Actually Stefan I'd be interested in your view on
The differences between gold and crypto mining since you actually have more experience than I do
In the extractive industries and you know, you are an executive a New York Stock Exchange listed gold miner
What do you think are the differences here? How do view have you approached this thing?
When well, I think the you know you talk about exploration and that's an important point, you know
A lot of there's centrally two phases in mining, you know first you need to find the ore body
That's often the most difficult part, you know only probably one in five thousand prospects ever become an actual ore body
In mining a lot of the value that's created actually occurs before any goal is brought out of the ground, right?
I think that's an important distinction because it that part of the the successive exploration creates the capital forms the capital that allows
mining to persist
the next phase of course is is
You know getting through the regulatory hurdles and actually raising the capital necessary for this very very capital intensive business of gold mining
And I think that those distinctions and the and the geographic randomness of gold deposits globally
You know really gives it a very decentralized look relative to you know
However, many crypto miners are are and also a natural meritocracy
so so what's the equivalent in cryptocurrency mining of a high-grade mine a
high-grade gold mine or a discovered there
There is no I mean the the best you can do in crypto is just having lower cost, you know
Electricity locating in you know Iceland or Quebec where you have subsidized power
Which is once again taking away from from the society's resources exactly
I mean, you know the all of that electricity could be, you know, put into other productive uses
right, so people have determined that this is
You know the best use case for that for that power or what's the equivalent in gold mining?
What is it 30 40 percent of gold mining is still done artisanally by hand. I think that's important because in a lot of
You know a lot of countries that perhaps don't have the the strong fiat currencies that you know exist in the United States and Canada
Europe
You know their way of turning their you know
incremental effort and toil into savings and wealth is
through gold mining and probably 30 or 40 percent is is still mined artisanally and of course, you know
There's a contrast there because it's not you know, that's not something that's accessible, you know somebody with no
capital in
You know in a poor country cannot go and start, you know a crypto mining business
That's just not as we know they wouldn't even have a return
So for example because because what we come down to is a return on your metabolic energy, so, you know
I own some gold deposits
I can think of one that I own in Nevada that has a grade of around 8 or 9 grams
It's a vein system a court system, you know
you could you and I could go out get a tent get a pickaxe and shovel go down to the tunnels find the vein and
Sit there for a week and I mean it would be a profitable endeavor
We'd eat some food and we get some gold out and we could sell the gold or you know to someone that needs to use
It for something and there would be our
Meritocracy but you know toil there is no equivalent like that with Bitcoin
You can't just you can't just eat food and negotiate with nature and get Bitcoin out of the ground with Bitcoin
What people are doing is essentially?
building computers that have to run
24/7 in the hopes that they win a puzzle and
The bigger the computer they build with a more power. They invest the more likely they are to win a puzzle
But once the puzzle is won and the coin is sold into the market the owner of the coin
depends on the continued mining of that miner and
So the proof work
That was expended by the miner the historic metabolic energy because there's certainly a lot of metabolic energy going into the production of Bitcoin historically
It's not bound to the coin that I'm holding a coin base or in my cold wallet
The only thing binding the abstraction of the proof of work is the miners continued insistence to perpetuate the network into the future
It's it's the most fundamental difference and I really implore anyone that's watching this interview
That's from the digital technology service economy
That hasn't experienced the real natural world the primary industries to meditate on what we're saying here
because this is ultimately where I think there is a gulf the the difference here is that you don't own something that
depends on the laws of physics for it to continue to be the same thing like gold and
And you know at this point you'll often get
some of this crazy talk like what about asteroid mining or what about if we discover fusion and
when they bring these
nonsensical scientific theories up
They will only focus on what would happen to gold not
Realizing that if you for example have a deus ex machina source of energy
Everything else would become cheaper
Including for example doing a 51% attack in the hashing algorithm
So everything is isn't is naturally scarce based on those Legos those elements
But that relationship between the elements is fixed through time
And this is for example, why all these myths about hoarding under a gold standard or false. This is why for example
deflation under a gold standard is good in the Austrian tradition where I totally agree with that, but ultimately
What we're talking about here
When Barry says things like that
when Bitcoin proponents talk about
There's no difference between gold and Bitcoin and in fact, if you're going to calculate the cost of mining Bitcoin
Why don't you calculate all the costs of mining gold storing gold transporting coal. No, no, no. No, there's a philosophical
Difference here that you have to appreciate the gold is mined once it lasts forever. Its
blockchain are the laws of physics and if you want to get into these non sequiturs suspension of laws of physics asteroid mining well,
Everything would change. I assure you gold would still do the best in that equation because of its natural attributes
You