Okay, so folks, we are going to do a walk-through through two Senate bills, which S219 and S119, they're both regarding policing. We don't actually have the bills yet. The Senate is still working on them, but we should have them either later today, they would be messaged over or tomorrow, but we thought it was important to at least get an understanding of them. And so we could hopefully move forward on them. And we also thought it'd be best if both committees could hear the testimony together as it would be most efficient. So I'm gonna start with Bryn. Good morning, Bryn. Morning committee. Can everybody hear me okay? Yeah, great. So Bryn, thank you. Thank you so much for your flexibility. I imagine you are in high demand today and have a long day, so I appreciate it. So folks, do you have S219 and S119 in front of you? Sorry, I should have asked that already or have access to it. Okay, great. And Bryn, I think probably the best thing to do would be if you could walk through both bills and then we'll have witnesses speak to both of them. I think it might be more efficient that way and you won't jump around as much. And a full committee member, certainly, I'm speaking to both committees. If you have questions for Bryn as she's going along, certainly raise your hands and we do have witnesses this morning and this afternoon. So, okay, thank you. Okay, good morning committees for the record. Bryn here from Legislative Council. Here to talk about S119 and S219. Does the committee have a preference on which bill I begin with? I think that S119 might be on the agenda first. I didn't know if there was a preferred order. Right, you're right that it is. How about S219? Because I think S219 might be a little bit more straightforward. Sure. Thanks. Okay, so you should have two documents for S219. There is a Senate Judiciary Amendment, the 10-page bill as it came out of Senate Judiciary. And then there's also a two-page individual amendment that was made by all five members of the committee that amends their amendment. So I'm gonna start with that two-page bill because that's actually the first section that will wind up being the first section of S219 as it comes to you. So if everybody has that, it's an instances of amendment and the first amendment adds the section A1 to the bill, which is a legislative intent section. So I'm just gonna keep going and hope that you all have that in front of you. So it's a two-part legislative intent section, the first part, subsection A references the work of the General Assembly over the last several years on addressing systemic racism and disproportionate use of force by law enforcement. And it specifically goes through several bills, Act 54 from 2000, many of these are gonna be familiar to these two committees, perhaps especially the DevOps Committee. So 2017, Act 54, that was the ARDAP bill that created the Racial Disparities Advisory Panel. 2018, Act 9, that was the act relating to racial equity and state government that created the position of the Executive Director of Racial Equity. 2013, Act 180, that is the act that relates to tasers, the use of tasers by law enforcement and the associated training requirements. 2016, Act 163, that is the act that required that the Law Enforcement Advisory Board create a model policy for the use of body cameras. 2017, Act 56, that is the professional regulation of law enforcement bill. And then also references S338, which doesn't have an active number yet, that's the Justice Reinvestment Bill. And then lastly, on the bottom of the page there, it references the fact that several committees continue to study these issues and specifically also working on requiring a model policy for the use of body cameras. And so in conclusion, this act represents just one step in the legislature's ongoing effort to address racial bias and increase accountability and policing. So that whole section is sort of designed to say this is a continuation of the legislature's work, not the culmination of its work. Subsection B says that it's the intent of the General Assembly that law enforcement agencies in Vermont use community policing strategies to develop collaborative partnerships between communities and law enforcement and adopt policies and practices that adopt or reflect a guardian mindset towards the citizens that law enforcement serves and to establish a culture of transparency and accountability that both promote public safety and foster public trust. And to that end, it's the intent of the General Assembly that law enforcement used the escalation strategies first prior to using force in every situation. So sorry about that. If you hold on one second, I can let the dog out, I'm sorry. It's fine, my dog is looking around saying, where's that coming from? So I do see that some of you are having difficulty finding this and actually, I'm sorry, I should have posted on our website. I found it on Senate Judiciary's website yesterday. And it's, let's see, I think it's document 1.2 under 219, but that's where I found it. Okay, so is it, does everyone has that document? Am I talking about documents that people don't have? Okay, great. On today for GovOps, too. It is on your, okay, great, thank you. Yeah, I don't see it on, I didn't see it on our website, but you can get it at Senate Judiciary. I would assume we're looking at draft 3.1. Two, well that's for 219, but the actual. 2.1. The actual intent language is separate. Oh, okay, gotcha. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Good morning. Morning. Sorry, I'm late. No worries. We're just starting with the walkthrough of 219 and Bryn is gonna do walkthroughs of both of the bills together, not as reflected on the agenda. So, okay, great. Go ahead, thank you, Bryn. Okay, so subsection B there really reflects some of the concepts that are incorporated in the 21st century policing report without specifically naming it. Just to be clear. And then the second instance of amendment there, I'm just strikes out some language in 219 that refers to a new crime. I think it will be easier if I explain that once we actually get to that section of 219. So I'm gonna end with that instances of amendment there and move on to 219 itself unless there's any questions. Yeah, actually, I see a hand and I have a question as well. Was there any discussion about whether or not to actually name the 21st century reporting this? No, that wasn't specifically discussed in committee. The desire of the committee was to make it clear that law enforcement, it was the intent of the General Assembly that law enforcement used de-escalation tactics prior to using force. And to flush that out, we went ahead and added some language that came from the 21st century policing report, but there wasn't this conversation about specifically naming it. Okay, thank you, that's helpful. And I folks, I do wanna let people know that I actually have spoken with Senator Sears and I very much appreciate this intent language because I think it's important for the body and for others to know that this really is a continuation of a larger conversation and a larger body of work and building on what we've done before and also looking forward. And I know that there are at least three bills in the Senate that are moving forward and certainly we have bills in the house. So I do appreciate seeing this language in here and let's sort of bookmark the idea of naming 21st century policing because I think it's something that is recognizable and understood by law enforcement and get some testimony on that. Okay, Martin, I see your hand. Yeah, Bryn, looking at subsection A, the 2016 act, number 163, an act relating to model state policy use of body cameras by law enforcement officers. I see that that act actually required a report proposed legislation by the end of December of 2016 and was anything ever done with the proposed legislation? Did those model policies that this act required, did they get put into effect? So there is a model policy, LEAB model policy on the use of body cameras but no further legislation resulted from that report. So model policy exists, but there's not a requirement currently that law enforcement agencies adopt that policy. Okay, well, I guess this is then a comment for folks just to perhaps mark this that it doesn't seem like we should put that one in there as something that we've accomplished when we haven't finished accomplishing that. I mean, it suggests that we have model policy that is required and that's not the case. So I would just flag that as a possible. I think it's questionable to put that in as one of the things that we've really accomplished. I would just add that I know that the Senate government operations committee is working on some language right now that may require that be a state required policy, that specific LEAB model policy. Yeah. I'm not seeing any other hands but I wanna make sure I'm not missing anybody. Anybody just jump on in if you do have a question for Bryn. Okay. Okay, great. Thank you. So I'm gonna move to S219. That's the amendment that came out of Senate Judiciary. It's the 10 page document that's draft 3.1. So letting you all get to that. The first couple of sections of this bill deal with law enforcement race data collection. Next thing, can I ask a real quick question? I just wanna get clarification on the amendment that we were looking at before. Is that draft number 2.1? Is that what you're looking at? Okay, thank you. So section one of S219 makes state grant funding to law enforcement agencies contingent on the secretary of administration, confirming that the law enforcement agency has complied with race data reporting requirements that are set forth in statute, at least six months prior to the secretary's review. So within the last six months, law enforcement agencies have to have complied with those race data reporting requirements in order to receive state grant funding. The section two is a related section. I'm on page two now that requires the secretary of administration to notify all law enforcement agencies about this new requirement that you set forth in section one by August 1st of this year. And it requires that the secretary let law enforcement agencies know that this requirement takes effect on January 1st of 2021. And beginning on that date, law enforcement receipt of state grant funding is going to be contingent on there having complied with the race data reporting requirements set out in statute. Any questions there? Can I move on to section three? Also about race data reporting. I'm sorry, I do see two hands up. I see representative Hooper and representative Burtitt. I have a question on section three. So I'll defer until then. Sorry. Thank you. And it's nice to hear another voice besides all of our song. Brent, as far as the reporting goes now, what are the, I don't know if their recommendations or requirements that police departments pass along this information. So we're going to look at that statute in the next section. Right now it is required that law enforcement report this gather certain information at every roadside stop and report that information to certain entities on an annual basis. Okay. So it is required by law currently. Okay, great. Thank you. So Brent, before you go into it on three, my concern or question I guess is when you get down to E1 between B and C, it almost seems like, you know, if the reason for the stop is a tail light and the type of search it was conducted, you kind of miss a step in there, maybe that would be valuable reporting and what the probable cause was for the actual stop. You make a kind of a jump from, I've got you on the side of the road to I'm in your trunk. And I'd kind of like to know why. Right, that has not dated that has historically been collected as far as I understand. I think that it may be the reason for the stop includes the probable cause that the law enforcement agency had or the reasonable suspicion, but I'm not sure. Specifically if we're talking about how people get into trouble, that's kind of one. Maybe somebody else on the committee has an opinion. Or also we will be hearing from DPS. So perhaps we could wait for our witnesses. Okay, I see Representative Harrison. Thank you, friend. If you go back to section one, it says the secretary shall approve grants only if they have complied with the race data reporting six months prior, but I thought you just said it was required annually. Does that potentially run into a problem where maybe they submitted the data seven months ago and now not available for the grants? They're still complying with the annual requirement. Right, so I think that the idea is that they have complied with those race data reporting requirements within the last six months, meaning they are up to date in terms of submitting that data annually so that it's not further out than one year. Does that make sense? Maybe it does, I'm just trying to get it through my head where there's a potential break. It seems to me that it should be the same period. Either it's one year and that's concurrent with the reporting requirement or it's six months and we change the reporting requirement to every six months. That may make it clearer if it's within the last year. I think the idea was that they have complied, meaning they have submitted the data on that annual basis within the last six months. So I think essentially it gives them a six month cushion. Okay, okay, I'll accept that, thank you. Thank you, I agree with you. Tom. Yeah, Bryn, are we gonna get into any information about how, well, it wouldn't be how well they're doing, but how the departments are doing as far as passing this information along? So that, I think that you're gonna hear from witnesses about that. That would have been my guess, but thank you. Okay, go ahead, thanks Bryn. So I'm gonna move on to section three. This is on page two. So this is the, this statute sets out what data collection law enforcement agencies need to do at roadside stops. And what the language here does at the bottom of page two is requires that roadside stop data that's collected to include use of physical force, data about the use of physical force. So it provides that whether physical force was employed or threatened in effectuating the stuff. And if so, what type of force was employed and whether that force resulted in serious bodily injury or death. And later on in this section, we're gonna talk about what physical force means. We've put some parameters around physical force. So I'll get there in a moment. I'm gonna turn to page three now. Excuse me, I do see Martin's hand is up. I think that's a quick question. What is effectuating the stop mean? Does that mean the whole course of the stop or only just the getting the card to pull over? What does that mean? There was testimony from law enforcement that they interpret that to mean carrying out the stop. So getting the card to pull over and what occurs after that. So I understand that it may be a bit clear for laypeople to say effectuating or during the stop that may make more sense from a layperson standpoint. But my understanding is that law enforcement understands that term to mean carrying out the stop in its totality. But that may be a question for you wanna confirm with law enforcement. Great, thank you. So page three, subsection two adds, you'll see that the executive director of racial equity is added to the stakeholders that have to work with law enforcement agencies on collecting uniform data, adopting uniform storage methods and ensuring that any data collected, it can be analyzed. Subsection three right below that requires that the executive director of racial equity receive the data in addition to the vendor that's chosen by the criminal justice training council for analyzing it. So it ensures that that individual is receiving this roadside stop data collected by law enforcement. Bottom of the page, line 20 required as a requirement that the data be posted in a manner in a manner that is user friendly. And then top of page four requires that the agency that's receiving this data from law enforcement agencies report it annually to the general assembly. And then in subdivision five there on the top of page four, you'll see that there are some parameters around what physical force means. And it refers to the force that's employed by a law enforcement officer to compel that person's compliance with the officer's instructions. And that includes compliance, contact controls, compliance techniques, defensive tactics and deadly force. And those are all I believe terms of art in the law enforcement world. And I can talk a little bit about what those mean. If the committee would like contact what all those terms mean. And before you do that, I do see two hands. I see Reps LeClaire and Nott. So Rob, go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. Bryn, I'm looking just to bounce back to, I guess it's page three, section two, where it talks about the Executive Director of the Racial Equity. My question here is they're talking about choosing a vendor. So is there not the database currently in place that we're using? Or are they looking to, I guess, buy a different one or get a different one to do different things? So that's existing law that talks about who the law enforcement agencies have to work with on. Well, I see. So the only difference is we're just adding the Executive Director of Racial Equity. Got you, sorry. Okay, thank you. Sure. Thank you. Let's see, Will. Thank you. My question is same page down a little bit, section four. The term user-friendly, how are we determining what qualifies as user-friendly? I'm just thinking it's a very big term. And for example, someone who's used to analyzing law enforcement data might find something much more user-friendly than, say, a community action group. So I'm just wondering how or when we define what qualifies as user-friendly. We don't. And I don't disagree that it's a term that could have multiple meanings. Thanks. Okay, great. Not seeing anybody else. Okay, go ahead. Thanks, Bryn. Sure. So I'm going back to page four. We're on that description of what physical force means at the top of the page. And it refers to these sort of terms of art. And so this was an addition that was made in the Senate to sort of describe with some specificity what physical force means. And this was at the request of the law enforcement agencies. So contact controls are defined by the Vermont State Police as techniques with little or no pain and other low-level physical contact. Compliance techniques refer to the use of tasers, aerosol spray, impact weapons, empty hand controls, empty hand body strikes or takedowns and police use of police canines. Defense tactics, defensive tactics are defined as impact weapon strikes, empty hand and defensive strikes. So that comes directly from law enforcement. I would suggest that if there are more specific questions about those types of techniques that that may be a question for law enforcement. Thank you, Bryn. Is it possible to have those definitions posted on our committee pages, please? Yes, I can forward, Mike, the testimony that was received by Mark Anderson, which is where those definitions came from. Thank you. Let's see. Tom, I, right? Yeah, yeah, I just, so Bryn, with these contact controls, compliance techniques, defensive tactics, all those already have definitions? Yeah, so those are terms of our use in law enforcement that have, I think, generally associated understandings about them. But not necessarily definitions in law? No, those were not specifically defined here. Okay, thank you. Okay, I'm gonna move on then to the next section, section four. We're now moving into a section that deals with prohibited restraints, types of restraints that are prohibited by this bill by law enforcement and the unprofessional conduct chapter. So, section four, we're in the criminal justice training council chapter of title 20 now, sub chapter two deals with unprofessional conduct. So you'll see here that the 24-01 category A conduct is left as is, no changes there. But if you turn to page five close to the bottom, we get now into category B conduct. This is the definition of category B conduct, gross professional misconduct. And the changes here, if you turn to page six, provide that there are two additional types of category B professional misconduct. The first is using, is law enforcement officer using a prohibited restraint on a person, and that is defined down at the bottom of the page. We'll get there in a moment. The second additional type of category B misconduct is failing if an officer fails to intervene when the officer witnesses another officer using a prohibited restraint or using excessive force. So those are two new types of category B misconduct for which the council can take disciplinary action on a law enforcement officer. Excuse me, not our see your hand is up. Yeah, thank you. I just have a quick question. When it comes to intervening, how is there any sort of definition of what intervention looks like when another officer is observing excessive force? Does it require, does it require that officer to stop the other one or does it require him or her to make a notification to the supervisor? Is there anything further on that? There's no, nothing further besides the word intervene. So I imagine that that would be open to interpretation by the council. Thank you. So I'm going to move on to that definition of prohibited restraint. You're going to see this definition a couple more times in the bill defines prohibited restraint as the use of any maneuver on a person that applies pressure to the neck, throat, windpipe or carotid artery that may prevent or hinder breathing, reduce intake of air or impede the flow of blood or oxygen to the brain. So I'm reading that definition because you're going to see it a few times since it is prohibited by the bill. Any questions there before I move on to 2407? Okay. So I'm going to move to page seven now top of the page. This is 2407 is an existing law that limits the criminal justice training council's ability to sanction an officer for a first offense of category B conduct. So the new language that you see there on line six through 10 basically carves out those two new category B misconducts from that limitation. So a first offense of use of a prohibited restraint or a first offense of a failure to intervene may be sanctioned by the council according to this new language. Martin. So to help me understand what 2407 really means, I mean, I went back and looked at the whole provision of misconduct. I'm just trying to understand when this would come into play. And I guess that requires me to understand really what is the council doing with these complaints? Because it seems to me that so long as the local law enforcement agency has done an appropriate investigation as defined here, what is the council's role? Do they, does it, it just wasn't clear to me. If there's, if, let's just say that there's a category B conduct is alleged or complained against somebody. How does the process play out and what is the council's role? So because this 2407 exists, this limitation on when the council can become involved. I think I'll just start there. My, and this is, again, this is a statute that the government operations committee is probably pretty familiar with and they may understand this. But my understanding is that law enforcement, this existing law was something that law enforcement lobbied for. And the argument was that we should let the law enforcement officer, law enforcement officers agency discipline that officer prior to having the council step in and impose any professional misconduct sanction. So let that first, that first instance of misconduct be handled by the law enforcement agency. Let it be a learning experience before it rises to the level of unprofessional conduct. So in the instance of a second offense when the council does step in, there's multiple different actions that the council can take to recommend an officer. And that includes a written warning. It could include everything from a written warning to a permanent de-certification of for the law enforcement officer. But there are things that could happen in between those two as well. So that, so the council, whatever the council imposes is in addition to whatever discipline the local agency is imposed. Is that correct? Yes, that is my understanding. So category B conduct in under existing law, second offensive category B conduct can result in, again, that myriad of sanctions from the council, a written warning, a suspension, a revocation of the law enforcement officer's certification with the option of recertification at the council's discretion, or a permanent revocation of that law enforcement officer's certification. All right, so I did have one other question. Did the Senate, I guess it's the way I'll put this question, did the Senate consider expanding the exception to this first offense, to the prohibited conduct or not, you know, to the category B conduct, excessive use of force? It seems like if you're gonna have this exception for a prohibited restraint and failing to intervene, excessive use of force seems to be kind of equivalent badness or even the biased enforcement. And was there any discussion of why just these two instead of expanding it to C and D, the excessive use of force or biased enforcement? There was some discussion about that. And it was decided that Senator White would deal with that in her committee in the Senate Government Operations Committee. So it's my understanding that that is an issue that that committee is working on right now. Okay. Yeah, there's, I don't know if it's in S-124, but that is a bill looking at that kind of conduct and I believe that House Government Operations will look at that as well. So as I said, these three bills really do go together and there's quite a bit of overlap. Okay, Representative Hooper. Sorry to be so questioning, but Bryn, I'm looking through this and a lot of this is based on first offense, second offense, where's the language that requires agencies to report to the training council when that first click has happened so that they know they're dealing with something that is a second offense as opposed to. You know, I've, this is not, Title 20 is not a title I work in with regularity. So I can't tell you off the top of my head where that language is, but I can find it and get back to the committee. You think it exists? I do, yes. If only Betsy Ann were here, she would know immediately and be able to answer you. I'm sorry. That's a frightening thing. And no apologies for questions. That's why we're here. So I appreciate your questions. Okay Bryn. Okay. So I'm going to move on to section five now. So this adds a new crime to Title 13 that's law enforcement use of prohibited restraints. We start out by defining law enforcement officer. And this is a pretty broad definition of law enforcement officer that's in the general provisions of the criminal justice training council chapter. It's a definition of law enforcement officer that we use quite regularly. Again, we see that definition of prohibited restraint. It's the same one that exists in the unprofessional conduct section. And then the serious bodily injury definition same as we use throughout Title 13. And the new crime provides that law enforcement officer acting in the officer's capacity as law enforcement who employs prohibited restraint on a person that causes serious bodily injury or death shall be imprisoned for not more than 20 years or find not more than $50,000 or both. And then you'll see subsection C there provides that nothing shall be construed to limit or restrict the availability of the justifiable homicide defense. And that subsection has been struck by Senate Judiciary in that instances of amendment that we looked at earlier. So that will no longer be there when you get S219 from the Senate. Brin, I actually see two hands. And also, Brin, will you be talking about the conversation around justifiable homicide that I think is happening? I'd be helpful too just to update us on that. So we've got Tom and Nutter. I would defer to Nutter first because if he's gonna say something around the same issue. Okay. Sure, thank you. Thank you. My question, at first I was glad to see that justifiable homicide section was in there. But now I'm learning that it's gone and I was wondering if there's any conversation, if you can enlighten us from the Senate's testimony as to why they decided to take out that section. Yes, sure thing. Committee, I'm going to need to take a brief five minute break after I answer this question if that's okay. I'm getting some questions from the Senate that need to be answered before they go on the floor. Absolutely. Thank you. So the conversation about the justifiable homicide defense was that statute, justifiable homicide, it's at 13 BSA 2305, if anyone wants to look at it, is a statute that comes from, I have the history of it, I believe it was enacted in the mid 1800s. It has quite a bit of language that needs updating and subsection C of that statute provides that essentially it provides a defense for law enforcement in their use of force to suppress riots or essentially to carry out any of their functions. And so there was a conversation in Senate judiciary about whether or not it made sense for that specific defense to exist in combination with this new crime because it may actually be considered that the legislature implied the repeal of that specific subsection because they are so diametrically opposed to each other. So Senate judiciary is planning on taking up the justifiable homicide statute on Thursday in addition to another statute that sort of sets forth that law enforcement may use force in order to carry out its functions. And so the idea was that by removing that reference, by removing the incorporating that statute by reference and subdivision C that law enforcement will still have all of the common law defenses available to them, the self defense, common law defense and also the justifiable homicide defense and subsections one and two which are essentially provide that if a law enforcement officer wounds or kills another person in defense of themself or a whole host of other individuals then they shall be guiltless or if a law enforcement officer, sorry. I'm sorry, which section is that in? That's in the 2305 subsection one. There are three subsections under 2305. The first. I thought you were quoting a different statute, but okay, thank you. Sorry. No. So essentially that's a long-winded way of saying that common law defenses are still available to a law enforcement officer under this new crime. But it was the decision of the Senate Judiciary Committee that that justifiable homicide statute needed some work before it would be incorporated by reference into the new crime. Thank you.


Hello everybody. Thanks for waiting and welcome to Markets Talks. I'm Ray, head of Markets at Cointelegraph. Here we discuss the latest in what's shaping the markets with valuable insights from industry traders, leaders in the industry, and also influencers. Today's guest is Magdalena Groanowska. Hey, Mags. How's it going? Hi, everyone. Super happy to be here. Thanks for coming on. So how have you been? What have you been up to lately? Well, it's the great white north up here in Canada. We're getting snowed in for the first time. But other than that, I spent an awesome time in LA at the Pacific Bitcoin Conference, super high signal event. Highly recommended to any other Bitcoiner. Also, just I've been advising PRTI. We have an awesome company that's an integrated miner that uses waste tires to power data centers like Bitcoin miners. So I'm sure we'll get into the market and miners a little bit, but I think it gives a little bit of a competitive edge if you have your own power source that you can get paid for the energy. Exactly. Yeah, I do want to explore that quite a bit. Now, if I recall correctly, you were involved in helping the Canadian government sort out the whole Quadriga CX thing, weren't you? Yeah, I'm still a bankruptcy inspector. So I was appointed by the Canadian Supreme Court to represent all effective users in the bankruptcy process. It's still an ongoing process, not unlike Mt. Gox, where the bankruptcy has yet to do a distribution. But we're getting close here in Canada. And I think we'll beat Mt. Gox. How many years has it been? So the exchange collapsed in 2018 and the bankruptcy process kicked off in 2019. So a little bit of time here. Yeah, would you say that the bankruptcy proceedings are kind of following the standard timeline or are things moving faster than what happened in like non-crypto? I think all bankruptcy proceedings tend to take longer than people want or expect. The crypto does add a certain complication because there's a lot of new ground that we have to break. They do try to follow local precedents. But in Canada, this was the first major bankruptcy collapse. And it does get complicated when you have multiple jurisdictions. And when funny business goes on, when there's actual theft, embezzlement, fraud happening, it does take a while to unravel when you're missing devices. And you can't access the secure devices as in Quadriga's case, that does add complexity. And I'm seeing the same thing happen in FTX, where there's bankruptcies, they're suing, countersuing. And a lot of commingling happening. So I'm seeing the same type of situations happen. And really the only winners there are the Bank of Sea trustee and the lawyer, because this will take a long time to unravel and a lot of fees will be spent to do that. Yeah, that's what I was getting at this whole recent FTX Alameda, BlockFi, Genesis. This scenario must be giving you some really strong flashbacks. Yeah, I think there's definite similarities. In some ways, I'm like, hmm, did Sam, you know, take a book out of Gerald Cotton's page, because there was commingling of funds in both cases, right? And that definitely makes it a challenge because you have to go in and find all the transactions and unravel that, right? There's seems to be a whole issue of properties being bought with funds that were, you know, potentially owed to credit or that are owed to creditors, you know, Alameda went a little 10x on Gerald, because Gerald bought about $10 million worth of property across Canada, whereas I think it was 130 million in the Bahamas of properties being bought. So, you know, I'm seeing the same type of situations arise and the process will be, I guess, pretty similar where you have to liquidate the assets, collect all the funds, and then distribute it to users. And the thing that really sucks about crypto bankruptcies is that the traditional way that distribution happens is you put it all into fiat value, right? And if they're going to be selling kind of at a bear market and holding on to this money for a long time, because it does take a while to get to distribution, they're basically selling at the lows to eventually distribute at the highs. And, you know, Quadriga actually, we got a little bit lucky because they sold close to the top, not at the top, but I think still for Bitcoin prices around maybe $40,000, so they did sell and put it into cash.  So people that want to buy in have to wait a really long time. That I didn't know. And, you know, I assume that you would just get equal amount of coins back or in a reduced amount of coins. So those that have been wrong of Quadriga don't have the option of saying I will take 10 Bitcoin as opposed to the dollar value of 10 Bitcoin. Yeah, so the challenge really comes into, you know, Mt. Gox is very different. Back then there was only Bitcoin and cash, right? Maybe you have different denominations of cash where you've got yen, you know, US dollars, etc. But it was really one coin. And the split to Bitcoin cash happened much later. Whereas FTX or Quadriga, you have people investing in Ethereum, Bitcoin. So if the exchange suffers a hack, suffers losses, you're not guaranteed that if I only had Bitcoin, and let's say you only had Ethereum, but they've got some other token, let's say Ripple or whatever on their books, you can't get the same amount of your token back. So they, you know, liquidate all into cash and then give you the equivalent cash value at the time of bankruptcy that you're owed. Okay, without making any accusations with the whole SBF and FTX thing and the Alameda thing and the funny money movements happening in Bahamas, do you see like a clear path of intent here? You know, I'm kind of disturbed because I watched the interview yesterday and it appears that Sam is, you know, still thinking I did nothing wrong. I didn't know and his defense seems to be, I didn't know. And that is a little bit disturbing. And the way the reception, the public reception that he's getting amongst the traditional world and traditional media is also extremely disappointing, which makes me question that maybe there is no clear path yet for him to be held liable. And I'm wondering what, you know, his lawyers, what kind of defense they're building. Our industry tends to have media. I remember when Rodrigo went down, you know, you read some of the comments on mainstream media and people are like, Oh, good, they lost money.   But other people think we're lucky and we don't deserve it. And oh, good, they lost some money because they were just yambling at the casino. So I think it will be interesting to see. I really hope he does get some sort of criminal charges applied to him. But it's really one of those cases where it gets really complicated to because, you know, he's not in the US. As soon as you start to do inter-jurisdictional law, it does get pretty complicated on who is the one who is putting in the enforcement. So fingers crossed, I don't know, Bohemian laws. But I'm hoping the fact that there was a lot of co-mingling happening and FTX US is involved that something does stick. Yeah, I hope so for the victims. One other question related to Sam and FTX. Where did it go? It just jumped out of my head. Maybe that's a sign to move on. Oh, so with Quedriga, there's some funds to, you know, like clawback and redistribute. That's great. With FTX, all the money left after they declared bankruptcy. So I mean, what's your view on that? There's very little left versus what is owed or what is lost. So where do we go from here to that? I would say there's, Quedriga was in a similar situation where 215 million were owed to creditors at the time of bankruptcy and only about 40 million was recovered. FTX definitely a lot smaller amount. There is still some assets, like the hack did not help. But there is still some assets like the property that can be sold and redistributed. But you're right. It's kind of a sad situation. And Quedriga, you know, we saw businesses fail. For example, small businesses that kept some of their crypto there that ran out of runway. For example, startups that I know. But I think FTX was on a much bigger scale and it did lead to collateral damage across the industry when it went down. Yeah, so let's talk about some other aspects of the crypto industry, specifically mining. The last time we spoke, we had a Bitcoin miners panel with you and Nick Hansen from Luxor and some other smart guys. And things were just starting to look a little bit rocky for Bitcoin and Bitcoin miners at that point. And oh, what a ways we've fallen since then, right? We have really fallen. And speaking of Luxor, I'm looking at the hash price, right? It's the expected value that of hashing power per day you're supposed to receive. And we're actually at the lowest times out of all of Bitcoin's history because in the past, the Bitcoin reward that was given was a lot higher with each consecutive having that Coinbase reward drops. And we're even worse off than, you remember that risk off event in 2020 when Bitcoin price fell to 4,000? Like we're lower than that. So it's really bad time to be a miner right now. Yeah. And you know, this is a question that's not in our question sheet.  With hash price being so low, and with electricity prices in the US being pretty high, and the same in EU, and most miners aren't using majority renewables, have we reached sort of like a survive or die crossroads for Bitcoin mining? I mean, what is the way forward in your view? You can turn off, sure, if you can wait that out. But I mean, what is the way forward? Mining's not profitable for most of these companies right now. It seems like they're going to bleed out. So how do we come back from this? How does the actual hash price and the, you know, the economics of Bitcoin mining recover? Because from what I understood, like cost of production follows, price follows cost of production. But that's not happening right now, right? So just kind of walk us through what your view is on that dynamic. Yeah. So if we look at prior halvings and just how, you know, the price falls, and there tends to be a delay usually between the amount of hash rate online across the whole industry. And there is that delay because it takes some time for miners to recognize that we need to shut off. And some, you know, some do fall under bankruptcy. And we are seeing bankruptcies occurring. We're seeing defaults on equipment, equipment that was financed, defaults on payback, paying back those loans. So there is a bit of delay because some miners, you know, might be willing to mine at a slight loss to get through, you know, one, two, three months. But at a certain point, you know, they'll recognize that it's not sustainable. I don't think it's the end of the industry, that said. I think there's a lot of innovative miners out there and miners that have managed their capital correctly, they've plugged in, sorry, they've found locations that are cost competitive, you know, for example, under four cents, under three cents that have the most efficient equipment, or they've been swapping two more efficient equipment over time. Some perhaps are, you know, finding sources where they get paid to mine, or they find alternative revenue streams. For example, we're seeing really cool innovation in Canada where there's a minor mint green, have a soft spot for it. They just put in a really cool project on Vancouver Island where they're heating the whiskey brewery. So they just put in a piece of equipment to heat that this week, and they get paid for the heat that they sell. So I think what we will see continue is those miners that kind of got in ahead of their skis, as this industry is saying, you know, they perhaps got a little bit of that FOMO of thinking, I need to get a site period, because last year, you know, my Bitcoin price was at 69,000. People just wanted to be plugged in. They bought, they found power contracts that perhaps, you know, weren't, that weren't fixed, and their energy costs now is a lot higher than they were expecting. They found sites that perhaps the regulatory environment wasn't as friendly. We're seeing, you know, moratoriums hit Canada now, not just New York in Canada, Quebec, Labrador, Alberta, is there not Alberta, Manitoba, the regulatory agencies are against mining at the moment. That said, some provinces are doing really great. Alberta just led a trade mission to Texas. So there is, you know, positive signs in the industry as well. But what I think is really neat that's happening is, you know, miners kind of like, I look at it as Darwin's finches, where these finches, you know, colonized various niches of the islands and found, you know, like some found that they could survive better if they specialized, right, if they specialized on nuts, or if they specialized on eating insects. And that's what we're seeing in mining. We're seeing these miners proliferate throughout the economy. Some are locating on farms, and, you know, perhaps heating greenhouses, and they're making it work there. Some, like, main green are, what they're doing, you know, is they're providing district heating. Some, such as PRTI, we're finding waste streams that are, that we're powering our miners with. So they're really proliferating and trying to find unique ways to make mining more economic. For example, there, you know, there are miners that are taking the, sorry, vented methane from landfills. And that's, that's a really cool synergy that's actually decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, right, their miners are partnering with the oil and gas industry. So, so I do think that mining will continue, just it'll look maybe a little bit different than these large scale miners, you know, like Riot, which is actually, you know, doing quite well. But it's a very competitive process to be a large scale miner. Whereas if you find that specific niche, you do find your competitive advantage in it, I think. Yeah, I was going to say that this evolution kind of looks like, you know, quote unquote, evolution looks like a pullback in comparison to all the expansion that we saw in the last one or two years. So I'm on the other side, just in media and in the public interested in Bitcoin, a retail investor, that's where most of us are, we don't have the insights of what's really going on with mining companies, how they're optimizing, like pivoting and finding ways to be more nimble, so on and so forth. So, you know, from my view, it looks like a cataclysm occurred and we have a retraction in industry. And the evolution of having smaller footprint doesn't look as profitable as the previous model. Therefore, there must be something wrong with the Bitcoin mining industry and can it survive through this? So I get what you're saying, all these little niche expansions are happening here and there, but then it just seems to be having a lesser impact on price and, you know, the public perception of the health of Bitcoin miners, but valuable insights nonetheless. Yeah, Bitcoin miners traditionally, you know, when the market's doing great, they tend to rip up a little bit higher than Bitcoin, but when the market's doing poorly, they do tend to drop down further than the price of Bitcoin in terms of the amount that the industry felt proportionally.  And the same thing happens with Bitcoin miners, right? Bitcoin miners, you know, last I checked during the peak, they were kind of trading around over $100 per telepter hash and now they're as low as $15 and I'm not sure how low it'll go, but, you know, S9s are being sold for scrap value during the last bear market and then during the bull market, they were sold, you know, something like $20, let's say, and then a peak maybe even as high as $900, right? What is pretty cool though is, you know, we are seeing hands being swapped. So there's going to be some additional auctions on equipment, which I do think will push prices a little bit lower. And so those ones, those miners that do have access to cheap power, and they could be those large-scale miners, that the miners are just going to swap hands to them, right? And they'll get the equipment at a song, but then also you will have other opportunistic miners that maybe are smaller scale, a little bit more distributed that are accessing mining.  And sure, you know, it's not economic to just plug in a miner in your home right now, but if you are using it for heat, it becomes a little bit of a better, you know, better economics and, you know, a lot of us, I think, are in Bitcoin because we see the value long-term. So even if you're mining at a bit of a loss, you're still mining and heating your house. Yeah. I know S19J pros are like $2,500 now or $3,000. From your view, are you seeing an exodus of mining out of the West, maybe into countries in Africa and perhaps back into like Eastern Europe? Yeah. So far I'm seeing it's at a small scale, you know, little villages setting up miners. And I love to see that to be honest. I don't, the amount of miners that, you know, that are coming out of these bankruptcies, out of these defaults, I still think dwarf what I am seeing slowly being adopted. I think people are still a little bit cautious to like, look at what happened with Kazakhstan, they increased the electricity pricing with bad regulatory, sorry, with regulatory changes. And, you know, same thing with Canada. So sure, maybe there's a bit of an exodus from one location and miners set up in Canada. And now we're I don't know if it's a concerted effort, but we're seeing province by province put in some limitations restrictions or moratoriums. And that's kind of disturbing because it really does cause that centralization, you know, where miners maybe want to set up more in Texas or favorable environments. And the more jurisdictions that close down, you know, the more concentrated it becomes, but at the same time, you know, the beauty of this industry is we are very mobile.  So that you can't take that piece of equipment somewhere, but a miner, he used to see four times migration in China a year. It's very easy to get up and go. What takes a little bit longer is obviously setting up the infrastructure, the structuring the PPAs, but it is still more mobile than any traditional industry. Right. So the current kind of bear market and volatility is good for decentralization of the Bitcoin network. And I was wondering about that exodus to say places in Africa and other places, like in the Middle East, because I know that these, these so-called former tier one machines are not as profitable here in the US and in Canada as they were before. So people are switching over to like the S 19 hydro, the S 19 XP, the new what's liner that's come out. And then that's liquidating like all that S 19 J's and pros and M M 30 plus plus and all that. So I mean, I can't use those in my house. My power rate's like 12 cents a kilowatt. So I'd be negative, right? So it would make sense to send those. I see that. It would make sense to like send them overseas. And I'm wondering if cash flush companies are considering like building infrastructure in places in Africa that have like two, three, four, five per kilowatt power. It really depends on their risk appetite. And also if they're publicly listed, I think, because it's a different kind of challenge that comes there. I mean, you really have to, you know, some of these countries operate in a scenario where bribes are commonplace, right? And how bad does it look if you're probably listed minor? And that's just the way that it works there. So you have to bribe this person, that person. It's just not a great news story, right? If you're a private miner, maybe it works a little bit better. And there's always the risk, right? That the the policy or regulatory risk that the current government in power, maybe there's a coup, who knows, but your miners no longer are your miners, right? And so it's a big risk because the infrastructure cost is still fairly significant. You're still spending millions of dollars, potentially depending on the size of your mind. So, you know, many aren't willing to take that risk. But for those that are already located in that country that understand the environment, operate in it, it really is an opportunity to get cheap equipment set up. So I think it depends on, you know, what you're used to and who your connections are. And yeah. But I mean, you look at other, for example, Bitfarms is setting up in Argentina, right? There are safer countries there. I don't know enough about Africa myself. But I think, you know, there's a sweet spot, right? Between regulatory certainty and political certainty and price. Okay, so to transition back to how did we get to such a precarious moment in the market for actual Bitcoin price, the whole crypto market and the mining industry, I want to run through some stuff real quick. In 2021, the crypto market was booming. BTC was like in that 40 to 70K region. Nobody thought we were going to retract back to 20,000 ever again. All the smartest people in the room were like, no, it's not happening. Even sub 40K was a backup scenario. Yeah, it didn't happen, right? Where's the blow off top? So crypto companies and BTC mining valuations were sky high. Handfuls of companies were looking to IPO. They were fundraising. Guys were taking out loans and fundraising like crazy BTC minor equipment was really valuable. And different lenders were like accepting equipment and Bitcoin itself as collateral. It seemed like the party would never stop, right? So fast forward to the present. And I think what we've learned is that some of these lenders in the centralized exchanges, they were simply doing re-hapothecation of client funds and of their own funds. And it seems to have had a really disastrous impact, perhaps like disproportionate impact on how miners created their models for like their capital expenditure, their operational costs, revenue, so on and so forth. So tell me about your views on minor valuation models, were they based on artificial data? And it's clear that many are struggling to manage their debt now. So what's your view on this? What role has, you know, leverage and re-hapothecation played in the current market breakdown? Sorry, I lost you there for a second. Yeah, you were frozen for a minute. So hey, to give summary, valuations were through the roof. Everyone was doing an IPO. People were pledging Bitcoin and their ASICs as collateral. Lenders were accepting that. Turns out lenders and centralized exchanges were just re-hypothecating funds, client funds and their own funds. Did that impact miners valuation models? Were they like planning their CAPEX and OPEX and revenues on artificial data? I think they were. And I think that, you know, even from six months ago, the world's changed quite a bit. Yes, price is an aspect of it. But even look at interest rates, right? They've jumped significantly. So financing, minor financing, I mean, they were always kind of around double digits. And now they're probably a lot higher. And the ability to access financing, like look at what happened, you know, basic prices fell so quickly that even if miners default, it's kind of like it sends ASIC prices into a further freefall with the options, with the amount of ASICs that are available for sale because of default. So I think any kind of lender is going to reconsider the, you know, the viability of taking ASICs as collateral or they will definitely structure it differently. So it does become a lot more challenging because no one wants to, a lender doesn't want to become a miner. Like that's not what they're in the business for. So I think access to capital is a little more challenging. And also from an equity perspective, if you're selling equity, you're not getting the same amount of money or value right now as during the peak, right? You have to sell a lot more of your equity for the same amount of dollars. And so it's just a bad time for expansion right now, unless you can find a good source of capital. So how far back does all of this contagion from FTX, Alameda, DCG, DCR, DCG, BlockFi, GMI, how far back does all this contagion and exchange collapses push us back from mass adoption and the kind of public validation of crypto that many crypto native companies have been yearning for? So I think the traditional public isn't as involved on Bitcoin Twitter or crypto Twitter. So they're just getting a peripheral view. So I don't think they're as aware of what's happening. But they are used to seeing Bitcoin die price fall significantly. And then every now and then it goes on top crazy. So I think it's not as significant. That said, every kind of iteration of scam is a lot bigger, right? Like MtGox in terms of dollar value, I think was only half a billion dollars at the time. Quadriga was 200 million big for Canada.  FTX, you know, we're starting to get into the billions. And so and more like millions of people that get affected versus, you know, under a hundred thousand versus a couple hundred thousand.   I am happy to see that people are starting to recognize Bitcoin potentially slightly different from crypto in general, right? And at the same time, like look at what's happening in the background, like we are building where like, and everyone's like, Oh, when are the institutions coming? Well, they're here a lot.  Like the the access that people have to buying crypto buying Bitcoin is significantly higher. And if you look at so Canada recently did a study Bank of Canada around Bitcoin adoption and, you know, half the people that came in came in during these years, right? And part of the reason is there are so many more ways to access Bitcoin, even through sort of like traditional channels, you know, people open up their well simple account, for example, traditionally used to buy stocks. And now they can not just buy ETFs, but they can actually buy, you know, Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever.  And so yes, sure, you know, we hear the bad stories and the news. But the fact that that it's easier than ever to kind of access that, you know, provide a little bit of an allocation, I don't think it's necessarily dead. Because, you know, we go through the cycle at the next bull run. Unfortunately, that's how people pile in. They see the price go up. And that's how they get interested. So it will happen again. But this time, there will be more channels and opportunities to access it. And hopefully, you know, people will consider a little bit more thoughtfully about how they store their Bitcoin and crypto, if they're not, you know, actively trading because of all these stories of BlockFi, Celsius going down, right? FTX. Exactly. So do you blame U.S. lawmakers and regulators for the current series of Ponzi schemes and collapses? I kind of hate that question, because it implies that crypto is not regulated. It is regulated. Maybe there isn't great certainty in the U.S., but definitely in Canada, we have a regulatory framework in place and in other countries, too. The issue isn't, is there, you know, sufficient regulation? It's really like, how do you stop bad actors? And you really can't, right? Like Bernie Madoff happened, there was a regulatory structure in place, right? It still happened. These things will happen. It will do bad actor things. It gets harder if you're a public company, for example, Coinbase, right? By the nature of them being an exchange that is publicly listed, extra rigmarole, you know, to go through regulatory hoops, to jump through controls that they have to do. So it's, so it's a lot more challenging for them to be a bad actor, but among private companies that operate in multiple countries, that operate in, you know, island states, it's a lot easier to, you know, there's less scrutiny, maybe from regulators in certain jurisdictions. So I think it really is a matter of trusting, well, don't trust Verify, as we say, but no, you know, making sure that you understand who you're putting your money with and are they regulated in terms of what level and what country. And, you know, really, like sometimes I think the big shock was a lot of people thought Sam was a standup guy. He did kind of all the right things and, you know, in terms of going around, you know, advocating for regulation. So I think there'll be even more scrutiny applied now to anyone after that. But I think like it still goes to show there are bad actors and you just have to make sure you figure out a way to avoid them. And no, no regulation is going to help that. Exactly. Scrutiny of character is important, but it's not really fully reflective or due diligence on that company. So like I know you're Canadian, but what would, in your experience, like what type of regulations do you think would best benefit crypto investors and create a more sustainable, robust market? I think there's ways to provide more transparency. For example, I know we talk about proof of reserves, but proof of reserves is not just, you know, here's a statement that shows all the balances in our wallets. You have to understand the liabilities because maybe you could have looked at FTX, but you didn't understand the loans that were happening, right? Collateralized loans, what the loans were to, they were against, you know, FTT token and so forth and this co-mingling between Alameda. So I think what, you know, Canada does have in place is a certain level of controls that regulations have to do, right, and reporting. And I think just requiring that a little bit more, I know it's kind of annoying because it costs more money for exchanges, but that's how you save, you know, retail is you require these kind of attestations, right, liabilities and assets, proof of reserves. You require certain controls to be implemented around and making sure there's nothing no co-mingling happening, for example, making sure there's no backdoors. I don't know if it's audits or whatnot. Like it's really challenging because the more regulatory requirements you put in, the harder it is for a new innovator to come in and launch an exchange that perhaps is a much better product because of all the legal fees that you have to pay to get it set up. But so there's definitely a balance that you can't, you know, kind of stimmy that regulation, but at the same time, you know, something needs to be in place. The other thing that I will say is certain exchanges, if you buy, let's say you go and buy Bitcoin and goes directly to your wallet, that's, you know, I think different levels of regulation for depending on how assets are treated. And if they're sent immediately to clients, I think there are ways to kind of make those things easier or less costly for a company to do. So I think definitely, you know, regulators have to look at specific ways that companies operate and assess the level of risk. And, you know, perhaps at some point, insurance companies will get a little bit more comfortable with providing insurance, you know, obviously making sure, you know, there's a difference between a hack happens versus the actual exchange CEO and executive staff are taking user money, right? So one thing maybe perhaps would be paid out, but the other wouldn't. But I'm hoping that at some point, you know, the insurance industry does get a little bit more comfortable. And maybe it's setting up, you know, an insurance fund that's kind of like, that's an agreement across the industry to create their own insurance fund. There are ways, you know, to kind of provide a little bit more certainty or safety. But I think ultimately really comes down to you, right? We still, you know, don't put more than you are willing to risk on an exchange. And we, you know, we saw a lot of people that still an FTX probably had a lot more than they were willing to lose. And then they did same thing with BlockFi, same thing with Celsius, right? Exactly. So this bear market has proven to be kind of like a massive reset. Is there a silver lining to it in your opinion? Some people would say that Bitcoin price or crypto price, this entry point is the silver lining. Fair answer. I think if you want to add to it, go ahead. I think like, yeah, you have to look at what's happening behind the scenes. And, you know, every bear market, the amount of development that has been undertaken to get to that point is, is, you know, 10x at least. The amount, like I said, the amount of payment rails, the amount of infrastructure, it's just, it's, it's warfare for years. So I think, you know, by the time we roll around next time, perhaps there's even more countries, you know, that have put in their reserves in Bitcoin, like we're seeing, you know, what I'm seeing is, because we are here in this industry and we see all this development and we see development on lightning or even DeFi, like just knowing that people continue to build is, is I think pretty impressive. And they're not really focused on price, right? Because they have this long-term view. And I think a lot of us are here because, you know, we feel strongly about the opportunities that we provide to people around the world. As the upcoming having play a role or a factor in your personal Bitcoin investment thesis. And for the companies that you advise when you're telling them like, hey, getting miners is a minimal cost for you.  And here's this magical having effect. Like, is it still relevant to you? Is it something that these companies you work with are intrigued by also? Or do you think we've moved beyond the significance of having? No, I think the having is still like, if you're an investor, it's a bit of a different scenario because we seem to still have those cycles every having, you know, in terms of price, you know, reaches a max and we reach a low. But when it comes to mining specifically, like the having is very important because there is a time after the having where your revenue basically drops in half, right? And if you are already kind of barely scraping by, you're not going to make it. You have to take that into account. And yes, you know, we have this beautiful system and Bitcoin where the difficulty adjusts. So as miners drop off because it becomes uneconomic, right? Those that are left are left standing. But I think, you know, even in bear markets, regarding of the having or not, if it's just, or if it's a bad time to mine, you have to make sure that you are using the most efficient equipment, right? That you have the cheapest cost energy. And the kind of power agreement that you have is not one that can surprise you if power prices go up, right? So I don't think, you know, having is the only thing. You have to be ready for bear markets and you have to be ready for havings. And the quicker you set up your infrastructure to means that you're mining more Bitcoin now before the having because it really starts to taper off as hash rate goes up towards that. Yeah. So what's your thesis like game theory wise? What is your how are you preparing post having for a word that's chopped in half, but production costs aren't going to change. They're going up now because you're getting less for spending more. So how is that not game over? Well, I think because of that, you know, that beautiful system where miners will drop off their, you know, some miners will stay in the game. I think just looking at PRTI, for example, I think the fact that there's if you have a system where you have optionality and what I mean by optionality is maybe you can mine Bitcoin, but maybe there's alternative ways for you to make revenue that you're not just dependent on Bitcoin only, right? So in PRTI situation, for example, where we get, we have an integrated energy system. And some of the other public miners have this too, right? They can sell their power. If it makes more sense to sell power to the grid where you can get paid for it instead of mining, especially during a bear market, that makes sense. For PRTI, we get paid for the waste that we take in and we generate electricity. But we also, you know, we can that electricity is generated from the oil that is produced in our reactors from the tires. There's also natural gas that's produced. There's also a carbon product that can be used kind of like coal and heated up. So if it makes more sense to sell the oil, because there's three gallons of oil for every tire generated during a bear market, then maybe or it makes sense to generate power and sell back to the grid that, you know, then by all means that is that optionality. Or perhaps it's not setting up a Bitcoin mining site. It's setting up a protein, you know, protein folding or high performance compute. So having optionality and different revenue streams is I think one kind of business model that works in whether a having or a bear market. And we're seeing that with other miners, miners that maybe are selling heat also have kind of this, you know, more flexible approach and opportunity to, you know, survive. So I think those miners that are looking at alternative revenue streams are better positioned for havings or for bear markets. That's brilliant. Thank you for sharing that in such detail, especially what PRTI does and your involvement with that. Last question. How are you weathering this bear market and what non financial advice, advice would you give to those who are invested or interested in crypto or Bitcoin to be specific because, you know, some people are like just don't invest in anything unless it is Bitcoin. But I mean, like, what are you doing during this bear market and what would you say to those that are interested in crypto or actively invested in it? I think bear markets are challenging for many reasons. I'm seeing a lot of layoffs too, right? So I think same thing having optionality for revenue streams as a person, right? If you have ways to to make money, whether it's consulting or so forth, to maybe take advantage of low prices, then by all means, I think, you know, bear markets are also opportunities, whether to build or to learn. And if people, you know, at the end of the day, we'll have bills to pay. And if you need to leave the industry, because the industry is experiencing a bad time, I think people have to like do what makes sense for you, ultimately, in terms of an investment perspective, I think one of the worst things you can do is sell at all time lows. If you don't expect it to buy back in, it's kind of like, you know, the person who maybe experiences a death, and then sells their house and just, you know, upsets all their life, right? You can't just make drastic decisions based on emotions. You have to take some time to figure it out. And like we've been here before, if this was the first time, you know, Bitcoin died, then that's another thing. But we've seen this happen before. It's part of the natural growth cycle.  One thing that I will say is that helped last bear market and same thing with this market, I don't actually tend to look at price daily or hourly, you know, check it maybe weekly, maybe monthly, if you're really stressed out, you probably have a little bit too much that you've put in. But also just don't look at price if it's causing you stress. I know it can be hard on Bitcoin Twitter, but definitely, you know, that is one way to get through this bear. Exactly. Of course, this isn't financial advice coming from mags. It's not financial advice coming from telegraph. These are just kind of our perspectives on how we weather these volatile markets. I see it as an opportunity and personally, I just keep stacking. That helps me reduce the FOMO to just make one purchase per week. You're bringing down that average cost. Yeah.  But I know that in the previous three bear markets, in two of them, I freaked out and I stopped buying and I ignored prices. And I was like, Oh my God, am I going to lose all my money? I just hope I break even and looking at a 10-year chart, in retrospect, I now realize that in those instances, in those troughs, those were the best times to be buying. So distribute the highs and buy the lows. Exactly. Remember that big drop to 4k? Does it really matter if you bought Bitcoin at 8k or 4k at the end of the day? Yeah, we're still at 16 and we went as high as 69. Zoom out. Exactly. Zoom out. Well, Mags, thanks for your time. I think the most valuable takeaway, aside from all the technical descriptions you kind of laid out on how the Bitcoin mining network and industry work and how people are pivoting and optimizing and just trying to set up multiple income streams in order to stay solvent and keep building. But I think the biggest takeaway is that the Bitcoin miners, sure, they're capitulating, they're selling their reserves, they're not profitable right now, many of the big ones. But behind the scenes, they're finding ways to optimize and to develop that versatility. And what's different this bear market than previous bear markets is the infrastructure's already been laid. The institutional investors have built train tracks, they've built roads, they're robust, they've built products. The only thing missing are the train cars, right? So I don't think that Fidelity or any of the BlackRock or any of these companies would spend hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to build out crypto-native infrastructure if they didn't have a long-term vision. So you've reminded us of that today. Well, thanks for having me on and I appreciate you picking my brain. Yeah, thanks. Thanks. I hope to talk to you in the future. You're welcome to come on anytime.  Shameless plug, but got to do it. All right, well, thank you for your time. Thank you, Mags. Talk to you later. Bye.


Julie, Jake, I know Jake Paul a little too big. I need somebody around my weed class.    But I ain't letting him set me up with somebody that's 200 and I'm 160.   Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, yeah, yeah. So Jake, blue, sturdy, me and you. And it's just like that.


Joe Biden hosted a virtual climate summit that was intended to symbolize the reassertion of American leadership on climate change after four years of Donald Trump. And in words at least, Biden's intervention was a world away from his predecessor. All of us, all of us, and particularly those of us who represent the world's largest economies, we have to step up. You know, those that do take action and make bold investments in their people and clean energy future will win the good jobs of tomorrow and make their economies more resilient and more competitive. So let's run that race, win more, win more sustainable future than we have now, overcome the existential crisis of our times. We know just how critically important that is because scientists tell us that this is the decisive decade. This is the decade we must make decisions that will avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis. That was Joe Biden, obviously sounding very, very different to Donald Trump. He's encouraging a race between the big emitters to reduce emissions, which, you know, if we're going to have geopolitical races, that's probably one of the better ones to have. On that front, in terms of competing as to who can reduce emissions first, Britain had a decent story to tell. So we'll see if they follow through on it, but they have committed to reduce emissions by 78% by 2035 level. That's compared to 1990 level, sorry. However, in his intervention, the Prime Minister's more memorable line from the event was not what the UK would do, but rather what he himself was not. It's vital for all of us to show that this is not all about some expensive politically correct green act of bunny-hugging or how do you want to put it? I'm not going to be bunny-hugging, but you know what I'm driving at, friends and colleagues. This is about growth and jobs, and I think the President was absolutely right to stress that. Now, many people on Twitter said that was a gaffe from Boris Johnson. I mean, I'm pretty sure that is exactly the kind of clip Boris Johnson quite likes to go out. He's trying to make a point to say, when I'm talking about green things, I'm not saying you have to consume less or live like a hippie. What I'm saying is let's have growth and green jobs. I think there was a plan there, and he likes people finding him funny. There you go. Let's go to probably, well, definitely a much more significant leader than Boris Johnson when it comes to fighting climate change. That's China's Xi Jinping. He used the occasion to reassert some pretty ambitious targets drawn up from Beijing. China will strive to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. China has committed to move from carbon peak to carbon neutrality in a much shorter time span than what might take many developed countries. So the point he's making there, obviously China, because it's developed much later than the Western countries, is not going to have as ambitious reductions by 2030 or 2035 as Britain or America. But he's saying, look, we're going to peak in 2030, and then we're going to go from the peak to net zero in 30 years, which would be very ambitious if they managed to pull it off. He also said they would be phasing down coal consumption in the five years from 2025. So that's a more immediate target. Obviously, the closer the target is, the easier it is to hold a politician to account for it. How these summits and negotiations and COP26 will work is by voluntary contribution commitments. I think I've used slightly the wrong term there, but essentially nationally determined contributions. That's what it is. My apologies. What this means is that each country basically gets to offer what their commitment will be, how much they will reduce their emissions by and by what date compared to what baseline level. I'm going to get you up where we currently stand with the different countries and regions in the world right now. This is from the FK. The European Union have said they will reduce their emissions by 55% by 2030. That's compared to the 1990 baseline. The UK compared to 1990 will reduce its emissions by 78% by 2035. The United States who compare their levels to 2005, they will halve their emissions by 2030. Canada, who use the same baseline as the US, they'll reduce theirs by 40% to 45% by 2030. Japan, who compare theirs to 2013, will reduce their emissions by 46% by 2030. China and India on here, that's even more complicated because this isn't them saying there's going to be a 65% reduction. They are going to have a 65% reduction per unit of GDP by 2030. They're basically saying by 2030, each unit of growth we have, each unit of economic production will be much greener, much efficient than it currently is. India, similar. They will make each unit of GDP emit 33% to 35% less carbon emissions. My apologies. That's all quite complicated. There's some quite, I suppose, important political reasons as to why they've all chosen different baselines, but that's what they've decided to do, makes my job slightly harder to discuss whether these pledges are enough. And if they're credible, which is probably most important, I'm joined by Laurie Laborn Langton. Now, let's imagine they follow the plan, they do it. How far do these pledges get us to averting climate catastrophe? They get us much closer. And I think we have to appreciate that a lot of progress has been made off the back of these targets having come through around the time of this summit. And it was good that America hosted that summit, particularly in comparison to the previous era, as you were saying. It's pushed countries to sign up to more stringent reductions like the UK, for example. There will be detailed analyses, mainly by scientists associated with the UN, that will look at precisely how much this has closed the emissions gap in the jargon between where we are and where we need to get to to keep temperatures down to a certain level. But it certainly takes us a bit closer. Whether it actually delivers is still a very big question and one that I'm sure many scientists will say, this is a good next step, but we're still nowhere near really closing that emissions gap. So we have a shot at ensuring that the temperature rise does not go above 1.5 over the course of the next decade or so. And again, sticking to their targets, so assuming they meet them, looking through that, which of those countries are you most impressed by? Who do you think is still lagging behind? Is Boris Johnson to correct or say that we've got the most ambitious target and therefore we're leading the way? Yeah, the UK target is very impressive. It would have been almost unimaginable even a few years ago to think that a governing Conservative Party with a large majority headed by Boris Johnson would sign up to targets that essentially lead to one of the greatest or demand one of the greatest changes in the economy that we've ever seen in this country. You know, there was a really interesting interview over the course of the week or a clip I saw on Twitter where Julia Hartley Brewer was pointing to an interview on Sky News with Fatima Ibrahim, who's the head of a group called Green New Deal UK, where she was being asked by the presenter how much the economy would have to change and the presenter was very much understanding that there would have to be huge changes to the economy. And Julia Hartley Brewer was saying, I want a minute. No one told us that this was going to happen. And that's baked into what the Conservatives are signing up to. So I think that's a really significant thing that we have to look at. We also have to admit that some of the big changes that China and India are promising are themselves very big steps compared to the international climate politics that we saw, particularly in the last decade, where the huge tensions between countries that were very wealthy and became wealthy because of the burning of fossil fuels over the last 200 to 250 years were very much pitted against those countries who were saying, rightly, we didn't really contribute to this problem. We want to develop like you guys have, but you're telling us that we can't. And that China and India are starting to sign up to more ambitious targets, particularly China with its net zero target. And we're sure that India will deliver one soon is a real significant change in the international politics that we're seeing. And then with the US as well, we had, you know, the head of ExxonMobil is the sector of state in America not too long ago. So it's very positive that these changes are happening. But again, they are still not probably the numbers need to be crunched properly. Anywhere near the kind of shift, well, they're not the kind of shift that we will need to try and minimize the risk of rising temperatures. Yeah, I mean, as I think one way of putting it, you know, maybe they could get us there, but the risk is still really, really high. If you want to avoid the risk of catastrophic climate change, it's going to have to be much more ambitious, eh? Yeah. And I think anyone who's looking at this and wants to lend a critical eye to to these this summit, the summits that will be happening across this year, there are three kind of tests that people need to be applying. One is around consumption. So our leaders talking in a way in which they recognize that the challenge isn't just swapping all the dirty stuff for clean stuff, which has an environmental cost, you know, we have to omit emissions at least at the moment to make all the clean stuff. And we'll also damage other parts of the environment and doing so. So can can can the things that we're signing up to the ways we're going to deliver on those targets ensure that we're not just able to swap the dirty for the clean, but also can answer the question of how we do that, in a way in which we're expecting countries to adopt a Western high consumption lifestyle across the world. And there's a massive question over whether we basically have the environmental budget to continue to push countries or countries to adopt that kind of high environmental impact consumption lifestyle. The second test is equity, so that countries are actually delivering on their targets in a way that involves communities and speaks to the huge global inequalities that we were alluding to earlier. And then the third and really crucial one that cuts across that is power. Our leaders talking about emissions reductions in the context of policies that will challenge the entrenched power of those interests that benefit from environmental destruction. And that's not just fossil fuel interest. It's also massive food producers that are cutting down the Amazon to feed hungry, based Western diets. So those are the three tests I think we need to have at the forefront of minds in what is a crucial year for environmental summits. When you look at those targets in the different countries involved, are there any of them where you think, look, if you're going to achieve that, you definitely cannot keep this policy that you currently have that you've made no indication that you're going to drop. What I'm supposed to take Britain as the obvious example, because that's where we are, for them to achieve that 78% target, what would they have to do to make you believe to be convinced that, yes, they're serious about this, they're going to do that? Not have basically committed to building a coal power plant in one part of the country. They talk a good game about making sure they contribute to international fairness when it comes to this. And the UK has commitments to making sure that it also supports countries around the world to phase out its emissions. We can't say that we're going to support countries around the world, and then at the same time cut our long-standing commitment to supporting those countries through overseas development assistance. So that's another one that is crucial, and has really scuppered the UK's claim to be a leader in convening things internationally this year, through this UN climate conference that we're doing at the end of the year. And then the third one I just just start there is that we have to have proper rules that ensure that banks aren't continuing to invest in fossil fuels. They cannot be voluntary agreements. We've had global banks, including ones based in the UK, investing trillions of dollars into fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement in 2015 was signed. And this government isn't serious unless it actually is developing and implementing strong, enforceable rules that stop those companies from behaving in that way. I listened to Joe Biden's speech, which I mean, it wasn't delivered perfectly because, he's not the best for the teleprompter. He's an older guy. He's 78, 79. It's tough. He's not the top of his game. 10 years ago, he was obviously a much better public speaker. But the words, what he was actually saying, the substance of the speech, which of course is what matters, was really impressive, I thought. And if you listen to that, which I would implore people to listen to, I think they played it on the world at one, quite a big excerpt of it yesterday. So listen to that on BBC Sounds. And I thought, you know what? I am on the Malaki Express. I am on the Biden Malaki freight train, right? Direct decarbonisation by 2050. It was really, really impressive. But I think underneath it all was the fact that China was looking to decarbonise just 10 years after the US. If that happens, it's such an astonishing achievement. Just absolutely astonishing. I think the big thing is, and people say, you know, technological fix, the reality is this won't happen if certain technologies aren't online. Can we produce steel, concrete, glass without creating massive CO2 emissions? If there are technologies that can do that before 2050, these aren't just commitments. But if for whatever reason, these technologies don't come online, it's going to be very, very hard to do. You'd apply that also to potentially cellular agriculture, you know, meet with our animals. There's a few other things too, but I think those are the big ones. Built environment, of course aviation, but aviation is only 3% of global CO2 emissions. The built environment and I think food, if we can decarbonise those, I think we can be optimistic. And the reality is as well, Michael, CO2 emissions per head in Europe, Britain, North America are already below their peak levels. Now, some people say that doesn't include, you know, aviation and travelling abroad. Well, okay, fine, we should be flying less. But regardless, that's still good. All the fact that, you know, they're consuming manufactured goods from elsewhere, which are produced generally in China, which is why China wanted that stipulation of, you know, per unit of GDP. That's also accurate. But it's pretty clear, I think that CO2 emission per person isn't going up in the global North. If you look at the US, you look at the EU, you look at UK, in the UK again, under a Tory government, 99% of all UK solar capacity has been installed since 2010. Now, it's not because the Tories are wonderful, mostly that's off the back of new labour policy and Gordon Brown subsidies, but it's because of the falling price of solar generation. And at some point in this decade by the mid 2020s, electric cars on price performance are better than petrol.  So I think, you know, the technology is driving a lot of it. The question is how quickly can we get things done to what extent is their political will. And until the last year, I would have said there isn't the political will, you know, we're going warp speed to hell, right, four degrees plus. I'm a little bit less sure of that, you know, I think, I think it's very possible we could decarbonize by 2060. And we actually have a huge amount of money invested into sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere, you know, building, you know, these wild habitats, which we're going to have to have across the planet to enhance biodiversity and so on. So it's not guaranteed, it's not priced in, but that we are seeing action now, I think partly because of COVID, right? I think people, you know, policymakers and politicians know the connections between biodiversity loss and, you know, do not expel over like COVID-19, they don't want that to keep on happening. That was very much a result of, you know, that's a climate change issue, leading to what has been the biggest pandemic since 1919. I think that's kind of kickstarted something, but it's been going for a couple of years now. I think it's hugely positive news. I just don't think we should sit back on our, on our backsides or rest on our laurels proverbially. I think we need to push forward because ultimately, you know, you can't expect politicians to keep to these ambitions, but like Laurie said, you know, the idea that Boris Johnson of all people would be leading on this five years ago would have been impossible to imagine.