My Bitcoin Podcast Binge
Plus, Albany Firm Focuses on Bitcoin Mining
Autumn in upstate New York. We know the drill.
Pick a weekend. Wait until most of the leaves have fallen, and then get at it. A full weekend of raking and bagging leaves doesn’t sound like much fun to most of us, but I’ve found that listening to some good podcast episodes helps the time go by faster. Much faster.
Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are generally my go-to topics for podcasts. I subscribe to about a dozen. Some of my favorites over the past three years have been:
What Bitcoin Did, with Peter McCormack
The Pomp Podcast, with Anthony Pompliano
The Wolf of All Streets, with Scott Melker
Bitcoin Fixes This, with Jimmy Song
This weekend, I binged on Anthony Pompliano, as he had just an amazing lineup of high-quality guests. Pomp’s podcast is an audio recording of his daily “Best Business Show.” Two of his episodes this week centered on the Bitcoin on-chain analytics. It’s always interesting to hear the perspectives of the two young on-chain analysts, Will Clemente III and Dylan LeClair. The 20-year-old Clemente has taken a year off from his studies at East Carolina University and has become the Lead Insights Analyst at Blockware. LeClair is the Senior Market Analyst at UTXO Management.
Both Will and Dylan do deep dives into the on-chain statistics and the Bitcoin charts, mostly produced by Glassnode. Both gave some great insights into the recent behavior of both long-term and short-term Bitcoin holders. The general takeaways: Longer term Bitcoin holders are generally sitting at a cost basis of about $17,000 per coin. Nice position to be in. The shorter term holders and traders have a cost basis of roughly $50,000. They’ve obviously held these coins for only a few short months or less.
The general observation made by both Will and Dylan is that long-term holders (“HODLers”) have been pulling their coins off of the exchanges, creating a supply squeeze in the current market. With liquid supply down, and more adoption occurring every day, the number can only go up. Econ 101.
Next up was an episode of The Pomp Podcast with that famed gold proponent and Bitcoin Hater, Peter Schiff. Pomp and his two brothers John and Joe get on Schiff quite a bit, rubbing Bitcoin’s lofty returns in his face. That aside, Schiff is an extremely knowledgeable source on the US economy, monetary and fiscal policy, and most of all, inflation. (Is that a hot topic these days?)
Schiff wrecks the federal government over their failed policies, printing money, runaway spending and continued near-zero percent interest rates. He also points out that the real inflation rate in this country is way higher than the recently-announced 6.2% per year. Why? Two reasons: It’s flawed, and it’s manipulated.
For example, the asset class that has skyrocketed in price this year is housing. Is the cost of buying a home included in the official inflation calculation? Nope. That’s a flawed process.
The C.P.I., manipulated? How can that be? Schiff seems to think it is, as he point out that certain commodities are, on a regular basis, removed from the formula and replaced with others. Did lumber go up a huge amount last month? Maybe replace it with another building material. There’s no doubt that these things happen. Schiff’s analysis of the current state of inflation in this country was outstanding. Naturally, he was promoting gold as the premier store of value in these inflationary times. Pomp, of course, stated the case for Bitcoin as a better store of value. Good fun.
By far the most entertaining of the episodes I listened to on Sunday was Pomp’s interview with Jason Williams, aka “Parabolic Guy.” Williams is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital Assets, where Pomp was previously employed.
Williams is a riot to listen to, and his enthusiasm for Bitcoin is off the charts. In this episode, he discusses a lot of assets classes and how the current US inflation is affecting them. He also talks about how large whale investors have been leveraging their assets that have skyrocketed in value, in order to buy more. All without incurring a capital gains tax.
You won’t find a bigger Bitcoin proponent than Williams. Proof: he is in the process of moving towards having 50% of his assets in Bitcoin. That’s all in.
And for me, most of the leaves got raked up. I barely noticed.
Albany Company Shifts Focus to Bitcoin Mining
Publicly-traded Soluna Holdings (SLNH), formerly called Mechanical Technology, has shifted its focus to Bitcoin mining, and is growing revenue at a record pace. The Albany, New York based company, following a multi-million dollar investment from private equity firm Brookstone Partners, has rebranded and gone big into Bitcoin. But that’s not all.
Soluna has vowed to do all of its Bitcoin mining using excess energy from only renewable sources, mainly solar and wind farms. Since the solar and wind farms run constantly, they end up with power that can’t be absorbed by the energy grid. And that’s where firms like Soluna are helping out. (Don’t fall for the usual Bitcoin FUD that it uses too much of a carbon footprint.)
How are they doing? Well, third quarter revenue increased by 54% to $5.1 million. The majority, $3.1 million, came from crypto mining. Their short-range goal? From the Albany Times Union:
“Soluna wants to build up its computing power to be able to complete one quintillion hashes per second in the coming months, what is known in the industry as reaching 1 exahash of computing, a considerable milestone.”
Says CEO Michael Toporek: “Watch us scale.”
Catch Last Week’s Issue:
Bitcoin $250,000 In January, then $1 Million when?
Issue No. 30, November 19, 2021
Rick Mulvey is a CPA, forensic accountant and crypto consultant. He writes about all things Bitcoin, and yells at the Yankees and Giants. He also runs marathons and makes wine, neither professionally.
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