, or up to $200 per megawatt hour, depending on which app you're running. And current grid pricing might be in the $30 to $35 a megawatt hour. So you'd much rather use that power to mine Bitcoin. But during times of crisis, obviously, power prices spike. And so like in Texas, we saw prices, you know, something like $900 a megawatt hour for a brief period of time. And so in those instances, of course, shut down the Bitcoin mining operation and become a power producer again. So it's really an arbitrage on the switch.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  And it takes a pretty unique crisis to have power prices spike to be elevated to the point that it would be more economic than Bitcoin. But it could happen. Obviously, Bitcoin mining is a, you know, as more miners are added to that, that the grid or the, sorry, the more hash rate is added globally, it becomes less economic to mine Bitcoin. And so I think there will be a threshold time where it will be closer. But you know, where economics are today, you want to mine Bitcoin. But that's the big advantage of being vertically integrated. If you just are buying power from someone else... You don't have that option. You're the power provider does.

• 20:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think that major energy companies are going to start mining Bitcoin similar to the the kind of calculation that you all went through? And obviously, you've got these very kind of unique aspects to the the plant that you own, the energy source, etc. But if you're just an everyday, large energy provider, and people keep calling and saying, hey, I want to buy energy for Bitcoin mining, at some point, do they just say, why don't we do it ourselves and try to build a similar vertical integration in other parts of the country? Or how do you think about that?

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know what? I don't I don't fear big public utilities coming into the space in a big way in the near term. And the reason for that is, it's a it's a different business than what they are typically done. And now, not being in this business myself, the relationships you need to have to get access to the equipment, or access to the transformers, it's it's a it's a new business that's probably, you know, there will be rewards for those that are early and a little bit brave. And public utilities, I wouldn't describe them as generally leaders or more followers. And it is a it's a different bunch. So you

• 22:14Speaker 02

  know, you're going to have to, you know, wire a lot of money to China to buy this equipment. That's going to make people nervous. You know, setting up a data center, if you're in the if the power business, it's a very different business than the data center business. So you really have to be experts at both. So I think we'll see a little bit of it. But I would be surprised if if the biggest names in the power space become the biggest names in Bitcoin mining. That would be an unexpected event. But I think, of course, some entrepreneurial power focused people that control their own generating asset, they are thinking about this, and some are doing.

• 22:58Anthony Pompliano?

  The large public utilities, I don't think anyone thinks of them as courageous or early adopters of many things. So I think you're probably more correct than not there. You all raised $105 million recently. Tell us a little about the fundraise and then what that capital was for.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, so hey, I'm really proud of our team that we in a very fast ways or between, you know, I think we had the idea to do an equity finance, an equity raise in January, and we were closed in April and did an ad on acquisition shortly after that. So we used a team or partnered with a team at Bead Riley to raise the capital. But I would just say, it to me was evident how enthusiastic the equity investor or equity marketplace is around Bitcoin

• 23:52Speaker 02

  generally. I think a year ago, there the institutional levels of capital wasn't as available as it was in the first half of this year. We now see in a group like Fidelity and, you know, some very smart investors recognizing that, hey, Bitcoin can be a store of value that that could look like gold. And it doesn't hurt that we that we now can't pick the paper without having fears about inflation and, you know, the impacts of just printing in our currency like its wallpaper, which we're doing. So I think it's a it's a, you know, a confluence of factors

• 24:36Speaker 02

  are making it interesting. Yeah, but as far as the fundraise goes, I think we had, you know, probably 30 or 40, you know, half hour to one hour video meetings with investors, many very sophisticated guys, family offices, hedge funds that, you know, understood the market. Like my first, without having met the investors in the beginning, I was worried that would be more in a sort of retail momentum focused people. And that wasn't the case. I think the vast majority of the capital are invested because of the fundamental merits of Bitcoin.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  And the merits of us as a vertically integrated mining business. So I think, you know, people really understood, uh, you know, what we're doing. And I think we had a really successful raise, uh, because of that, you know, our, we went out looking to raise, um, $60 million and then up closing in 105. So it's, uh, I think that speaks for itself.

• 25:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a pretty good fundraiser there. Uh, when you look forward, what does this become? Are you trying to build stronghold into like a national mining, uh, brand that you want to go and continue to acquire, uh, power plants and continue their vertical integration strategy? Is it something where you stay in Pennsylvania? Um, just how do you think about kind of future plans and where the aspiration is?

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, hey, we're not going to stop here. We, we have a lot of execution work to do, you know, owning two plants now and, you know, with something like 30,000 miners showing up between now and, and, uh, the end of the year. Um, it's a lot of, a lot of, uh, 30,000 machines to plug in. Um, uh, about a hundred, uh, sort of mobile data centers, um, are being built right now to handle, to handle them. Um, and thank goodness we ordered all of the transformers and all of the switchgear and equipment long ago to be able to handle because the wait even for that equipment now is, is six to 12 months. The, the global, um, sort of supply chain problems are felt across the board, but I

• 26:47Speaker 02

  think we've been mostly ahead of it. Um, we have a third plant that we're trying to buy. That's in the same waste coal reclamation business as the first two. And, uh, we're going to work hard to get that third plant. Um, and then I would say as a, uh, as a miner, we contemplate obviously growing the fleet. We really have cash flow that we can, you know, choose either to hold Bitcoin. On our balance sheet, or we can convert it to dollars again and buy more machines. And I think we'll try to find the right balance, you know, I think there are, if there's another crypto winter in our future, we want to be, you know, well capitalized and maintain liquidity enough to survive that and hopefully even grow into it.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  As opposed to just, you know, when things are hot, machines are in short supply and everything's, you know, more expensive, it takes longer. So I think we want to be in a position to be a, a low cost leader in the space. And then not, you know, while we're always in a giant hurry, we don't want to mess up the, our capital structure or overpay in a way that we might regret if there's a, you know, downturn that lasts for some period of time. So if we debate it here, should we, you know, there, there are other ancillary businesses adjacent to mining that we should get into, or should we mine something other than Bitcoin? Or do TPU mining?

• 28:13Speaker 02

  So I think we were constantly thinking about it and looking at our, our assets and understanding that with our, our low cost of power, that's truly environmentally beneficial. Should we just mine Bitcoin or do other things as well? And I would, I would bet that in five years, we will have, you know, multiple strategies that we've executed on. But hey, I would, between now and the end of the year, I would settle on just building out these two plants in a, you know, flawless way. That would, that would be a good achievement this year.

• 28:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, one of the things that I think I really come to appreciate, kind of learning more about the business is it's a very unique strategy. The benefits are pretty obvious once you start to understand the power generation, the vertical integration and kind of the cost of the power that you're able to generate. But you have a great appreciation for, you can have kind of these great ideas, but the execution is still important, right? And so just actually going out there and executing every single day is ultimately going to determine whether you all are successful or not. So it'll be, it'll be pretty cool to watch. Before I let you go, I always ask everyone the same three questions and you get to ask me when to finish up. The first is more serious. What is the most important book that you think you've ever read?

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a great question. That's actually a question that I often ask, uh, ask people that I interview for jobs. Like, what's the last book you read? Most important book?

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Uh, that's gotta be, you know, Atlas Shrugged. That's, that's, I think, you know, sadly, I think we're sort of living aspects of, of that, that novel in our political and, and social lives today, which is unfortunate for all of us to, to have analogies of that book to, uh, to what we're currently living through, but I think we are. So that's, that's probably the, the, the book that is, is the most important one.

• 30:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, uh, that is a great one. Second question is a little bit more personal. Your sleep schedule comes from our friends over at Eight Sleep. They, uh, have this thermo-regulated bed. So I used to sleep like five or six hours. Now I sleep on this mattress that can make freezing cold. Uh, and I don't know the science. I'm not a scientist, but somehow it makes me sleep a lot better. Uh, and I sleep like eight or nine hours and I feel, uh, way, way better. What's your sleep schedule been like, uh, over the last few years and how's it changed?

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I think, uh, the Apollo sleep schedule is much different and many, many, you know, it's fewer hours than, than what the sort of suburban life of solitude that COVID allowed. Um, so I think I would, you know, it used to be probably five to six hours a night, you know, um, different time zones so regularly that you never really get adjusted. Um, but now I'm probably a solid, you know, eight hours. I'd like to go to sleep maybe 11 o'clock and if I, you know, if I can get up, uh, early, that would be a, I prefer way to do it as opposed to, I don't want to stay up all night and sleep in. I, I like, I, I prefer to get up like at six in the morning.

• 31:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I, I'm the same exact way. I'd rather wake up early than, uh, than go to sleep real, real, uh, late. Uh, third question is the most fun one. Aliens. Are you a believer or a non-believer?

• 31:43Speaker 02

  I, I wish I believed. Uh.

• 31:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Why do you not believe?

• 31:50Speaker 02

  Um, because it's the same, the same reason why I don't believe in Bigfoot. If you, if you actually have physical evidence, other than like a grainy, you know, videotape, let's see it. And if they're all over the place, let's have something physical that, that you can, can see other than a, uh, you know, anecdotal, I saw something look, you know, looked like a Tic Tac. So I'm, I'm gonna wait until, um,

• 32:20Speaker 02

  until we have the actual, you know, dead alien and spacecraft before I'll, I'll become a believer in that one.

• 32:26Anthony Pompliano?

  So, so we actually probably, uh, when you explain it are more closely aligned than I thought we were. Uh, I, I always say I'm a believer. I just think that they are likely to exist because the, uh, kind of solar system is so vast, but we'll never come in contact with them during our lifetime. Right? Kind of the, the whole idea of time and things like that is, is probably gonna prevent it.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  No, we, we're on the same page then. Is, is there life in our, in the universe other than us? Absolutely. So, you know, there, there's no chance that we're alone here, but are we, have we been visited? Like, we would know.

• 32:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm with you on that one. All, all of the, the UFO reports, uh, I always tell folks, uh, they're unidentified objects, right? Once we identify them, they're no longer UFOs. Uh, so, uh, we got work to do, but we'll see. Uh, you get to ask me one question to, uh, to finish off. What do you got for me?

• 33:16Speaker 02

  So what's your, what is your, your goal for your brand new show? Like, you know, you're, uh, you have, you have target number of, of watchers and listeners, or what are you hoping to achieve this for yourself this year?

• 33:27Anthony Pompliano?

  No, I, I think the, the big thing with the show is, um, you know, we've invested so much capital over the last couple of years, uh, and just over and over and over again, uh, it was kind of sad actually, like just so many people kept saying like, I don't understand the economy. I don't understand how finance works. I don't understand how money works. Uh, I'm saving all my money, right? And you're like, well, that's probably not what you want to be doing. And so, uh, naturally it just became a thing where, uh, myself and, uh, two of my brothers, we said, listen, you know, we're not the greatest geniuses in the world, but We know a hell of a lot more than most people and have been able to use that to our advantage. What if we just every single day talked about it? Um, and you know, I, I think, uh, it was pretty obvious pretty quickly that there was going to be a pretty big appetite for it. Um, and, and you know, I always approach these things with, I have no clue what it turns into.

• 34:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And you, you just kind of take it one day at a time and let's see what happens. But, uh, but based on the first show, I think, uh, and I think we're probably on to something.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Nice. Good luck with it. Congratulations.

• 34:24Anthony Pompliano?

  I appreciate it. Where can we send people to find more about Stronghold or find you on the internet if they want to follow up with you?

• 34:29Speaker 02

  You know what? We have a website, uh, strongholddigitalmining.com. And, uh, you know, I'm on LinkedIn, so I'm happy to hear from people if you have, uh, questions.

• 34:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Well, listen Greg, I really, really appreciate your time. I think what you guys are doing is, uh, is fascinating. And as you continue to build it out, we'll have to bring you back to, to give us an update. So keep up the great work and, uh, we'll do it again soon.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Appreciate it. Thanks. A good question. Talk to you soon.