Joel Bowman and Adam Sharp on Censorship and the Parallel Economy

“I actually find myself pretty optimistic just to see people out in the streets because realistically, this stuff has been going on for a while, like financial censorship, speech censorship. So just seeing people out in the streets is encouraging because ultimately, I don't think the people's will will be denied for too long.”

~ Adam Sharp, Start-up Investor and Editor at HIVE Blockchain Technologies

TRANSCRIPT

Joel Bowman:
Welcome to the Bonner Private Research Podcast. I'm your host, Joel Bowman. Each week, we bring you exclusive conversations with members of Bill Bonner's private research team, as well as some special guests will meet along the way. We're trying to connect the dots from high finance to lowly politics, private investments to public follies, from Wall Street to main street, at home and on the road. We're into sound money, personal freedom, classical books, and great wines, not always in that order. So join me and the rest of the Bonner Private Research team as we pack our bags and follow the money. Mate, so let me welcome you officially to the show because it's been a little while since you and I got together in person. But I've known you for what, 10 years now I feel like?

Adam Sharp:
Yeah.

Joel Bowman:
Right around there.

Adam Sharp:
It's been about that long, yeah.

Joel Bowman:
So you're an early investor, a crypto enthusiast. I know you're doing a lot of work with the gents over at HIVE Blockchain Technologies and early investing as well. But one of the, and we can get into all that, but one of the conversations I wanted to start off with you is something that's just been rattling around my head in the past few weeks, and that is what is going on with your friendly, mild-mannered neighbors to the North. This is instructive in multiple ways for an antipodean who's been watching what's happening in Australia over the past couple of years. But just for people who are catching up with this story or maybe they've had it just peripherally on their news feeds, but maybe they're paying attention to, I don't know, what's going on in the Ukraine or whatever else, do you want to just catch us up to speed with what's been going on in Canada, what the latest is?

Adam Sharp:
So most people are familiar with the basics of what's going on with the trucker convoys. But it is interesting, like I talked to my parents about it this weekend and they really didn't know what was going on because it's not really being reported in the mainstream. So you have to go to some social media platforms to get up on it. But basically lot of Canadians are really sick of the vaccine mandates and the mask mandates and the quarantine rules. So it's set off really a large protest in Ottawa, which then spread to become a blockade at several of the US-Canadian borders. And now there's been much protest in all major Canadian cities. So they really cracked down hard on the one in Ottawa, batons and mace and cracked some skulls and trampled some people with horses.

And it's surreal to watch because these people were totally peaceful protesters, they were cleaning up after themselves, crime actually went down in the city during this occupation. And Trudeau invoked these emergency powers that basically give him unlimited ability to freeze people's financial accounts, which they are doing. So anybody that is associated with the protest that they can identify, either they donated to the protest or they were on video, it's very Orwellian. They are using video to identify people, facial recognition, and then blocking their bank accounts. Then we've heard multiple stories of people who just went to the grocery store and all of a sudden they donated to the convoy, so their credit cards aren't working, their bank accounts are frozen. They're going to try to now take a bunch of the trucks that they towed away from downtown and sell them and keep the money.

Joel Bowman:
That just seems vindictive at that point. This isn't just an impounding and come along next week, pay a fine, and get your rig out. This is, I would guess for the vast majority of people who have their being taken from them, this is probably their main source of income, this is-

Adam Sharp:
Oh yeah. And probably most of them have a big loan out-

Joel Bowman:
And livelihood.

Adam Sharp:
Right?

Joel Bowman:
Right.

Adam Sharp:
And they probably owe a million dollars on a loan a lot of them. I don't know how much of big rig costs, but I'm guess it's not cheap. So I just keep being reminded of this great George Orwell quote, and he says, "All tyrannies rule through fraud and force. But once the fraud is exposed, they must rely exclusively on force." So I feel like that's where we are, at least, in Canada.

Joel Bowman:
It's like the veneer has been pulled back and now this is just the naked state just ruling through power and brute force.

Adam Sharp:
Yeah, exactly. Like that old Frank Zappa quote about the brick wall.

Joel Bowman:
Some Frank Zappa.

Adam Sharp:
Yeah, exactly. So it's interesting, I think it's been inevitable for a while. But I think it's going to be a hard period that we're going to have to go through. But I actually find myself pretty optimistic just to see people out in the streets because realistically, this stuff has been going on for a while, like financial censorship, speech censorship. So just seeing people out in the streets is encouraging because ultimately, I don't think the people's will will be denied for too long. We have the internet still, hopefully we will going forward. But it's nice to see people getting a little angry and a little upset because this stuff has been going on for a while, it just didn't affect us as directly.

Joel Bowman:
So I feel like we can, you touched on this from multiple angles there, but I feel like broadly we could break it up into a couple of main themes here. And for our American listeners/viewers/readers, however you're consuming this, it almost feels like there's a first amendment component of this and then something we, I don't know, we maybe call it a fourth amendment component. Where there's the censorship of free speech and very importantly, in the case of these demonstrations, the ability or the right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress. So this would be our first amendment point of attack there. And then it gets into something entirely different when you're talking about asset seizure. You sent me the story originally, but I think this started with the government leaning on a private company, this was GoFundMe I believe. It gets a little muddy for me after that, so what happened? They lent on GoFundMe, they backtracked after a little bit and said, "Actually, we're not just going to take the money, we're going to automatically refund it to you." But then things escalated.

Adam Sharp:
So there was over $10 million raised for the leaders of this trucker convoy. And it was going to pay for their gas and some other expenses, but mostly for of gas. GoFundMe basically shut down the raise after it had reached $10 million and they said, "We're not going to give it back." Or no, "You can ask for a refund. But if you don't ask for a refund, we're going to take that money and donate it to charities of our choosing." Now, they got a lot of pushback on that. So they reversed, they automatically refunded everybody. So a new fundraiser started on a Christian crowdfunding site called GiveSendGo. And GiveSendGo is basically only around because GoFundMe shuts down so many dissident and conservative type of fundraising events. They're basically very political in who they allow to fundraise on the site.

So GiveSendGo all of a sudden turns into a big, big business. They raised about I think over $8 million for the truckers. And they did get some of that money to them. Then the Canadian government stepped in, a lot of that money is frozen now in a US bank. They got some of it to the protestors, but a lot of it is still in limbo, so it's been frozen. But this is leading to a bigger thing that we've been talking about a little bit, where there's a potential here that we're going to see parallel economies develop. Like GiveSendGo is the fundraising platform for conservatives and dissidents and GoFundMe is the one for normies and whatever. So are we going to see that for social media? We're already starting to see it for social media. Are we going to see it for banking? Are we going to see it for payment processing? It's a big, big thing.

If you guys aren't aware of what's happening on social media with censorship, this has been going on for a long time. The first time I remember seeing blatant political censorship on Facebook was in 2007, it was during the GOP primaries. I saw Ron Paul talk and I was impressed. So I went to Facebook and I'm like, "Oh, let's join a Ron Paul group." And there were no Ron Paul groups. So I was like, "Well, that's strange." I guess I didn't think much more about it, but I never joined one. I could have been involved in the movement, I could have been spreading the word. But they had intentionally hidden them it turns out. And if you look it up, TechCrunch did some reporting on this. So this was 2007 and they were disabling the ability for people to create Ron Paul groups on social media. So this stuff has big, big impacts. The ability for a company like Google or Facebook or Twitter to control someone's thought process through little nudges and through censorship is tremendous, it's just really, really powerful.

Joel Bowman:
And we're not talking about tiny, little corner of the web type outfits here, we're talking about the main choke points of information, the main filters through which, I don't know what the percentage would be, but it would be upwards of 90% of internet traffic is driven through Google, through Twitter, through Facebook. These are the feeds that allow people the reality that we just take for granted when we go online. And as more and more of our life is played out online, whether it be the news you get or the commerce that you interact in, your brokerage account, your online banking, where you travel, where you stay, and probably in future at some credit score.

But let's go back to the truckers for just a second because I want to play the other side for a little bit. And this will circle around to what I've experienced just watching, from down here in Argentina, watching what's been happening in my birth country of Australia. And that's that there'll be a narrative that will say, "Hey, actually, these people they were out protesting, they were disturbing locals, and they were hampering trade across the border." I've seen a bit of that. I wanted just to get your take on this idea that these things have become so politicized now that rather than it being a case of, hey, it's the people the state and their oppressive, be it mandates or it could be a taxation policy, it could be some kind of draconian law, it's been turned into a divide and conquer situation, where you get all this mud slinging back and forth between people on the so-called right and people on the so-called left, whatever that even means today.

Such to the extent that looking at the diametrically opposed coverage of what's going on in Canada, I'm just reminded of that old poem which starts out, "First they came for the communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. And then they came or this other socialist and what have you." I think that people who are defending the encroachment of the state onto any civil liberties are going to maybe be unceremoniously reminded that actually they're going to guard their civil liberties at some point in the future, and maybe there won't be anyone left to stand up for them.

Adam Sharp:
Right, exactly. It's interesting how things have basically become... There's basically two or three or four separate realities and people believe in them steadfastly. And there's not a lot of... I don't think a lot of people are being convinced one way or the other on a lot of these issue. So it is interesting, it's disturbing, but it just appears to be where we're at.

Joel Bowman:
It seems, perhaps even to have been exacerbated this divide during the past couple of years. And I think part of maybe, and you can speak to this, your experience in the US would have been different to what we had down here in Argentina, but the atomization of society in general during these lockdowns and isolations and social distancing. I feel like a lot of the checks and balance that usually hold polite society together, when you gather around the water cooler at the workplace and maybe you flesh out a couple of ideas or Tony from accounting says something a bit wayward, but then his friends pull him into line and say, "Hey, that's a bit of a crackpot theory." Or whatever.

I feel like a lot of those checks and little social balances and etiquette have just completely been done away with. And now we congregate on Twitter where we just scream at each other. Everything has to be as divisive as it can possibly be and as incendiary as it can possibly be. So I feel like, even more so in the past couple of years we've had this, people have been digging their heels on both sides. It seems like we're farther from the center perhaps than we've been in a long time.

Adam Sharp:
It is interesting. One thing that I've noticed is that I look a lot of political and social polling, and Rasmussen Reports does some of the most interesting stuff. What their latest polls are showing is that independents are about 70% in line with conservatives and Democrats are becoming more on an island by themselves. So it is interesting to watch. I'm convinced that it's 99% based on the media that you consume, for most people. It's just like if they watch Rachel Maddow, they're angry about certain things if they watch Sean Hannity, they're mad about other things. But social media, despite all its flaws, despite all the censorship, it's priceless.

Just to be able to follow what's going on around the world and maintaining that place where people can share ideas freely, I think that's going to be an increasingly important thing going forward. With Twitter, Facebook, all these companies, they're all towing the same line, they all are follow orders basically from the government to sensor certain things. Like I sent you that article where Facebook had this algorithm, that was exposed, where it gave users a vaccine hesitancy score. So if you had a certain score that showed that you were vaccine hesitant, your comments would be hidden or downgraded or put below the fold. So my view is that stuff like this is happening really widely on most of the social networks, and people can sense it, right?

Joel Bowman:
Yeah.

Adam Sharp:
Back to polls for a second, I think something like 55% of Americans now believe that big tax sensor is based on political views. It's become widely accepted I think. Obviously some people don't accept it, but it's pretty clear to me that they are using their own personal political views to censor and steer the discussion. Ultimately, I think that's a really bad strategy. If you think about a company like Google or Facebook or Twitter, they've basically... I still use Twitter because it's just a great learning tool, right?

Joel Bowman:
Yeah.

Adam Sharp:
But something like 40% of their audience hates them now and is desperate for alternatives. They want places where they can speak freely and not be banned or shadow banned or whatever. It's just creating this huge opportunity for these alternative platforms. And that's an area that I've been focused on for a while. But right now it's just more relevant than ever, right?

Joel Bowman:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Adam Sharp:
People want truly, well, a lot of people, some people don't want free speech platforms, but a lot of people do.

Joel Bowman:
Free speech that they agree with is fine, it's just free speech that they don't agree with that they're unhappy about.

Adam Sharp:
Exactly. So I don't think that trend of big tech censoring stuff is going to reverse anytime soon. But it's created a really unique actually investment opportunity because these alternative platforms have an unfair advantage right now. They can really have free speech and people want that. So I think if Google and Facebook and Twitter and everybody hadn't started censoring people, it would have been really hard for any of these platforms to gain traction. But because they are cracking down on certain political views, it just hands these guys a huge gift. It's like, "Hey, Rumble..." So Rumble is a YouTube alternative. And I think they had 63 million monthly active users in Q3. And they never would have gotten that if YouTube hadn't started banning all this stuff. Because YouTube has banned basically anything that goes against the establishment in terms of COVID, even the war on terror to some extent. So people are finding these alternative outlets and the growth on them is really exploding.

Joel Bowman:
It does feel like if you build that they will come moment for a lot of these companies that are waiting in the wings and they're watching, you would have had to be really avoiding the news cycle to not hear Joe Rogan's name in the past month, let's say. So here's a guy who inks $100 million contract with Spotify. Wherever you fall on whether or not he should be able to say what he has to say or whether his guests should be able to say what they have to say, what is undeniable is that a large amount of people want to hear that. And he has an incredibly large audience, the kind that would make your average CNN anchor weep into his teacup.

So that audience are craving long-form interviews, they're craving a curious mind, investigative, even interrogative journalism, really getting into the weeds on certainly unpopular mainstream opinions. And it just demonstrates that there is a huge demand for that. So go through a couple or a few of the companies that you're looking at. Because I know you're a startup investor. I may have mentioned at the top of the show here, but since you and I have known one another, you've invested in over 125 startups, a dozen or so have grown to unicorn status at this point, which is pretty. So when you see this, as you say, potentially even a gift being handed to companies that are positioning themselves as free speech alternatives or maybe even existing in a parallel economy, what are the standouts, outfits that you think are doing a pretty good job or that are keeping an eye on?

Adam Sharp:
So in terms of public companies, there's really two that I consider credible, the first one is Rumble. So Rumble is a YouTube alternative. If you guys aren't aware, YouTube bands a lot of content, pretty much anything that's anti-establishment. If it catches on and gets too many views, YouTube will quickly delete it. So YouTube, also if you don't know, is one of the most lucrative businesses in the world, they apparently get over $63 a user per year. So that's pretty good, considering a lot of those people don't use the platform very often.

Joel Bowman:
They have a subscription model, is that through... I guess that would average out between advertisement and subscription, right?

Adam Sharp:
I think that's just free, that's just ad based content.

Joel Bowman:
Oh, wow. So that'll go even to another point where advertiser's are going to go after this. If we get a lot of eyeballs on Rumble, that can take off quickly. Anyway, I'm jumping in there.

Adam Sharp:
No, it's fine. So Rumble's an interesting one. It is a SPAC, and SPACs are weird for a few reasons. It's a fancy reverse merger kind of. So all SPACs start off trading at around $10, CFDI is $14 right now. It is a little expensive, I believe the market cap... It's tricky with these SPACs because if you look at Yahoo Finance or something, it'll tell you $400 million, but it hasn't merged with Rumble yet. So until it does, we won't know the full valuation. So it's more expensive than it looks. But I think they had, let's see, 63 no. So they grew monthly active users from Q3 2020 to Q3 2021 from 2 million to 36 million. So that's pretty explosive growth, 18 times in a year.

So they do have serious growth, they have a lot of good content. I watch stuff on Rumble, a lot of stuff that just isn't available on YouTube. And like I said, the company hasn't merged yet. It's worth watching, I might buy a little of it. So the big risk to Rumble is right now, they pretty much allow almost any controversial content. They allow stuff that's controversial that YouTube would never allow about COVID or about conspiratorial stuff. So right now, they are in the app store, they're in the Google and the Apple app stores. But the question is if they're going to get banned if they don't start censoring. Because the whole reason people use Rumble is because they don't censor like YouTube does, but that also puts Rumble at risk of being deplatformed from the app stores.

Joel Bowman:
And you would imagine that, especially if these are indeed the early days for Rumble, that they would be attracting, I would imagine, some of the more conspiratorial out there stuff that people would want to more easily point their finger to. So that may even give the app stores a little bit of cover to say, "Well this is exactly the speech we don't want. And so let's clamp down on that before it gets out of hand."

Adam Sharp:
Yeah, that's exactly it. So the people that get kicked off other platforms, they go to these new platforms. And sometimes they do have views that are offensive, it's going to happen. Sometimes they're going to be neo-Nazis, something like that. But just ignore them, you don't have to paint a whole platform because of the content that is on it. If it's a free speech platform, there's going to be some offensive stuff on it. I feel like we're adults and we can deal with that.

Joel Bowman:
One would hope.

Adam Sharp:
But some people don't agree. So Rumble is an interesting one. The other big one is Trump's social media platform, so this is called Truth Social. And it is publicly traded, but there's some warnings here. So the ticker is DWAC, and it's another SPAC company. So right now, it does have about a $20 billion market cap, and they just launched the app last night. So last night they launched the app just for Apple users. Apparently they have a huge wait list. I'm pretty sure if they can get a platform that works and is scalable and is fast, they're going to get some traction for sure. Because, like we said, people are really craving free speech, but there...

So right now, it does have about a $20 billion market cap, so that's pretty steep for a company with no revenue. It's also up from... So like all SPACs, it started off trading at about 10 bucks. And last I looked this morning, it was $90. And there's a lot of potential dilution there too because with SPACs, people who invest at that in the private round, they get warrants at $10. So there are a lot of warrants at $10. So there's more dilution in this thing than it looks like. But I do own some DWAC, I think it has potential to become the mother of all meme stocks.

Joel Bowman:
Mother of all meme stocks?

Adam Sharp:
Yeah. Think about how obsessed people were with GameStop just because it was fun. I don't know why exactly they were obsessed with GameStop. But I think that this thing could become... If people start using it and people like it, it could really run. I don't know that fundamentally it's a great buy, it's probably not. But it's interesting nonetheless just to watch.

Joel Bowman:
It seems also maybe this is, well, I would bet that this was something that was driving the GameStop, AMC type buyer, was a bit of a finger to the man in some way. This is like, "Hey, this is how we can swarm and leverage asymmetrically our..." It's a flash mob in some sense.

Adam Sharp:
That's exactly it. And what sticks it to the man more than supporting Trump's social media network?

Joel Bowman:
Very unpopular for the man.

Adam Sharp:
So you summed it up really well there, I think that's the reason that it could run, is just it's almost like Bitcoin a little bit. People buy Bitcoin because we think the current system is flawed, we don't love it. And a lot of people think that social media and big tech is super flawed. So I think people could use it. If it catches on with users, I think it could certainly run. But it is already expensive, so just be aware of that. It's up a lot and there's a lot of dilution that's not baked in yet. So just be aware of that. Really the more interesting opportunities though are private. Most of the up and incoming free speech platforms are still private. One of the ones that I invested in a while ago is gab.com. So Gab is a very free speech platform, it's controversial, of course, because it is a free speech platform. And it does attract people that have been banned from other sites.

But there's a lot of good people on Gab too and a lot of funny people and a lot of good news for conservatives and stuff. But that's an interesting one. I think they had about 90 million visits in January. So the interesting thing about Gab is how much censorship they've had to deal with. So in 2017, I believe their app was banned from the Google and Apple play stores simultaneously because of hate speech. And specifically it's because Gab doesn't believe that you can say, "We don't allow hate speech." Because it's always subjective. So they don't have a policy in there and basically they won't ban people that Google and Apple don't like. So Google and Apple, to play on their play stores, want it's like editorial control of these platforms. So that's the reason they got banned from the app stores basically. They were also banned from AWS and all the other major web hosts payment. They even got their domain banned from GoDaddy, which is crazy.

Joel Bowman:
Wow, that's too heavy...

Adam Sharp:
So a domain name banned. But you know what, the founder and CEO, Andrew Torba, is really an impressive guy. He's a Christian, he's a family guy, and he just keeps building. No matter what they throw at him, he built his own infrastructure to host, they built their own email system, they built their own marketplace now, and they're also building their own payment system now, which is interesting. And by the way, I think this whole concept of the parallel economy, I think it's Andrew the CEO of Gab who coined that term. So I do want to give him credit for that. But the other interesting thing about these private market investments is that a lot of them... No mainstream VC would probably touch Gab with a 10 foot pole. So there's this artificially cheap aspect to some of these plays too because they're a little bit too icky for mainstream investors or they're a little bit too-

Joel Bowman:
It's like a risk discount.

Adam Sharp:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, a risk discount, exactly. So Substack is the other interesting one, and you guys are on Substack.

Joel Bowman:
Indeed, yeah.

Adam Sharp:
And I just started the Substack, it's great. It's a really good service, they don't seem to censor stuff yet, and they're growing like crazy. I think this was a while ago, but they've just passed a million paying subscribers. So if you guys aren't familiar, well, everybody that's watching this is familiar with Substack, so I don't have to go into it, but it's another free speech platform. Interesting-

Joel Bowman:
And the founders have come out and been pretty... There was some rumbling, I think a couple of articles and maybe the Guardian and the usual suspects pointing fingers that, was it Chelsea Clinton retweeted something complaining of antivax or misinformation grifter. Of course, misinformation is anything that the establishment disagrees with, just by definition there. But I was very encouraged to see the founders of Substack basically come out and say, "Look, sunlight is the best disinfectant. So we're going to have ideas out there, if you don't like the idea, come up with a better idea, counter it, put up some information, and let's get to the truth of the matter as best as we can. But we're not going to get there by telling people that they just have to sit down and that it's not their turn to talk."

Adam Sharp:
Yeah, exactly.

Joel Bowman:
You mentioned Bitcoin before. And that being a similar kind of... I guess it had its genesis as a bit of a workaround to what many of us saw as a flawed central bank system. The whole end the Fed or audit the Fed crowd found a lot of appeal in a currency that didn't depend on the fiat whims of an elite central banker class. So I was thinking about this just before when we had... This was born in 2008 during the Cypress bailout. Then we had the whole Cypress bail in, which was a catalyzing event for Bitcoin to take another bull run.

I'm wondering, now we have this G7 country, which is essentially, and this is to take a full circle back to Canada, we have a G7 country which is confiscating the financial assets of its own citizens. But we've seen gold respond this time, we haven't seen Bitcoin responding. And there's still a lot of downward pressure in the market on cryptos in general. What do you make of that in light of Bitcoin's historical role as responding positively to these financially sensorial market conditions and why perhaps it hasn't done that so far this time?

Adam Sharp:
That's a great question. It almost reminds me of March of 2020 when every everything in the world was selling off. I was sitting there saying like, "Well, they're just going to print unbelievable amounts of money. Why is Bitcoin selling off?" But the market just hadn't come to that realization yet. And when you do get these forced sell offs, a lot of these leverage trade and hedge funds, they're just forced to sell their Bitcoin no matter what. So I think long term, it's going to be great for Bitcoin. I wrote an article about that in February of 2020. But it takes the market a little while to catch onto things that might seem obvious to you and me, I think. I think there also is concern because in Canada, they are forcing centralized crypto exchanges too to freeze people's accounts, freeze people's Bitcoin. So people are like, "Whoa. Oh, you can just freeze the Bitcoin too?" Which it is a problem.

Joel Bowman:
For sure.

Adam Sharp:
People can pull their Bitcoin off exchanges, they can trade with it amongst themselves. But in order to cash out, you do need that government approved exchange. So it's certainly a hiccup for Bitcoin. If Biden comes out and says something similar, there certainly are some near term risks to Bitcoin. But I can't imagine a more bullish overall fundamental environment. Money printing as far as the eye can see, I don't think they're going to be able to raise rates and normalize, that just seems like a fantasy to me. But I don't know, I'm just still incredibly bullish on Bitcoin. But yeah, it might get Rocky for a bit. We could go lower. What do you think?

Joel Bowman:
I'm more or less in agreement. I think that there are scenarios where I can see short term pain. I recall the situation during some pretty hectic selloffs in the past. And I don't think that we're necessarily there yet, just with regards to general market sentiment. A lot of people got in during that run up to 60 plus K. And for them, a 40% draw down isn't really gut wrenching by historical standards. So it does look like there are a few catalysts that could potentially send it a little lower.

But this goes back to the general theme, where I think all of these governmental tightening, whether it's with regards to free speech or assembly or seizure of financial assets or any restrictive behavior that the government engages in, which I can only imagine is going to get more intense, is going to be beneficial long term for any of these kinds of workarounds, provided that there are enough people who still value all of those things like free speech and people who want the right to be offended, the people who want to go on social media platforms or listen to videos or interviews or transact with people that might not necessarily be to everybody's liking. As long as people value that to some extent there'll be a huge demand for it. And I think in the long term, I'm hoping that demand for freedom is going to win out and pay off. So we'll have to see.

Adam Sharp:
Yeah, I agree.

Joel Bowman:
Well, Adam, we've probably gone a little over time already, and I'm very grateful for your time. But I did want to get to what you guys are doing over at HIVE. Give us an update on what's been happening there. I know it's been a pretty busy Q1 so far for you guys, so what's in the pipes?

Adam Sharp:
So if you guys don't know HIVE, HIVE is a leading cryptocurrency miner, we mine Bitcoin and Ethereum. And we do it, I think, in a really clever way. We basically locate our facilities right next to cheap and clean hydro power, so Canada, Iceland, Sweden. And we mine a lot of Ethereum in Bitcoin. I just started at the company last June. So it's been fascinating to learn more about the mining industry just because I've been around Bitcoin and I've been an owner for a while. But learning about how the sausage is made it's fascinating, it takes a lot of capital investment. Like all these... There's a bunch of big publicly traded miners now, and some of them are spending up to a billion dollars I think.

There's some serious capital being invested into the Bitcoin ecosystem. Like we're building a big campus or expanding a big campus up in new Brunwick, Canada. And it's so cool to see these purpose-built Bitcoin miners going up. And the timing of the China ban last year was really interesting because it was great for North American and other miners because all of us a sudden we have all these data centers and people want to get their equipment in there. The hash rate went down, mining became a lot more profitable. I think that the decentralization out of China, because what percentage of Bitcoin mining was in China? It was like 60% or something.

Joel Bowman:
A worrying percentage of eggs to have in one basket for sure.

Adam Sharp:
So it's spread out throughout the world, and I think that's a great thing. It's going to be interesting to see what happens. Like we're saying, both of us have been in Bitcoin for a long time and we don't know what's going to happen in the short term. But long term, I really don't think... I think this is the world that Bitcoin was created for. This is why Satoshi did it, inflation, bailouts, all these different things.

Joel Bowman:
Well, it's the world of chaos and uncertainty, where you don't know the future and you can't centrally plan everything from the top down. So you will have organic moves, whether they're geopolitically responsive to something like the China ban. Or whatever happens in the future with regards to, I don't know, you throw on some climate and energy restrictions in one particular jurisdiction and then all of a sudden crypto miners who were, I don't know, position next to a hydrotech all of a sudden become much more attractive. So these are market responses that we can't predict down the road. But that's what makes it fascinating and interesting and rewards the front row tickets to it, I think.

Yeah, absolutely. It's going to be fascinating to watch. Like you said, it's probably going to get worse before it gets better, but I am convinced that it is going to get better. People are, I know this is very cliche, but there is an awakening going on about overreach of government power and overreach of central bank power and all these different things. So that's not to be overlooked. Once the people... The first step towards change is recognition, and I think we're at the recognition stage right now. So hopefully change follows, and I think it will.

Joel Bowman:
All right. Adam, let's wrap it up there but get you back on shortly for some more chat. There's certainly no shortage of things going on in the world to hold our attention. Okay, Adam Sharp, thanks a lot, mate. Appreciate it

Adam Sharp:
Thanks, Joel. Bye.

Joel Bowman:
Cheers. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Bonner Private Research Podcast. You can find more conversations like this in the members only section of our website at bonnerprivateresearch.com. If you would like to contact us, please address compliments and complaints alike to podcast@bonnerprivateresearch.com. We look to hearing from you either way. Until next week.