1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:16,400 Welcome to the Afrinu podcast. My name is Mbazor Jeremiah and I am the host of Afrinu 2 00:00:16,400 --> 00:00:27,200 podcast. On this podcast we make different kinds of contributions and deliberations and 3 00:00:27,200 --> 00:00:34,480 different aspects of nuclear technology as it affects the continent of Africa and beyond. 4 00:00:34,480 --> 00:00:43,880 So, for today's episode of the Afrinu podcast I will present you Brian Markyard who is from 5 00:00:43,880 --> 00:00:52,320 Canada. I will speak about Bitcoin, my name is Benz and how it interface nuclear power. 6 00:00:52,320 --> 00:01:03,800 Can you tell us a little bit about yourself Brian? Hi, thanks for having me. This is very 7 00:01:03,800 --> 00:01:09,560 exciting opportunity to talk to some individuals and to an audience that is vastly different than 8 00:01:09,560 --> 00:01:16,400 I'm familiar with here in Canada. As for myself, I work in the Canadian nuclear industry. I operate 9 00:01:16,400 --> 00:01:23,680 and maintain a laboratory that supports safety and reactor research for the can-do nuclear-powered 10 00:01:23,680 --> 00:01:29,040 reactor fleet. Basically we monitor the corrosion in the pressure tubes and then we report that to 11 00:01:29,040 --> 00:01:35,560 the utilities and that determines the health and longevity of the pressure tubes that are used 12 00:01:35,560 --> 00:01:42,040 in the can-do nuclear-powered reactors. And then the other thing I do in my spare time is I've 13 00:01:42,040 --> 00:01:50,560 taken an interest in Bitcoin and specifically the Bitcoin mining technology that uses an algorithm 14 00:01:50,560 --> 00:02:03,240 that requires a lot of electricity to perform that computing. It requires a lot of electricity to 15 00:02:03,240 --> 00:02:09,280 perform that computing operation. So nuclear power can leverage this technology as a large flexible 16 00:02:09,280 --> 00:02:16,480 load to provide an anchor tenant to nuclear power deployments ensuring that there's always going 17 00:02:16,480 --> 00:02:21,680 to be demand for the power wherever we build a nuclear reactor of what other size from several 18 00:02:21,680 --> 00:02:26,800 gigawatts. The traditional reactors that we're familiar with being built around the world and 19 00:02:26,800 --> 00:02:32,960 the smaller, small modular reactors that we intended to deploy to smaller markets that are 20 00:02:32,960 --> 00:02:39,120 going to open up a wider range of applications for nuclear power. And I believe that having a large 21 00:02:39,120 --> 00:02:46,480 flexible load and used as an anchor will be a value of full assets to expanding the range that we 22 00:02:46,480 --> 00:02:53,880 can deploy these nuclear-powered reactors without as much investment risk and economic risk when 23 00:02:53,880 --> 00:03:01,120 it's when you're trying to deploy a large power asset without certain consumer base it either 24 00:03:01,120 --> 00:03:07,200 doesn't get invested in or it puts a lot of costs on the ratepayers and the consumers in that local 25 00:03:07,200 --> 00:03:13,280 area that are paying for that power asset. So thank you. There's a lot of interest in this very 26 00:03:13,280 --> 00:03:18,720 narrow niche and it's very exciting to see all the developments happening. It's interesting. 27 00:03:20,240 --> 00:03:28,400 As you were talking about the Bitcoin mining and how nuclear power interfaces do it, you talked 28 00:03:28,400 --> 00:03:34,960 about the economics and how people are able to afford energy and this is a very interesting aspect 29 00:03:34,960 --> 00:03:43,600 in Africa, you know, of the several millions of people who are without electricity, the people who 30 00:03:43,600 --> 00:03:53,600 are without it in Africa constituted a larger percentage of this number and most parts of Africa 31 00:03:53,600 --> 00:04:02,000 are still energy poor. We are not talking about energy transition yet. We want to still talk about 32 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:08,320 energy sufficiency first because now people are talking about, especially in the advanced world, 33 00:04:08,320 --> 00:04:15,440 how they can advance to clean or green energy. But the good thing about nuclear energy is that it 34 00:04:15,440 --> 00:04:23,120 gives you the best of both worlds, giving you both energy sufficiency and also making you transit 35 00:04:23,120 --> 00:04:29,680 in a very clean form if you want to target that way. So this brings me to kind of ask you about 36 00:04:29,680 --> 00:04:40,480 how your journey has been like you just given us a rundown about how this aspect of Bitcoin mining 37 00:04:40,480 --> 00:04:48,080 interfaces with nuclear, what caused your interest in this aspect of 38 00:04:48,080 --> 00:05:06,440 endeavor like Bitcoin mining, nuclear engineering, what's the parallel or what's like the meeting point, if that's the right word to say. Because I know from the Bitcoin mining aspect that it requires a lot of energy. The 39 00:05:06,440 --> 00:05:35,560 ASIC chips that is used to mine Bitcoin and a lot of energy is involved. I remember my professor telling me about the experience of some Nigerians mining Bitcoin, how they have to go get a lot of, they spend a lot on diesel generators because we are energy deficient, the lack of electricity here in Nigeria. So they get to spend a lot of money on off grid power sources like the generating sets. 40 00:05:35,560 --> 00:06:02,880 So considering the large energy resource that is needed to mine Bitcoin, how does nuclear and Bitcoin mining come to kind of have a carry along because people talk about off grid energy and the quickly think of wind renewables and the rest of them. How does nuclear come to play or come to parallel or have a meeting point with Bitcoin mining? 41 00:06:02,880 --> 00:06:31,880 Yeah, that is a big question is like where do these crossover ends? What I would say is that the Bitcoin miners consume a lot of energy and then nuclear power is one of its biggest liabilities is that it can generate too much power and so much so that that often will result in negative prices for having to curtail their load, which has negative effects on like on core and the turbine. 42 00:06:31,880 --> 00:06:43,880 They would prefer to operate everything at 100% and not have to follow the loads if they don't have to because they can make better economics if they're able to sell more electrons to our customers. 43 00:06:43,880 --> 00:07:05,880 So the way that I see this crossing is that you're not always going to have demand for that electricity where it is locally produced because electricity is a very tricky asset to manage because it must be consumed somewhere as it's being generated. 44 00:07:05,880 --> 00:07:34,880 It has to be kept at that supply and demand balance perfectly. So grid operators, their job is to ensure that they have enough generation sources online of sufficient demands of sufficient volume, sufficient like ramping up rates so that they can reliably and quickly and predictably manage how much electricity is going to be using in a given place with what they have available within their operation. 45 00:07:34,880 --> 00:07:56,880 So I'm more familiar with jurisdictions like Ontario in Buffy and Canada and a few of the American locations like Texas is a really interesting use case to see how Bitcoin mining is being used across that grid and how their spot price can vary depending on the time of the day, depending on the temperature, depending on the rate of solar that they're getting, 46 00:07:56,880 --> 00:08:10,880 depending on the wind that they're coming, whether or not the prices of natural gas are available at the time with their peak or plants all over the place, prepared to spin up at a moment's notice. 47 00:08:10,880 --> 00:08:22,880 So that's a service that grids will often pay utilities extra for to just be available to turn on and they'll be paid the premium for doing so when the grid is at really high demand. 48 00:08:22,880 --> 00:08:41,880 So I've heard from like secondhand places in Africa that for the most part electricity demand is fairly sufficient and abundant in where many of the cities are, but as soon as you start to get rural and have grids and lots of dependency on diesel generation, 49 00:08:41,880 --> 00:09:02,880 some places might get lucky and have substantial hydropower resources. But from what I'm familiar with this is it's very tricky to build the infrastructure that's required to transmit electricity out to a very disparate rural population. 50 00:09:02,880 --> 00:09:17,880 If you are not going to have the sufficient demand that is what the investors say like that the loan guarantees required in order to build these projects in the first place. 51 00:09:17,880 --> 00:09:38,880 So I see Bitcoin as a very good crossroads between that like especially for nuclear power like I nuclear power is at the top of my list but I'm seeing evidence and examples of places in Africa that are using the strategy already for micro scale hydro projects and some solar wind operations where that's available. 52 00:09:38,880 --> 00:10:05,880 But there's a company that's called Ridless compute and what they're doing is they're identifying like small like less than a megawatt sometimes not even 100 megawatt communities where there's only like 30 residences using this power, but they aren't going to use enough to justify the full capacity building full capacity of what these this hydro dam could generate. 53 00:10:05,880 --> 00:10:20,880 So what they're doing is they're offering to use Bitcoin miners to consume that excess capacity, whether it's only like 30 kilowatts to like 100 kilowatts that's four or five computers. 54 00:10:20,880 --> 00:10:49,880 And then they're able to spread out the just the upfront fixed capital of building that power infrastructure across a large wider base of customers. And then one of the more interesting capabilities that this Bitcoin miners have is that it can be programmed to underclock themselves so start consuming less electricity when there is a higher demand priority coming from other users on the grid which when you start 55 00:10:49,880 --> 00:11:06,880 doing stuff like that it can be dramatically changing for people in these communities because now now you can reliably have a light bulb. Now you're not stuck to cooking with wood or other very high pollutant fuel sources. 56 00:11:06,880 --> 00:11:27,880 And you can do each other and can start studying you'll have more reliable refrigeration and all of these things start to compound on each other. You can irrigate better so that the local cattle herdsman is able to get a better block of cows or herd of cows and then that grows and he starts growing a better business. 57 00:11:27,880 --> 00:11:40,880 And that's for local community minutes has these second and third for the ripple effects. Once you are able to get that just reliable, affordable power to communities that have never experienced before. 58 00:11:40,880 --> 00:12:00,880 And there's opportunities for small scale projects like that all across the world. It just requires the right market incentive to unlock it. So I'm very excited about where these two technologies can go when we start getting into much larger scale points but it's beautiful to see that it can be done at any scale. 59 00:12:00,880 --> 00:12:14,880 And can't wait. 60 00:12:14,880 --> 00:12:32,880 It's not sessions don't really have really tell your kids. They just want to tell them that needs to go to. 61 00:12:32,880 --> 00:12:35,880 Well. 62 00:12:35,880 --> 00:12:46,280 Yeah, it does. Hello, Gai Hemina. Hello. Yeah, that's better. 63 00:12:46,280 --> 00:12:53,280 Okay, so. Okay, yeah, sorry about that. So I was trying to illustrate the fact that when 64 00:12:53,280 --> 00:12:59,640 people like talk about electricity, especially in Africa, and also if my extension can also 65 00:12:59,640 --> 00:13:04,840 be the rest part of the world, people on a generous, just want to plug their devices 66 00:13:04,840 --> 00:13:10,680 to the electricity sources or just turn on the light and then have the light on without bothering 67 00:13:10,680 --> 00:13:19,680 much to know where the electricity comes from. And this kind of brings me to the aspect of the 68 00:13:19,680 --> 00:13:27,120 nuclear technology that does this load following from your explanation. You are like talking about 69 00:13:27,120 --> 00:13:35,640 the gridless electricity that's kind of feast on the extra kind of electricity that comes from 70 00:13:35,640 --> 00:13:43,240 wherever sources that the Bitcoin mining is connected to. So like in this place, we don't have 71 00:13:43,240 --> 00:13:50,320 enough energy, let alone sparing it. But because of this, the unique nature of electricity generation, 72 00:13:50,320 --> 00:13:56,480 where you have to have some kind of transmission from the generating points to where it is being 73 00:13:56,480 --> 00:14:03,880 used. So you have some losses. So to curtail that loss, I think we are trying to talk about the 74 00:14:03,880 --> 00:14:11,760 Bitcoin mining kind of using those electricity that would have been lost to transmission to mine 75 00:14:11,760 --> 00:14:22,040 some Bitcoin. So why do we have to use this energy, this excess energy generated to mine 76 00:14:22,040 --> 00:14:30,880 Bitcoin and not other fiat currencies or maybe other kind of cryptos? Why Bitcoin? Why are you 77 00:14:30,880 --> 00:14:37,640 particularly buy Bitcoin and what's the unique feature of this kind of resource that you are 78 00:14:37,640 --> 00:14:44,840 talking about? Perhaps you might want to give us a breakdown of Bitcoin and why is it important in 79 00:14:44,840 --> 00:14:51,320 our days today? Yeah, that would definitely be a good idea. Bitcoin is one of those things that 80 00:14:51,320 --> 00:14:57,640 just about everybody's heard about it, but very few people actually understand what it is, what 81 00:14:57,640 --> 00:15:03,440 it's capable of doing and what benefit it might provide to humanity. And right now, what many 82 00:15:03,440 --> 00:15:10,320 people have seemed to decide that it is and it's very useful for is as a money that's truly 83 00:15:10,320 --> 00:15:17,520 decentralized and global and would enable me to send exchange value to you right here, just as 84 00:15:17,520 --> 00:15:22,400 easily as sending a text message without any counterparty between the two of us. That means 85 00:15:22,400 --> 00:15:27,560 we don't have to go through my banking system, your banking system and all the other steps in 86 00:15:27,560 --> 00:15:33,840 the way that that would take and result in any number of fees that are associated with that 87 00:15:33,840 --> 00:15:43,000 transaction being taken off by some middleman or rent sneaker. So that's definitely one use case 88 00:15:43,000 --> 00:15:49,840 for it. And then it's just a native token that can be used on the internet. It was born on the 89 00:15:49,840 --> 00:15:57,760 internet. It's a great store of value because it holds properties, money that it's, it's divisible, 90 00:15:57,760 --> 00:16:04,760 it's portable, it's scarce, it's recognizable, it's just growing use cases, it's got a very, 91 00:16:04,760 --> 00:16:10,640 very good as a medium of exchange, it's growing in a lot more uses that people are starting 92 00:16:10,640 --> 00:16:17,840 to recognize across the world. And where I am, we've had a fairly stable financial system for 93 00:16:17,840 --> 00:16:24,320 as long as I remember, I grew up, everything seems normal. But now things are starting to be 94 00:16:24,320 --> 00:16:32,960 stressed at the end just because there's a lot of debt piled on a lot of debt. But it's hard for 95 00:16:32,960 --> 00:16:38,800 me to even like comprehend the struggles that have gone on in the other nations that are further 96 00:16:38,800 --> 00:16:43,240 and further away from like the core of like global financial system, which is the United States. 97 00:16:43,240 --> 00:16:50,160 And it seems that the further away you are from the US dollar, the worse off the effects of its 98 00:16:50,160 --> 00:16:59,480 constant dilution of value will affect you and your local currencies. This, yeah, reading up on how 99 00:16:59,480 --> 00:17:13,400 a lot of the development lending and strategic, no, I shouldn't read that word, but it's where the 100 00:17:13,400 --> 00:17:18,920 structural readjustment, that's what I was looking for. It's imposed on a lot of these countries. 101 00:17:18,920 --> 00:17:27,480 Yeah, especially by the IMF. Yeah, exchange for these loans, they will have these criteria that 102 00:17:27,480 --> 00:17:33,240 now this country needs to rearrange its economy in order to support export markets so that they 103 00:17:33,240 --> 00:17:37,880 can earn US dollars to pay off those loans because they can't get those loans in their own local 104 00:17:37,880 --> 00:17:43,560 currencies. And if they try to, they all end up like Zimbabwe in hyper-inflating their currency 105 00:17:43,560 --> 00:17:48,120 into oblivion, and then nobody knows where they think it's worth anymore. And it just ends up 106 00:17:48,120 --> 00:17:54,280 reverberating to like strange, barter economies, or people just find whatever works for them in 107 00:17:54,280 --> 00:18:00,440 black markets because your results in pulling around wheelbarrows for a full of currencies with 108 00:18:00,440 --> 00:18:09,000 10 zeros on them. Yeah, and money in the hands of humans is, it doesn't seem to go well unless 109 00:18:09,000 --> 00:18:19,720 there is some tangible tether, some energy flow in the world. And Bitcoin can tap into any energy 110 00:18:19,720 --> 00:18:25,080 flow that we can get our hands on, whether it's nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal. If we 111 00:18:25,080 --> 00:18:32,440 can generate electrons with it, we can mine Bitcoin with it. And that is the key distinguishing 112 00:18:32,440 --> 00:18:38,680 feature between Bitcoin being used as a money and the completely self-referential, 113 00:18:41,160 --> 00:18:46,440 disconnected for reality via currencies that we've been using for at least the last 50 years 114 00:18:46,440 --> 00:18:50,840 since the last vestiges of what was the gold standard was completely eliminated. 115 00:18:51,720 --> 00:18:58,120 Then you see examples of nations that propose returning to gold standards. Very shortly afterwards, 116 00:18:58,120 --> 00:19:05,960 they are destabilized and not in a good place anymore. So it is tough to hear the stories of 117 00:19:05,960 --> 00:19:11,800 people who have went through these events, but they are learning experiences for us all to 118 00:19:11,800 --> 00:19:19,560 understand the forces that we are up against. Well, you know, coming from, yeah, I mean, 119 00:19:19,560 --> 00:19:27,480 like, I get your point about the description of how like universally applicable Bitcoins and how 120 00:19:27,480 --> 00:19:36,920 they will change the whole space of independence and how nations can prosper with Bitcoins. But 121 00:19:36,920 --> 00:19:42,600 given the traditional societies where we find ourselves and the regulations that exist already, 122 00:19:43,320 --> 00:19:50,280 it's kind of difficult to find a country that will just relinquish its central banking system to 123 00:19:51,640 --> 00:20:00,120 Bitcoin, you know, Nigeria, for example, I think some few years ago, we're allowing like those 124 00:20:00,120 --> 00:20:09,080 exchanges using some special kind of wallet. I mean, after some time, they found that it was 125 00:20:09,080 --> 00:20:15,880 being used as a backdoor for some corrupt practices. So they had to ban the operations and even the 126 00:20:15,880 --> 00:20:23,480 legal ones had to also for victim as well. So some ways of getting money from different parts of the 127 00:20:23,480 --> 00:20:33,000 world became a bit more challenging, you know. So this brings me to the question of an event 128 00:20:33,000 --> 00:20:40,440 that happened in the just recently concluded summit they had in France where the president of Kenya, 129 00:20:40,440 --> 00:20:50,680 President Ruto, was talking to President Emmanuel Macron at the summit about independence of Africa, 130 00:20:50,680 --> 00:20:57,000 you know, why Africa needs to like be given a place at the table, you know, to have a share 131 00:20:57,560 --> 00:21:04,440 and to have its independence at the same time, you know. This brings me to the point of how this 132 00:21:05,400 --> 00:21:13,320 will bring this paradigm shift that Africa needs to gain its independence and also contribute as 133 00:21:13,320 --> 00:21:21,640 at a level playing ground with the Committee of Nations at the same level and commesurate at the 134 00:21:21,640 --> 00:21:28,040 same time because when it comes to the table of sharing, each person we have to kind of make 135 00:21:28,040 --> 00:21:36,280 contribution according to its size and make profits that is commesurate with its size as against 136 00:21:36,280 --> 00:21:42,040 what is already existing. As you said, those predatory loans that IMF gives that leads to 137 00:21:42,040 --> 00:21:47,960 structural changes in the country. Nigeria is currently experiencing a very big change 138 00:21:49,320 --> 00:21:55,720 given the current subsidiary removal on the petroleum product that has brought 139 00:21:56,520 --> 00:22:05,800 a kind of big hardship on the general public. But we need a paradigm shift that will make us 140 00:22:05,800 --> 00:22:12,680 begin to think in a new way. So I wonder how will this Bitcoin mining and also the energy that 141 00:22:13,560 --> 00:22:20,520 kind of powers it bring about this kind of paradigm shifts in the way that we do things 142 00:22:21,320 --> 00:22:28,360 in terms of financial management, maybe loan and all this. How can it bring about justice? How can 143 00:22:28,360 --> 00:22:36,280 it bring about a kind of fair play on the scheme of things when it comes to financial and global 144 00:22:37,000 --> 00:22:47,800 participation in the larger scheme of things? I mean, how can it bring Africa up on this kind 145 00:22:47,800 --> 00:22:53,320 of platform to play on a level playing field with other Committee of Nations? 146 00:22:53,320 --> 00:23:00,840 Because just like you had mentioned earlier, it levels the playing field. Everybody has to play 147 00:23:00,840 --> 00:23:09,240 by the same game, same rules. And there's no wise group of 12 men that just go into a room and tell 148 00:23:09,240 --> 00:23:15,400 us what the value of money is and how the rest of the world just has to live with that. It's a 149 00:23:15,400 --> 00:23:20,520 constant rule change whenever they break their own rules and then they change the rules to favor 150 00:23:20,520 --> 00:23:27,320 themselves but never to favor in any way that the scales get tips towards the little person or the 151 00:23:27,320 --> 00:23:34,280 producer. But with the Bitcoin, it flips everything on its head and it changes the value of being 152 00:23:34,280 --> 00:23:41,160 extractive versus the value of being productive. Like for the longest time, Africa has the potential 153 00:23:41,160 --> 00:23:47,800 to produce everything that you need for yourselves and be a huge exporter to the rest of the world. 154 00:23:47,800 --> 00:23:54,040 But the way that seems structured now is that many of these nations that have been preyed upon by 155 00:23:54,040 --> 00:24:03,000 these predatory loans, it's all about extracting as much value as possible. And Bitcoin gives that 156 00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:10,840 power back to people that produce things and it diminishes the ability to extract that value in a 157 00:24:10,840 --> 00:24:18,440 way that you are required to do the work and create something of value that people want to 158 00:24:18,440 --> 00:24:23,560 exchange their Bitcoin with before. Like if other nations want to trade with you at that level, 159 00:24:24,520 --> 00:24:30,040 they will have to offer a better good or better service than what is available on the rest of 160 00:24:30,040 --> 00:24:35,960 the market. It's going to completely change the structure of everything just rampant consumerism 161 00:24:35,960 --> 00:24:43,560 and everything is made in a way that is planned to plan the obsolescence. So you're always having to 162 00:24:44,120 --> 00:24:49,320 these breaking objects and then we don't even think about it here at First World. We just 163 00:24:49,320 --> 00:24:56,360 break things and we just get new things. There's no more ethos of trying to buy and build high 164 00:24:56,360 --> 00:25:04,280 quality products. It's been completely wiped out of our culture and it is really 165 00:25:04,280 --> 00:25:11,880 enthusiastic. I see the enthusiasm in all of these other young nations that they 166 00:25:14,280 --> 00:25:18,280 gone through a different path than they still respect a lot of those values. 167 00:25:20,440 --> 00:25:28,600 And when things start to shift and tip to those that are willing to put in the work 168 00:25:28,600 --> 00:25:35,000 to generate something of quality, I think a lot of that is going to tip towards Africa. 169 00:25:36,360 --> 00:25:42,840 We've lost our way in the West and we don't appreciate. I don't think you lost your way. 170 00:25:42,840 --> 00:25:47,240 How we got to where we are? You still showing the way. We are still learning from you guys. 171 00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:55,960 There's parts of it. But the one example I want to stress is just as a country that just threw it 172 00:25:55,960 --> 00:26:01,480 all to the wind and is experimenting with Bitcoin and that's El Salvador. A lot of other countries 173 00:26:01,480 --> 00:26:05,960 yet you do have your own central banks and they're going to be put a resistance but El Salvador 174 00:26:05,960 --> 00:26:13,320 was only using the US dollar. They had lost their central bank. It was shut down well over a decade 175 00:26:13,320 --> 00:26:19,640 ago. They haven't had their own currency for some time and they came out of years of civil war 176 00:26:19,640 --> 00:26:26,760 and then gangland war and then they finally elected a president that just said enough is enough 177 00:26:26,760 --> 00:26:31,480 and they turned everything around. It seems like overnight. I don't know how much you know about 178 00:26:31,480 --> 00:26:36,440 El Salvador but the headlines were basically it was the murder capital of the world more than 179 00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:44,440 five years ago. And now there are more murders and violent crimes happening in major Canadian 180 00:26:44,440 --> 00:26:50,120 and American cities than are happening all throughout El Salvador because they had the leader 181 00:26:50,120 --> 00:27:00,440 with a vision and he had the intent to pull it off. It's a bold move with the Bitcoin abuse of it 182 00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:04,760 because a lot of what he did was just actually start to enforce the law and clean up a lot of 183 00:27:04,760 --> 00:27:10,040 the gang issues that their country was having. But the Bitcoin thing is attracting a lot of 184 00:27:10,040 --> 00:27:15,480 tourism, it's attracting a lot of development, it's attracting a lot of educators, it's attracting 185 00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:20,840 a lot of Canadians and Americans and Australians that were not happy with the state of our own 186 00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:29,240 countries. It's interesting that it's providing a place it's not it's providing somewhere where 187 00:27:29,240 --> 00:27:37,000 people are fleeing to as opposed to fleeing from. So it's a really interesting paradigm and it looks 188 00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:42,840 like it's working very well and I hope it succeeds and it does appear that there are smaller examples 189 00:27:42,840 --> 00:27:47,400 popping up here and there throughout the world and they're providing an example that many African 190 00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:55,720 nations could try and emulate. Like there's lots of talk, Ghana hosts the African Bitcoin conference. 191 00:27:55,720 --> 00:28:04,840 Yeah, I was going to talk about that. Yeah. So there's a lot of interest in this technology 192 00:28:04,840 --> 00:28:11,160 and a lot of the African nations have already been meeting with Bukalian, his finance minister 193 00:28:11,160 --> 00:28:15,400 and foreign ministers to discuss different strategies that they can implement themselves. 194 00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:26,040 But it goes in against a lot of the IMF policies and the contingencies that are attached to taking 195 00:28:26,040 --> 00:28:32,360 those loans from those entities. So it's a risk but it's also an opportunity cost and 196 00:28:32,360 --> 00:28:39,560 I hope more follow suit because there's a lot of potential for these nations to do well with 197 00:28:39,560 --> 00:28:46,200 this technology before the rest of the wealthy world catches on and we get to the top of the S-curve. 198 00:28:46,200 --> 00:28:53,000 Yeah, I hope so too as well because when it comes to the story of the brown bread and the white bread 199 00:28:54,360 --> 00:29:01,240 there's this struggle kind of that catches up with the public and also the elites. Sometimes 200 00:29:01,240 --> 00:29:07,720 the elite think that the public think that what the elites are taking is better when the white 201 00:29:07,720 --> 00:29:13,800 bread came up. They wanted the white bread but it was a business model to catch the people because 202 00:29:13,800 --> 00:29:20,680 it was more easily mass produced but the brown bread was more nutritious and it was what the public 203 00:29:20,680 --> 00:29:30,920 had. So hopefully that case doesn't come in the Bitcoin issue. So to wrap it up we've kind of had 204 00:29:30,920 --> 00:29:41,160 a conversation about nuclear energy and Bitcoin. Bitcoin is kind of currency that is decentralized 205 00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:47,880 and can be used to make transactions in different parts of the world in a very simultaneous way. 206 00:29:48,840 --> 00:29:57,000 So I kind of wonder as a last word what would you like want to advise maybe a country that is 207 00:29:57,000 --> 00:30:10,040 still struggling to have its energy provision met yet because like Nigeria for example and 208 00:30:10,040 --> 00:30:15,960 most African countries we are still energy poor and we are not here talking about energy transition. 209 00:30:16,760 --> 00:30:22,760 Climate change is real and we need to have more energy. Canada for example has a lot of energy 210 00:30:22,760 --> 00:30:31,400 but it can lend its excesses to Bitcoin mining unlike Nigeria and most African countries that 211 00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:37,640 don't have enough energy. So what can we do to tap from this great gold mine that is in the horizon 212 00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:47,240 in summary? Well in the meantime just look for any opportunities where you can. 213 00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:52,280 There's definitely going to be a community of local bitcoins wherever you are. They're popping up 214 00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:58,520 everywhere but you will have no problem finding them. And they will be able if you have 215 00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:07,000 knowledge of places where there is an opportunity for something like this that can help finance 216 00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:16,440 a small electrical infrastructure project the people are out there that want to help you 217 00:31:16,440 --> 00:31:25,000 do this and develop these technologies. So reaching out to your local Bitcoin community is a great 218 00:31:25,000 --> 00:31:33,880 start. Learning about power systems wherever you can just learn about Bitcoin. I don't even try to 219 00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:38,520 start by telling people to go out and buy Bitcoin especially like under your circumstances people 220 00:31:38,520 --> 00:31:43,240 have enough trouble just saving for what they need today and tomorrow that saving anything 221 00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:54,040 that's a challenge. But even if you start with just tiny amounts that can make all the difference 222 00:31:54,040 --> 00:32:00,840 to your future self and that's where you start to just not have zero you can just a few cents 223 00:32:00,840 --> 00:32:06,840 worth is a great place to start and just learn what it is and how you can use it because I 224 00:32:06,840 --> 00:32:11,240 guarantee everybody in this world is going to find a use case for it sooner or later especially 225 00:32:11,240 --> 00:32:19,400 with the tumultuous times that it appears that we are going through at a global scale right now. 226 00:32:20,600 --> 00:32:25,800 I think if we can get to the 30s I think if we can get to the 30s intact everyone's going to be 227 00:32:25,800 --> 00:32:32,360 alright. Thank you very much Ryan. Thank you so much Ryan it's been a great time with you 228 00:32:32,360 --> 00:32:37,720 in this episode of the afternoon podcast. I hope we have more time to talk about the summit that's 229 00:32:37,720 --> 00:32:43,560 coming up in Ghana where we delve more into how the nuclear community can contribute to the 230 00:32:43,560 --> 00:32:50,840 Bitcoin mining community. So till then I hope you keep your ears glued and stay tuned to the 231 00:32:50,840 --> 00:32:58,360 afternoon podcast. Thank you so much Ryan until we talk next time. I appreciate it. Thanks for 232 00:32:58,360 --> 00:33:08,520 having me. Thank you so much.