Podcast: Greg Beard on Unexpected Mining Opportunities

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Synopsis:‍

Will speaks with Greg Beard, the Chief Executive Officer at Stronghold Digital Mining, who has more than 25 years experience investing in the Natural Resources sector. This episode covers,Greg’s initial thoughts on mining, the business of cleaning up waste coal, Bitcoin, the Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and so much more.

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Transcript:

Will Szamosszegi (00:27):

Well, Greg, I I appreciate you comingon the podcast. I've been looking forward to this one and I'm excited to hearabout how you got, got into what you're doing at Stronghold, but what you guysare focused on today. So the floor is yours, my friend.

Greg Beard (00:40):

So yeah, I'm the CEO of StrongholdDigital Mining. I spent 25 years in energy investing in private equity. And asa part of that, uh, one of the CEOs that I invested in is Bill Spence, who's mypartner in this business. And cuz he was one of my prior CEOs I had investedin, although I hadn't had a professional relationship with him in more than 10years, I would just stay in touch. And he bought one of the two power plantsthat that stronghold owns. And I think because he got, he was, he had healthissues. And so he called me saying, Hey Greg, help me have a look at this powerplant to see if you can help, you know, make it a little better. And so Ilooked at it and got involved that way. The reason we got into Bitcoin mining,and by the way, I would've, had you given me a thousand guesses as of what Iwould be doing post private equity, I would not have guessed Bitcoin miningpublic company CEO as infinite number of guesses wouldn't have ever gotten it.

(01:33):

But, um, the reason why I think, asyou know, as a Bitcoin miner power is your biggest variable expense and thearbitrage between power pricing and bitcoin mining economics became apparent tous when lots of Bitcoin miners were calling saying, Hey, can we co-locate atyour facility and buy power from you? And so that's really what started us to,for us to look at the economics behind Bitcoin mining. And we made the decisionthat it was better just to be a minor rather than be a hoster. And the logicbehind that is, if economics are good, you're better at being a minor and takethose economics for yourself. And if economics aren't good, if you're a hoster,it's more than likely that the company that's paying you to host is gonna quitpaying you. And so the downside seems to be the same, but the upside potentialfor mining is much greater.

(02:18):

So I think if there's a, I think adifference being stronghold than others is that we're vertically integrated,meaning we own the own power assets. We run our own data centers and we own ourmining equipment. So I think the thought behind that vertical integration, it'skey. And this is, you know, something we should dig into, but the ability tosell power when power pricing is better than the economics of mining Bitcoin iskey. Or the ability to buy power from the grid at spot pricing when thatpricing is super low is really important. And so most bitcoin miners that don'town power assets, they really have what I think about as a one way option. IfBitcoin prices and hash rate, you know, makes sense and it's economic, youwon't mine for Bitcoin. And if it's not, you won't. So it's just a on offswitch, do mine or not at a certain point in time, own the own power assets,gives us dozens more options.

(03:11):

We can cycle D miners off and on, youknow, mine at night and sub powered during the day. If, like I said, a powerprices are low, we can shut the plant off and buy power for cheap Bitcoinmining profits are high, we can divert the power from the plant to the datacenter and not give any power to the grid or give a lot less to the grid. So itreally ends up being a, a what I consider to be a giant sort of power pricingarbitrage machine, which is, that's just much more interesting than just, hey,mine, Bitcoin or not

Will Szamosszegi (03:39):

Machine. It's interesting. So I thinkwe, we talked a little bit about this offline, but when I first came into themining industry, I saw that these two industries were gonna collide in terms ofthe energy sector and the bitcoin mining industry. And so I think it's, uh,it's fascinating to see that you came from that background on the energy side,brought that into mining, and now you're running almost like this blended typeof company. It seems like you're doing a lot of things, best practices from theenergy sector, but then also implementing that with the bitcoin miningeconomics. Kind of a random question off base, but what was it like when youfirst dove into the economics of Bitcoin mining? Because I, the, the economicsof the energy sector, it's a very different return profile. So like when youstarted looking at mining, what were your initial

Greg Beard (04:20):

Thoughts? You know what my initial,so my, my background and energy I'm familiar with, with the oil and natural gassectors and the economics of drilling wells. So I really thought it lookedsimilar. So when you, you have a big capital upfront capital expense, bigcapital investment in that investment increases a lot of cash flow, hopefullyin the first six months, the first year and then it declines. And so it'sreally the rate of the decline curve that you're underwriting. You know, Iguess similar to oil and gas as well, it's the, the underlying commodityBitcoin is very volatile and then hey, the lower the price goes, then the lowerthe global hash rate might go. And so you then have a kind of right way risk onthat front. The higher the price goes, the more people add machines and the thehash go higher and diminish your economics that way.

(05:02):

But I really, I really thought it wasvery similar to the economics of drill well and watching that well decline inproduction over time. I would say the downside of Bitcoin mining versus say oiland gas investing is that in oil and gas you can hedge your production. So onceyou have a production online, you can hedge a year or two, you know, say up tofive, I can hedge even 10 years in my prior, uh, life And Bitcoin you'rereally, you can do hedging, but it's so expensive that you would, um, andpeople that mind bitcoin generally aren't as bearish as, as most from thefuture of crypto and Bitcoin. So it's just not a, it's not a, a useful thing,but model the economics myself, you know, I didn't, uh, call someone else andsay, Hey, you know, look at this for me.

(05:42):

And it's really not all thatcomplicated. You know, you don't have, you only have a few variables. Thecomplicating part was blending bitcoin mining into power and, and thenunderstanding the operational capabilities of a plant. Cause a plant, a powerplant can't be shut off and on in seconds, but you can do things, you know, wehave invested in software to turn a data center. Our data center can be turnedon and off in seconds. So it's just understanding and then modeling infinancial way what's possible operationally. But yeah, I think initially, hey,there's no doubt I thought quit my job at Apollo, now I'm gonna be doing bidbitcoin mining. It was a little crazy to kind of play that being like my nextstep. But hey, having done the, the work on it, I think the, the risk adjustedreturns can be there if done in this ver integrated way. So yeah,

Will Szamosszegi (06:35):

I,

Greg Beard (06:35):

I became

Will Szamosszegi (06:35):

The fan. I think the, the way you'redoing it is that's where a lot of miners are going. A lot of miners right now,they don't have that full understanding of the energy side the way that you do.Um, but I think that that's where the industry's going. So g going off of thattoday, you guys have your own vertically integrated operations and then, um,I'm assuming that you're trying to find the best way to build in these, in thebear market, right? And in the past you see these bull and bus cycles. You seethe miners who over lever and take on that debt during the bull cyclesstruggling a lot. And then you see the other ones that took in their capital,held onto it and are ready to reinvestment when prices come down. Like today,uh, I think last time I checked it was like just under $20 a, a Tara hash,something like that may actually might even be lower now it's a lot differentthan when it was like, you know, up around a hundred dollars a Tara hash orsimilar minor.

(07:24):

So the timing of these cycles is soimportant and that's actually one thing that, um, Fred from from Marathon hadmentioned. You know, that they focus on really trying to time the cyclesbecause that seems to be the biggest variable. With all that said though, whatare some of those insights or keys that you guys think of when you'reapproaching these different cycles? The bull market, the bear market and, andthe different levers you can pull cuz it's very different not only from anoperation and acquisition of minor side, but the actual cost of your access tofinance and completely changes as a minor, um, during these times. I'm justwondering how do you think about it and are there any things you've noticedthat people might not be very aware of?

Greg Beard (08:02):

Hey, the, the financing, I'm justtalk about the how the, how the mining market is financed or it's typically ahedge fund style financing that has a two year amortization. So if you borrowmoney against your mining fleet, you're expected to repay that capital withintwo years, which is an extraordinarily fast amortization. And so I would, Iexpect that with today's economics miners that bought machines and over $80 aTara hash and borrowed, you know, half of that or borrowed, you know, $40 aTara hash, they are not going to be able to afford to repay that debt. And sothey are, I'm sure surely they are reaching accommodations with their lenders,with those hedge funds, you know, or banks and they're having a suspension ofpayments on their principal interest. My view of mo of the the market is that Idon't think the market really recognizes what that circumstance, that hey, youpeople argue, well hey, I can break even a $10,000 Bitcoin and that doesn'treflect the amortization of the debt.

(09:06):

And so I think most, most of the guysthat borrowed a lot of money need Bitcoin to be above 30,000 in order toamortize the debt. So I think we're going to see a bunch of restructurings ofdebt and a few bankruptcies if this crypto winter lasts another year. I thinkinterestingly, I think everyone's been talking about, hey, when will all themergers happening? We need consolidation in the sector. And in a strange way,the the over-leverage of the system make some mergers impossible because youcan't, you know, who's gonna wanna merge with a guy who faces bankruptcy risk?Who needs Bitcoin to go from 20,000 to 30,000 people to afford his debt? Likeno one's gonna want to take that equity. The public equity markets I think donot recognize this quite yet and still view the these miners as a big option onBitcoin.

(09:51):

But it's a risky option on Bitcoingiven that if you don't see higher pricing effectively the, those businessesare gonna end up being owned by the, the lenders. So stronghold is, is a bitdifferent in that when we borrowed our capital from our hedge fund group, wedid not structure the debt with a corporate guarantee. So Stronghold Inc is apublic company. We had stronghold create an L L C that borrowed all the capitaland all of the miners that we bought and put leverage on were held in that llc.And when, and you know, we bought a bunch of miners at two higher pricing andthe what we owed on those miners is probably pretty close to double what youcould rebuy the same miners for. And so recognizing that and recognizing thatthe lender really had an equipment loan, not a corporate loan.

(10:37):

So I, I called the bank and said,Hey, I'd like to restructure the debt and lower the principle amount due toreflect the reality that, that your collateral is worth half of what's owed onit. And they chose I think probably more bullish to me on where the equipmentmarket might go. They chose that, uh, I returned the miners to them, which iswhat I did about six weeks ago. I returned the miners to 'em thinking that Icould buy Rey them for maybe a 30 or 40% discount. And given what's happeningeven in the past six weeks with a flood of mins hitting the market, hundreds ofthousands if not millions of miners unplugged on the shelf, you can now buylike an S 19 J Pro for, you know, 20 bucks a Tara hash, which is the number yousort of quoted a few minutes ago.

(11:22):

So I think, yeah, I think Fred isright. Where you buy is a big determinant of what your future holds unlessyou're, you know, clever enough on the structuring side to borrow in a way thatmakes it the equipment lender or bank's risk more than the the borrower's risk,which is how we, we did it at stronghold, it's a big, our stock, our stockprice has not done well since then. I think, I think the market sort ofprobably perceived that I, you know, if you sort of draw the analogy to like acar loan, it's like, hey, we sort of tar tossed the car keys back to the bankand think the market says, well these guys must be not driving any longer. It'slike, no, we're gonna drive probably the same car or better but at half

Will Szamosszegi (12:00):

Price. That's interesting. And uh, toyour point, I think that a lot of times did this is one of those markets that'sso, uh, even more so than than other industries, just like sentiment driven.And if every, when everyone's hearing about certain things happening in themining industry or, and I, I mean we just saw it with, you know, the valuationson the more consumer focused companies, kind of like the the block bys or thecoin bases or the Celsius, the valuations are just crazy, crazy in terms of howmuch they could fluctuate. I think block by went from like a $4.8 billion, likesomething like their series E or something to all of a sudden with FTX lookingat the optionality to acquire at like 25 to two 40 mil just like cents like noteven like really cents on the dollar I think in the mining industry.

(12:43):

It's interesting cuz I mean I I hadno idea that that was the case in terms of, because I feel like a lot of minersdidn't have foresight to do something like that where they put an allocatedtheir risk to like an LLC subsidiary. But if the market is just looking at it,oh, a lot of these miners purchase equipment at certain prices and then all ofa sudden, uh, the market tank, then they made a purchase where a lot of valuehas been eroded and erased and, and they have to find a way to pay off thatdebt for those who I guess planned ahead. It's a, it's a lesson for future bulland bear cycles where you wanna make sure that you're, you're putting your riskin the appropriate areas and, and with, especially with mining, I mean this isanother part that's, that's crazy that I'd be interested to hear your take onis the volatility in mining equip, it really seems like the amount that itfluctuates it, it's almost unlike other types of equipment markets, right?

(13:30):

Because the pricing on it can vary soquickly. It's not necessarily being priced at the marginal cost of productionfor that piece of equipment. It's more so based on, oh, how quickly can thismachine pay itself off? And that's completely tied to the price of Bitcoin, soit can just fluctuate an unbelievable now, um, in such a short period of time.So when you guys are looking at that, how do you I guess, model that out or howdo you approach that? It, it kind of seems in today's day and age, almost likean art and not necessarily a science yet. And I've spoken with a couple ofdifferent minors, they've got different approaches, but I'd, I'd be curious tohear how you guys look at that and know, oh, this is a good time to be lookingat actually purchasing minors, or hey, this might not be the best time. Andthen, you know, taking the lessons obviously that we saw in this bull marketand, and bear market. How are you looking at that? Yeah,

Greg Beard (14:21):

So I think the way you're describingthe equipment market is absolutely right. I think the one thing that peopleprobably don't talk about too openly is that the amount of leverage that sortof the two main equipment vendors have had in the past where you actually haveto pay, you know, half of the purchase price upfront or agreed to like adelivery contract over a year starting in three to six months. So they'rereally using your do your deposit dollars to buy the chips and make themachines. And so I think they're, you know, they probably have negative workingcapital, even if there's, your deposit is probably more than what the machinecosts to build in the first place and that's, you know, half the money or, oreven less in some cases. So a I think in a, in a robust market, vendors can dothat.

(15:06):

So I think they're, that that, thatmay change. Where right now with a glut of equipment, I think we're, mostpeople say, why would I sign up to a long-term future contract for deliverieswhen the spot market is cheap and available and you're not having to wait andrisk deposits and delivery schedules and those, those contracts are not in thefavor of, of the buyer and they're really in favor of the vendor. So they canbe late and there's not much you can do, obviously that there are rumors thatvendors would even build the machine, run it for themselves for a few monthsand then, you know, clean it up, package that new, then ship it off. It's afairly attractive market for sellers of equipment because, hey, there was achip shortage, there's a, you know, logistics issues and Bitcoin what, youknow, went from 3000 to over 60,000 and a year.

(15:59):

So it was a, about a as bull marketas you could come up with for, for vendors. And they did the right thing andthey, they squeezed buyers raised prices from like, prices were about $12 toTara Hash when I first saw this, when I was doing the modeling myself, and itwent over a hundred, which is like you pointed out in a very short timeframe,the cost to build those machines did not go up eight x you know, <laugh>or anything close to it. So it was all margin for the Avengers. So yeah, Ithink the reason that, hey, we're all in the business is that we're a bullishon, on the product and landing can bring, and the reason to potentially enterinto a future contract is that the efficiency of future machines is better thancurrent machines. So if your cost of power is higher, you need more efficientmachines to make your margin.

(16:45):

And so, but if I, I would encouragethose that are interested in mining to really look at the efficiency, the costof that efficiency, the cost of that capital, because it may be the betterchoice is to get a, a great machine that's maybe last year's model third of theprice because the payback on that machine is probably half of what the latestand greatest machine would be like. I think some people are very, you know,hey, you just wanna own the latest and that's great, but I want to, I'm gonnaend this to make the most money with the least risk. And that's the, that's howI approach it. No one these or really cares a, a bitcoin mine. Well is it minewith a, an XP or an S 19 J Pro? It's like, well, who cares? You know, so it's,I've really, we try to look at this from a capital efficiency, risk adjustedreturn standpoint, which might not lead you to the latest and greatestequipment.

Will Szamosszegi (17:37):

I feel like what you just outlined inthe way that you look at it, it's very like, it, it it's with a very logicaltype of approach in terms of understanding. You're trying to produce Bitcoin atthe lowest cost possible and what's the best way to do that? What are thelevers you have financing access to capital, access to machines, all thesecycles. With all that said, I'm curious as to your opinion on where you think theindustry is moving, right? And we've been seeing the clear trend of, you know,going from one early days where people could even mind pull bitcoins on theirlaptop to today where you just have an industry that's just growing and havingnew products built. Now we're even talking about things like options to, thatminers will have with options in hedging hash rate and those types ofcontracts. Uh, I'm curious as to what you think the winning miners of thefuture are going to do and what the approach and industry is gonna look likethe, during the next cycle or, or even the cycle after that over the next likeone to two

Greg Beard (18:33):

Havings. So, and no, what's clear tome and what has been clear is that this is an indu, you know, you needindustrial scale to make the margins work. So the, the days of having your, youknow, sort of stealing your parents' power in your basement and runningmachines, that's, you're just losing too much money to do it. And so that's,that's over. It's like, yeah, the days with a laptop mining, that's, that'slong gone. Small scale operators, they're gone. Even people that are hosting orpaying for hosting, they're, if they haven't already, they're, they should berecognizing that A, the security of their hosting contract, they thought theyhad a great deal and a hosting deal and they're hosting provider goes bankrupt.So now the p p a that they thought they had through way two is gone. So Ithink, I think we're gonna see people really recognize that, that bitcoinmining is sort of an adjunct to the power business and you'll see power ofproducers like us get in the business and it's needed.

(19:25):

So it's needed because the, the, youcan't do this without scale even understanding what's needed to mine. That's anindustrial scale project from, you know, buying the transformers, you know,doing the one lines on on the engineering, you know, figuring which pods to do,working on either airflow issues or, you know, the more, the more modernMethodist to do, you know, liquid immersion to keep things cool. I think whatwhat we're gonna see in the future, which is what we're doing now at Strongholdis, is stabilizing the grid while running our data centers. So I think what,what people like the average American says, Hey, who doesn't love green power?I do have kids, I want a clean air greener planet. But if you ask me, Hey,would do you want green power? If you had green power, would you be okay if youdidn't have power, you know, a third of the time, cuz the grid couldn't handleit, it's like, and, and would you be okay if if your power bill was three timeswhat it is today?

(20:17):

So like I think if we continue downthe path that we're going on, on Greening America with solar and wind, we'regonna end up with power costing three times what it used to cost and we'regonna end up with blackouts. And that's simply because we were taking abaseload supply of power, you know, fueled by fossil fuels and replacing itwith an intermittent source of power that on an apples to apples basis is threetimes the cost of what we have. And so, hey, we're not gonna do that. Obviouslywe're not American, arent gonna be willing to live in the dark. And I thinkwe're probably being accidentally coaxed into paying three times for power andI that's happening, it's gonna make people upset, particularly as we sort ofenter a recession. But one of the ways to mitigate the reliability issuescaused by the installation of solar and wind projects is bitcoin mining datacenters that can toggle on and off to replace the, the loss supply when thewind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining.

(21:15):

And we had a, a pilot project at at,at both of our sites that was approved by our grid operator that essentiallysays when the grid needs the power, the, and the, they can call it from uswithin a couple of minutes and they call the ball and they essentially say,Hey, shut down the data center and divert all the power to the grid when it'sneeded and we're happy to do that. And so that is a stabilizing agent for agrid that is being sort of inadvertently meeting made unstable by theinstallation of all of this intermittent supply. So like it, wheres the futureof, you know, Bitcoin mining, it's industrial scale projects owned by powercompanies that run the data centers with the grid stability in mind that makesthe whole thing work. Because without that we see what happens. You know, likethe, the sort of the ca ation of the grid isn't great, it's a lot moreexpensive and a lot less reliable. So I think Bitcoin, if done right, can be astable stabilization agent, which I, I I received my letters from the ElizabethWarren and others and explained very clearly stronghold is actually cleaning upa nasty environment. I haven't talked yet about what our source of power is andas we're cleaning it up, we're making the grid more stable. Meanwhile, they,all of the incentives congress has put in place is making the grid moreexpensive and less stable. A Bitcoin can help make it survivable.

Will Szamosszegi (22:37):

Yeah. What, what you touched on therefirst off, I agree with everything that you were saying there. I think that Ishare that belief that a lot of people are gonna come to the realization thatbitcoin mining is the killer application for the energy sector to be able tofix a lot of those issues you just outlined. But on on top of that, just liketaking it one step further, I think that what makes Bitcoin mining so great isthat it can be placed anywhere and shut off on a dime as you mentioned. Andthat helps stabilize rigs and the sun's not shining 24 hours a day, the wind'snot blowing same way every single day. And these are intermittent sources ofpower as you mentioned. And I think that uh, one of the biggest conversationsthat um, I'm not sure if you've been following is this utilization of methcapturing methane for bitcoin mining.

(23:23):

That I think is a powerful narrative totalk about in regards to bitcoin mining just because it is a clear way that youcan combat climate change and global warming because there's a waste that'sjust currently going up into the atmosphere. And then capturing that, beingable to u utilize bitcoin mining to capture that. I think that the entireconversation around the environmental piece of Bitcoin mining right now isalmost like being framed in the completely wrong way. People are just lookingat one side of the ledger, looking at the energy consumed, they're not lookingat the benefits of stabilizing the grid and a lot of these things that you'rementioning. So I mean on that particular front, on the environmental side ofthings, when you talk with someone who's saying, oh you're a bitcoin miner,like that's, isn't that killing the environment? How do you normally respond tothat? Is it with that conversation track of how you're helping stabilize thegrid or do you speak about it in some other type of a way when you are askedthat type of a

Greg Beard (24:16):

Question, easy for me because mysource of power is from cleaning up and reclaiming waste coal property. So

Will Szamosszegi (24:24):

I'd love to actually dive into thatand learn about how that works cuz that, that's one area that I don't thinkwe've talked about on the podcast at

Greg Beard (24:30):

All. Yeah, so the two plants thatstronghold owns are called waste coal plants. So, but that's, it's for theresult from more than a hundred years of coal mining in Pennsylvania, when thecoal was originally mined, it was brought up from beneath the water table, youknow, from the surface. And the, about 90% of it was great. It was used to makesteel and make power, you know, on all that coal built cities in America andhelped us, you know, win World War ii. So we, we needed all that, all of thatproduct. But the 10% that wasn't good enough cuz the BTU content was too lowcuz maybe it was on the edge of the coal scene and you know, or had otherproperties that just made it unusable. All of that bowl was just stuck at theside of the mine mouth. And now they're, they're, they're now called, they're800 of these piles and I use the word pile thinking like it's a pile of leaves,you know, it's a small, you know, pile, which in your driveway, that's not it.

(25:25):

These piles are actually mountainsnow and it's, it's probably billions of tons. So now we've taken a, a productthat is high in sulfur, high in other contaminants from beneath the surface,beneath the water table and now put it on top. And so whenever it rains pilesthat are, they're not gonna like just go away whenever it rains. All of thatwater seeps through, through these piles. The sulfur, all the toxins end up inthe groundwater. So if you looked at many like rivers and streams and lakes inPennsylvania around mining operations, they are red and it's, it's fromessentially like sulfuric acid, you know, car acid, you know, battery acid thatis getting into the water of the 800 piles, about 80 of them are currently onfire. Cause they, they get hit by lightning or if they, they will oxidize andand smolder.

(26:14):

And so when they burn all the carbonin those piles end up in the air. And with with no emissions controls, you getsulf fear of sulfur and you get all of the cancer-causing agents in the air aswell. So there is one solution to cleaning up the piles, it's to usebulldozers, front end loaders, excavators, dig it out and put it in apurpose-built furnace that will burn it with emissions controls that, thateliminate 99% of the cancer causing stuff and leave behind, you know, communitiesthat once had like vibrant, you know, mining operations and employment then nowhave smoldering piles of waste that wreck our groundwater and make ituninhabited. So it's really, i I view it as fixing a class warfare problem.Like these communities are small and have no voice anymore. And so there is no,and you can't sort of toss a handful of grass seed on these piles and pretendthat they're not there.

(27:07):

You know, people that live near themend up with higher instances of asthma and cancer and everything else. So, youknow, it's not just, it's not pretty to look at, it's not by the way I can tellyou clean it up, but it's a big problem. So know that what we're doing hasproblem that exists is more than a hundred years old. If there were anothersolution, what is it we're a hundred years in, you know, so 25 years ago,Pennsylvania, bipartisan way encouraged power plants that burn this productthat are, are like super expensive design and build. Cause they're, they'renot, they're not thermal coal plants. These are custom design plants to, toburn this low BTU product and clean up the waste. The state knows that theyneed the stuff cleaned up. It's a blight on the state. So reputationally tohave these things around.

(27:51):

And so they've incentivized theconstruction of these plants and, and we, we work in partnership with the pa wework in partnership with the D e P, you know, they're the ones that call ussay, Hey stronghold, will you please clean up this pile over here and we'llwe'll pay you for every tongue that you remove. So I think I, I described mybusiness is that we're really a rec reclamation company where the byproduct ispower and the high, the best use, most high margin use for that power is mineBitcoin. So I think you could look at, hey, for every coin we mine, we cleanup, you know, a few thousand tons of this waste. So yeah, I guess I fullyrefute any, Hey Greg, you're doing environmental damage. I think I'm the onlyguy, you know, I think those that are using like hydro or or renewable energy,yeah, I commend them for their choice to not further pollute the environment.

(28:44):

But what we're doing actually cleansit up. But I think if there's a criticism, it's at our process emits carboninto the atmosphere. And my response to that is, is all the carbon in thesepiles will end up in the atmosphere anyway except when it's reclaimed throughour process. We eliminate the truly nasty chemicals and products and we end upwith a clean land in a rehabilitated land and water that's cleaned up. So Iwill, you know, go to my grave telling you that we are doing the right thing bycleaning up these sites and at mining bitcoin, it helps it happen more quickly.And you know, I would say these plants were probably in danger of being shutdown because they, you know, power was so cheap in these part, in this part ofthe country that it was difficult for them to be, you know, viable. Yeah,

Will Szamosszegi (29:33):

That, that's fascinating. I, yeah, I,I'd never had someone walk me through that process. And so when you're goingthrough this whole process, and in a way it's different than the methaneapproach, but in a way it's similar in the sense that you're taking somethingthat has these negative externalities, you're taking this waste and yeah,rather than just have allowing it those externalities to continue to exist,you're finding a way to utilize it for something productive, helping the communitiesbring jobs. But then on top of that support the bitcoin mining network as well.In terms of outside of the energy business side, how have your views onBitcoin, I guess, yeah, overall, like Flo, yours, what's your view on bitcoinand, and the value that Bitcoin has

Greg Beard (30:11):

Plus one of the sort of bitcoinenergy leaders on CNBC last week and his, his view was every government thatcan print it on currency is going to print it to the point that it makes thecurrency worth less. And that's, that's, that happens 100% of the time sincethe, the history of, of currencies, which is why, you know, a gold is, is cheaptoday, but you know, relative to it was, you know, two years ago, but it's, itis still a, a more stable store of value and a more sure store of value than a,a government printed currency. And that's just human nature. You know,governments are apocalypse machines, you know, they'll, they'll leverthemselves and I think we're right now we're essentially we're, we are printingour way out of our leverage since I think that which is a smart thing to do ifyou, if you borrow way too much money, make that money worth less, you know, ifyou can still grow your economy, I think our, our debt may actually be on aninflation adjusted basis.

(31:07):

The US debt is actually declining,which is the whole, no one's gonna admit this in a, you know, in a governmentforum, but the only way out of our debt crisis that we have created is toinflate our way out and make the debt small relative to the size of oureconomy. So inflation does that. So we have a a sure bet we are going to havemore US debt and we're going to have, and the US dollar will be worth less in10 years than it's worth today. And a torn will be worth a lot less. And youlook backward and it's been true since it was, you know, taken off of the, youknow, gold standard. So that, that's a sure bet with that in mind, hey, isBitcoin the best way to hedge that? That sure thing in the, in the long runpossibly, you know, in the short run, definitely noted.

(31:53):

But I think that's the, the purpose,you know, and the spirit of Bitcoin was hey, the, the, the US dollar and notjust picking on the dollar, any government mandated or printed currency is asure bet to fail or become diminishing value just by design. And that has tobe, and that's not necessarily a terrible thing as long as it's a slow erosioninstead of a, you know, collapse. But I think what we've seen is really with,and it's becoming more, if it wasn't clear before, it's clear now the printingof the extra few trillions of dollars in the name of sort of covid recoverythat probably wasn't needed in the first place. It was, you know, sort ofpopulist money printing that created a giant bubble in the equities markets,created a giant bubble in in the tech markets, tech equities, markets andBitcoin traded, uh, in sympathy with that.

(32:41):

So pure portfolio in tech justdoubled in value, which it did during Covid. You probably felt Rich probablysaid, well I'm gonna take some of my extra value and put it into Bitcoin cuzthat's the next thing. And now that we're in reverse that the coin bubble isversed with the tech bubble and uh, we've, you know, seen the, that Bitcoinreally trades instead of trading with gold, it's trading as a derivative ontech equities, which in a bubble market can happen. So now we sort ofstabilized around 20,000. It's too tough to say, Hey, what will, you know, whenwill Bitcoin recover? What will the, you know, future hold, I wouldn't be doingit if I didn't think it had a, a bright future, but it's difficult for me toreally bet on a Bitcoin price and recovery until equities recover and equitiesare not gonna recover until the Fed puts raising rates.

(33:32):

They're not gonna quit raising ratesuntil inflation's under control. And I don't think inflation's under control.And so I would, I would not, you know, so I think I, I guess my position isstill one of being defensive and so, but if you ask me, Hey, will Bitcoin behigher in a year than it's right now? I, I don't know, you know, I think youreally have to plan for a really tough time because our government put us in ahorrible position, you know, it's almost like the legislative and executivebranch is now fighting the Fed. It's like, hey, well every, every trillion youprinted, it's gonna cost us, you know, second five basis points of interestrates. You know, that'll probably be something about the map that'll end up atthe end of the day saying, well, if you over overdo it, now we need to cool itoff. And just to toolkit we have to do that at this point is, you know, our,our toolbox is kind of empty. We have just a hammer in there and that's justinterest rate manipulation.

Will Szamosszegi (34:23):

Yeah. And I think the, the Fed justraised by 75 basis points. Right, and I mean, this is an impossible questionto, to really have like a clear answer to, but, um, I'm curious as to g divinga little bit more into what you had mentioned earlier with that portion oflike, what is the Fed gonna do, right? And how you were thinking about it.Okay, well they, they've made a commitment, they're gonna go and try and getinflation under control. It's obviously very difficult with the amount that'sbeen printed. And you're also looking at the, what everyone's talking aboutwith shortages and supply chain constraints that might be on the horizon,horizon prices. So with all that said, what's your sense of how they get thatunder control? Obviously it's by raising rates, how bad or how long do youthink that those types of rate rises are gonna have to be going on and, andhow, what's your, I guess how does that play into your general outlook on theeconomy as a

Greg Beard (35:12):

Whole? We have issues and they're notjust here, you know, uh, and I think answer the questions like, Hey, what will,you know, like a big component of inflation is energy and that that's gonnaimpact people. I think people this, this fall are gonna sort of, now they'renot getting their bill from August and people's power pricing is, is high, Iguess a lot higher than it was probably higher than expected. What happens inin Ukraine is gonna impact, uh, and Russia is gonna impact a inflation in that.That's, that's a big portion of the metric. I'm not, I guess you're sort ofunderwriting war, war games to then guess inflation outcomes, which is tough tosay, but I don't, I think that a, theoretically the Fed needs to raise rates tomatch the rate of inflation, but it, it moves down. So hopefully if inflationgoes, you know, from eight plus percent down to, you know, 4%, then they'rekind of, they can be pretty close to being done with rate increases.

(36:08):

But if it stays at eight and theygotta keep marching up to match it and we'll see what happens. I think the, thebig mystery will be the components that make up inflation. Like what are theyreally looking at because they're saying, hey, they want to limit inflation to2%, but then that's the stated goal and they'll probably begin to manipulatewhat they mean by 2% by saying, Hey, it's 2%. If you, if you, if you excludeenergy or if you exclude food or you know, it's like, well, why, you know, doyou not use energy? Why are you excluding things? Um, so I think they'll,they'll probably, again, they may begin to say, Hey, they're hitting theirgoal. If you, you know, look at the fine print, it'll be a bunch of thingsexcluded in the asterisk, you know? Yeah. To, to count it.

(36:52):

I, I think what I, you know, I, Iguess this, going back to this, I saw CEO last week saying, Hey, the Fed is,you know, Bitcoin is down in part because the Fed is doing its job with controlinflation and these are sort of the adults in the room controlling it andtherefore we're seeing sort of Bitcoin not do all that well. And I think thatis absolutely incorrect. I think we have children that printed all this moneyin the first place for populist reasons, not economic ones. Being the firsthalf of covid was, was a mystery what was gonna happen. Yeah, of course. Be,you know, get ahead of it. But when it became clear that it's not all that dangerousand it was gonna go away and become, you know, when a quick McCain like thisendemic, alright, why do we print the extra 3 trillion, you know, um, Idisagree, I think, I think Bitcoin should be reacting to the fact that hey,these guys are not protecting our currency and they're now having to behave,you know, the fed's actions are in response to recklessness, not prudence.

(37:47):

I think we should be bullish on it,but hey, what happens with interest rates? I think that they'll keep going. AndI think what, what they, you know, always do, if you were to study the the pastis you can't, you have to, if you sort of telegraph to the market, hey, we'regonna raise rates like another 200, you know, basis points, you would then seea, you know, like a whipsawing market mostly go down, you know, downward andreduce the chance for a soft landing. And so I think they don't, you see amarket collapse and you can see you jobs collapse, rent increases go away.Like, you know, like we've already, not that I wanna make this like a politicalthing, but that 3 trillion of extra money so far has probably cost the USeconomy probably 20 trillion. We've seen 8 trillion wipes outta the equitiesmarkets since June. And that's not, you know, probably the biggest component ofvalue is the housing market. And that no doubt has seen north of 10 trillion invalue erase. So if you could, if you go back in time it'd say disguise, don'tdo it. Protect the currency, protect the economy. But it's just too tempting,which is why its like, hey, why is Bitcoin gonna be, you know, gonna work is becausethey, they just can't help or are those that administer our currency cannothelp it.

Will Szamosszegi (38:53):

Bitcoin it's, it's interesting cuz itis tied directly to free market principles with mining, which obviously youknow better than, than almost anyone out there, right? What supports Bitcoin isthe free competition of earning those new bitcoins, minting it, tying it toreal world energy, real work that it takes to mine a Bitcoin. Then all of asudden when you look at the printing that can go on, that is detaching actualfree market competition and the real world value because if you can just printit away at the marginal cost of zero, then allocate that somewhere else. That'snot free market driving where those dollars go and are being spent. It'scompletely unrelated and tethered to wherever group that didn't earn all thatmoney in the free market decides to put it. And so yeah. I I think it'sfascinating and hearing you outline how much value has actually potentiallybeen erased when you look at equities and these other things that, that wasfascinating.

(39:43):

I hadn't thought about it that way,but yeah, that, that's a good point. I mean the economic warfare and all theseother areas, it's, it's interesting to see how it's playing out. I I justthought it was unheard of when all of a sudden we heard about how, I don'twanna mess up the amounts, but all of a sudden how we can just take over thereserves of the do like it of the dollars that another country holds, right? Andso for example, uh, we're gonna take X number of billions of dollars that youhold in this currency and we're not gonna recognize that and we're gonnareappropriate it to another cause. I think that, and I'd be curious to hearyour thoughts on this, but there's Breon woods and then I feel like we'veentered like a new age like Breton, the, the next evolution of Breon Woods inthe sense that the dollar is no longer, it can no longer be trusted as areserve currency that can be protected if you're another nation that's holdingdollars.

(40:32):

And I think that once, once you crossthat type of a boundary, it completely reshuffles the deck in a way of you'renot as willing to hold dollars if you know that the US can suddenly just takethose dollars and not recognize your holding some belt. So from the economicpoint of view, economics point of view, I'm curious as to like your views onall this and, and how you think about that, you know, having, being involvedin, in the whole machine, so to say from running a company, like how do youassess that type of a risk like the geopolitical or regulatory

Greg Beard (41:00):

Risk? The US has a gigantic benefitthat's that nothing is, and no one can compare, have being a reserve currencylets us print away, right? So people tolerate, so hey, why are they able to dothat? Well the, the taxing power of the US government is also second to none,right? So, you know, you get the tax bill from irs, you actually pay it intheory it's like, hey, all of that debt and the ability to print the moneythat's backed by strongest economy in the world, even if we're, you know, in arecession that's, that's worthwhile. Of course if our, you know, ourcompetitors globally see us with this reserve currency and that advantage thatwe have if it could be taken away would really hurt us. Cuz then we couldn'tprint like we print, you know, it's like if we print the money and only UScitizens by debt, that's a much different thing than having a globally fundedgrowth.

(41:50):

If you look at the, the growth of theus hey a lot of it's debt funded and a lot of it's debt funded, not themajority, but by external economies because of the perception that it is themost stable of the currencies I would say. But by I'm no longer gonna going totrust the US dollar, where are you gonna put it? Where you gonna buy your, yourUS treasury equivalent? And I would say as, as we are knowing that weultimately will inflate ourselves down to a diminished value per dollar, Iwould suggest that other countries have a, have even less discipline. And I'mnot sure that if I were told, if I were running the economy of a third worldcountry, you're probably not gonna be well advised to hold all of your reservesin a much less stable currency. As much as I'd say, hey, should you hold yourassets in Bitcoin or in US dollar?

(42:39):

If you're comparing it to most, andif you have 140 countries in the world, you know, probably 30 of them you wouldsay fine, you'd sort of be willing to take currency risk, but the majority youwould not. I fear for the loss of the US heaven reserve currency and I, I cantell you that's gotta be the, the, the Fed I'm sure is as panels and seexecutive sessions monthly, weekly, or even daily just to say how do we makesure that we keep this, uh, status because it's, it is really harmful if we

Will Szamosszegi (43:11):

Lose it. Yeah. And going off of thispoint, we recently saw the inflation reduction act and just the amount of moneythat is gonna be going into the renewables industry in, in some way, shape orform. I'm curious, like with your background in the energy markets, what do youthink the ramifications of that bill are going to be? I'm not sure if you'vehad the chance to, to dive into it or if there are just a couple key thingsthat you wanna mention that that how you're looking at it from, from your seat.I

Greg Beard (43:38):

Think we're gonna see, you know, the,I'm a big fan of nuclear energy. It's nice as, as solar and wind scene. It'sjust, it's already done man. I like my view is not gonna change what'shappening. What's happening is we're going to fund these things and build themand that's not a, I think it's not a great answer, but that's what we're doing.But here's, I think it's argued that hey, solar is on par with natural gas interms of cost. And that might be true if the sun is shining, but it doesn'tshine all the time. So to build a, to replace a 100 megawatt, you know, naturalgas fired power plant, you would need to build a 300 megawatt solar field. Andthen, because during the day you need to charge all these, you know, batteriesto then to be able to power that same amount of demand at night or to handlethe peak.

(44:24):

The peak demand. The peak load. Andso it's not, you can't a hundred megawatt solar field is not anywhere anywherenear the same as a hundred megawatt gas plant cuz you need to have a, amassive, you think about the amount of pollution required to create a couplehundred megawatt, you know, battery pack and that battery pack will last, youknow, five or five, maybe 10 years max. It's kind of gross and we're reallyfoolish not to look at it like the right and an equivalent way, but I guess thesolar lobby, they're better than, you know, they sort of defeat rationalthinking. So I would argue, hey, what we're doing, it's this gonna end up,we're gonna end up with with more solar and wind that is as super inefficient,probably just as dirty and maybe worse and even what we had and mean.

(45:05):

We're doing it while the answer issitting right in front of us and which is a carbon-free, massive baseloadsource of power is MOOCs. And uh, thankfully I think as a part of that bill, Ithink we're actually having some incentives to not shut as many down. And so Ithink we'll see a couple of big, you know, I think we've got something maybearound a hundred plants in the US maybe we'll see some not get shut down cuzthat, that in my view is the best way to make power. I think for a, as atransportation field, like you, you, you'd hate to burn oil. Like oil to methat's like a amount of energy content in the, in a barrel of oil is a miracle,you know? So don't waste it, don't convert it to power when there's a, a betterway for, for power use nokes for transportation, use oil, you know, that's,that's the, uh, at least like airplanes, like cars, you know, you wanna havesome, like hybrids are probably the most efficient way to, to do cars insteadof all electric.

(46:02):

Like again, because the grid, if wewere to all be forced into electric cars tomorrow, the grid fails by morning,cannot charge all of the, the grid is not set up to answer the power needs ofan electric vehicle fleet as Americans currently live. So if something has tochange, so I kind of liked it that the, the gradual approach was, hey, whydon't we do, you know, more efficient hybrids that maybe do, you know, 50 or ahundred miles of battery, which is probably, most people are gonna be allelectric anyway and then have the combustion engine there for when it fails. I,I had a Tesla for five years and I sold it and I got the one that had the bigbattery pack in it. I sold it when I couldn't make 100 mile round trip on acold day to like a kid's sporting event.

(46:43):

I was, I sold it the next week. It'slike, all right, everything's supposed to go 280 miles and now it's like four,four or something years old and it couldn't make 200. Wow. So they're like,just like the battery in your phone, Hey, that's what happens to your car. So,and maybe now with the new ones they go 500 miles, maybe they diminish down to,you know, three 50 or 400. But I think we're, I think as society we're sort offalling for the argument that it's greener and cleaner, but it's probably not.So I think we're making mistakes that are policy driven, but again, that aremade and we're gonna do it. Cause it seems to be, you know, that seems to beworking for those that are making the decisions. But I think as we see people'spower, bills triple, which are in the process of seeing it's already happenedin California,

Will Szamosszegi (47:25):

Wild, how expensive power is upthere, right? It's like it's over 50 cents a kilowatt hour at

Greg Beard (47:31):

This point. You know, I think the,those that that mandated the sort of head policy that caused that to happen arearen't unhappy about it. That's the great, it's, and it's such a, you thinkyou're, if you think you're a, like a progressive politician, you're not justmaking power prices expensive for rich people. Disproportionately impacts poorpeople. Guy who's like balancing his budget probably can't afford a $200, $200to fill his gas tank, probably can't afford to have his power bill go from, youknow, 80 bucks a month to 300. But they're doing it like unapologetically,which is re aggressive and it's not even gonna result in a cleaner planet.That's, that's the crazy part. Like, well where are all these batteries comingfrom? Outer space? No, it's mine and it impacts water. Uh, and it doesn't evenlast that long, these, these solution is nukes.

(48:13):

So if, if happy the day thegovernment just say, Hey, how do you make nukes more inexpensive to build? Soone, if you have a current, you know, it's really the permitting and thedisaster recovery or disaster prevention that makes this unexpensive. Thenmodern designs that are being contemplated now are so much safer. You wouldn't,you wouldn't even need to have the containment systems that the old designshave, have had to have, you know, we're running nuclear power plants on craftcarriers, so, and have, and have them for a long, long time. France has, I think80 small nuclear facilities and they do it with an, the government can say,Hey, here's a pre-approved design that is, is sort of, you know, that, that hasa fast track through permitting where it's put, that ought to be what replacescoal pop, coalfire power plants or gas plants. That's much, much better for theenvironment, for and for society than what we're currently put. I'm, I thinkI'm a minority voice.

Will Szamosszegi (49:09):

I, I feel like disproportionatelylarge number of people that I speak with who have a background in energy end upbecoming very pro nu pro-nuclear power. And so I'm curious, do you think thatthe, why do you think that we haven't utilized, or actually I would say thatthe better question first be what are the, if you were to list out the key,main reasons why you think nuclear power is great and I mean you've touched onsome of them already, like the baseload demand things, things like that. I'lllet you lay it out how you think through it. Yeah. But then after that, I'mcurious as to why you think they haven't been as adopted despite having a lotof these benefits. So I'll, I'll leave it to you to, to par that how you likeYes. Now

Greg Beard (49:48):

It's carbon free, which is for,that's the, you know, monarch of the day carbon free, it's base load meaning,and it runs around the clock. And we have facilities that are decades old, like40, 50 year old facilities of the atli. That's a long time, but they'reunpopular cuz hey, when they fail, it's catastrophic. So who wants to live nextto the potential of a failure? No one understand it. But if you looked at theamount of deaths from, from nuclear accidents, it's a fraction of, of aboutanything else. It's like, Hey, what are the number of deaths from mininglithium or the deaths from mining coal or the deaths from all the pollutionthat all of you know, that the unfriendly types of power causes could probablyeven have, we shouldn't have nuclear accidents and they're not excusable, buteven if we have 'em, it's, they're still exponentially safer than what we'recurrently doing.

(50:36):

How many ga I'll bet, I'll bet morepeople have died in wind farm installation, you know, and road accidents than,or off these things. Then they then have died in nuclear power accidents. Imean, I don't know the stat, but it's out there and it's probably safer than wif you count up the, the desks related to all of the, the making of thatproduct. Um, and why isn't it, why isn't it happen? There's sort of twocompanies that have like new designs and they, they've competed with each otherin both of those designs, at least in the US and Westinghouse and ge, they arevery expensive. Um, and huge. So if, if you, if you wanna build one, great. Ifyou wanna build a, you know, 2000 megawatt nuclear power plant, go to one ofthose two guys and, you know, they're huge on a capital basis and require, youknow, footprints on land that are, you know, unviable today.

(51:31):

And so it's like, all right, whowants to build a five or 10 billion facility and fight your neighbors and fightgovernment and then, hey, when you have waste uranium waste at the end of theday, where are you gonna put it? Government hasn't solved that issue. It'slike, ah, forget it. Let's just build a natural gas plant and get permittedmore quickly. You don't have the headache. How does it happen? Government's jobis really to one handle the waste side of it. It's, which ought be easy to do.And I think the nuclear regulatory agency in conjunction with the D E D P, Ithink, or maybe d e c is, is funding sort of the new technologies to make thefootprint smaller, to make them cheaper and easier. And I think, hey, thatought happens. And the government has already been a proponent of that. Sohope, hopefully we'll see it. But yeah, it's a, it's a tall, it's a big ask,but like as a world when you do it, because it's like, as I sort of said, thethe alternative is just, it's tripling a cost of power for it without andprobably doing much the environment.

Will Szamosszegi (52:30):

Yeah. And everything falls out ofenergy, right? Every single thing, everything that gets built, the incredibleworld that you see around you is because we have the ability to utilize energymore efficiently. And our society today utilizes energy much more efficientlythan a society from 300 years. And it allows us to do more with less of a humaninput and, uh, create a much better world that can support billions andbillions of people. So thi this has been an unbelievably interestingconversation. I have one more question, but before, um, I ask the lastquestion. Are there any places online or I guess any last things you'd wannasay about stronghold before we dive into the last question?

Greg Beard (53:06):

Oh, sure. Hey, I would just say this,why it's, it's been a super interesting year. We, we've been public a year comethis October, October 20th is our, is our, was our listing date. So we've,we've done so much in the year, but I think our, our most exciting days areahead of us. And, and I would just say for investors, we are set up to survivecrypto winter and have, have done things to, to make sure that we get tothrough to the other side, which, hey, we're all, when when will it happen? AsI said earlier, it's tough to know exactly at some point you gotta be bullish.But, uh, you know, I would just say, Hey, do your, if you're interested inBitcoin, mining is a good avenue to get, get exposure. But every, you know, in,in comparing one miner to the next miner, don't just say, Hey, this guy canproduce, you know, 200 coins a month or whatever, and think that that's a greatmetric because those 200 coins might be costing that guy the equivalent of 250coins to make them, or that guy might have debt, probably has debt that makesthe equity worthless.

(54:08):

So I would say it's a, it is a veryimportant time for investors to do their, their own work. I would, I wouldn'teven trust like research reports at this point cause having read them all, likepeople are missing some sort of key fundamental aspects of the business thatthat will determine whether or not these companies survive and thrive or not.So I think it's, I I'm excited about what we're doing and there's, there's, Ithink, uh, in the next two quarters think it'll become more evident to themarket where we can just sort of show, hey, here's what we've done and here'swhy we're, why it made sense. But we'll see. Uh, I'm I'm mostly enjoying itactually.

Will Szamosszegi (54:42):

Yeah. I, and I will echo thatsentiment. I do think that when the markets are down, when you're in the bearmarkets, it's crazy to see how, how important timing is in this market. And,uh, you definitely don't wanna be going into to mining during the highs and thepeaks of the bull bull market. A lot of times I think that you'll see thingsget overvalued, but just like it swings upwards, I think the sw pendulum swingsthe same way downwards where you can find and scoop up some incredible dealsduring the bear markets. And I think that that's how you see a lot of peopledoing really well investing in this industry rather than, yeah, you don't wannabe the, the, the grandma that goes and hears about Bitcoin and is the lastperson to buy it at the peak, right before everything falls. You want to be init at the, the times where there's, there's blood in the streets and uh, thingsaren't as pleasant on the outside, but the fundamentals are still there andactually better than during the bull bull run. So yeah,

Greg Beard (55:32):

Absolutely. You're right. I, i had, Ibought stock, it's, it's in the public record. I bought stock two weeks agopersonally having like my salaries gonna be paid in stock for the next year atleast. So I, uh, hopefully that that reflects my view of, of prospects of

Will Szamosszegi (55:46):

The company. Yeah. Look at, um,actions since instead of words as a lot of people say. So the last question,um, is what is one belief you hold to be true that the majority of peoplewould, uh, disagree with you on? It's a very tough question.

Greg Beard (55:59):

<laugh>. I mean, that's, that'sthe kind of question you gotta, you gotta get it, uh, haven't asked. You know,what I would say if, if I'm an expert in the, in the energy space, you know,which I, I am as far as my whole, whole life, I think it would be probably thatif you looked at, at the impact of like oil on the world, I think it's, it'sbeen demonized as a commodity. But if you were to study like standards ofliving and the availability of cheap energy, so not just oil, but sort ofcheap, cheap fossil fuels. Well it's certainly, you could argue it has had its,you know, complaints related to carbon more recently. But I think a lot of thestandard of living improvements globally are a result of chief of that samecheap energy. Um, if you looked at, at the difficulty sort of growing a, astandard of living, like we're now in an age where we are going to be triplingthe cost of that, the access, that cheap energy. And I think it's probablygonna result in a, in a reduction in standard of living that I think is reallyimportant for like the fabric of society and for like global financial health.So I think if there's a, I I probably have a minority view that fossil fuelshave been the most important sort of contributing factor for the globalindustrial growth and the benefits that that has resulted in for, for all ofus.

Will Szamosszegi (57:18):

Yeah, that's a great answer. Uh, I'llshare with you in that minority opinion here and uh, we'll close it there.Thanks again. My

Greg Beard (57:26):

Pleasure, pleasure meeting you. Thankyou.