Curtis Doran, treasurer of the Lab West Chamber of Commerce and a veteran of both traditional and crypto mining, leveraged Labrador’s plentiful low cost hydro power to expand Block Lab from a single garage rig in 2016 into Newfoundland and Labrador’s largest 14 MW Bitcoin mining operation. He later launched Hestia, which captures the miners’ waste heat to warm local homes and businesses, an especially valuable benefit in the province’s harsh climate where electric heat is common. Despite financing hurdles, custom equipment demands, the lingering stigma of failed predecessor Great North Data, and provincial rules that favor exporting energy, Doran argues his ventures create jobs, boost community development, and provide a flexible grid friendly electrical load that should influence future energy policy.
In this episode, Labrador native Curtis Doran explains how he grew a lone garage miner into a 14 megawatt Bitcoin powerhouse, turned its waste heat into a lifeline for homes and businesses in Canada’s frozen northeast, and sets the stage before we dive into the detailed timestamps below.
00:00:00 - Introduction: Curtis Dorin and the Digital Gold Podcast
00:00:58 - Labrador's Unique Position for Bitcoin Mining
00:06:21 - Block Lab's Journey from Garage to 14 Megawatts
00:10:39 - The Quebec Power Deal and Policy Hurdles
00:21:07 - Hestia: Bitcoin Mining for Heat
00:30:57 - Hestia's Market and Demand Response Capabilities
00:46:27 - Certifications, Patents, and EV Charging Integration
00:50:09 - Bitcoin as a "Pioneer Species" and Grid Benefits
00:56:07 - Future Outlook and Satoshi's Vision
00:58:53 - Conclusion and Hestia Heat Call to Action
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JP: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Digital Gold Podcast. Today I'm joined by Curtis Dorin, treasurer of the Lab, west Chamber of Commerce, CEO of Block Lab, and Hestia and co-founder of Blake Big Land Networks, a veteran of both crypto and traditional mining. Curtis merges blockchain innovation with resource industries, leveraging over 20 years of experience in operations, finance, and community development. Memorial University graduate. He's driving regional economic growth through decentralized tech and connectivity, proving Bitcoin mining's potential to empower local economies. Curtis, welcome. Let's dive in to Digital Gold and see how it meets the real-world impact in Canada.
Curtis: Thank you. Glad to be here.
JP: So let's talk about Labrador, because most people wouldn't be able to put it on a map and even point at it, but you happen to find one of the best Bitcoin mining sites, arguably in the United States, in the North America. How did you end up there and what makes [00:01:00] Labrador so special?
Curtis: So luckily, born and raised in West Labrador is basically the entire eastern seaboard of Canada, north Atlantic. So I happen to grow up here. Traditionally an iron mining community. It's, basically the largest iron ore producer in Canada, along with a couple, other mines, that are also iron mining. So, the entire industry, the entire community was built around the iron mines, in the late sixties and seventies. Grew up here. Dad was a welder basically in the mines, and, started my life actually in the iron mines as a, an iron mine. Went to university, finished with a business degree, came home and got a job driving haulage trucks, which, completely opposite direction from what, my university had given me. But, luckily it, showed me traditional iron mining and really where it comes down to Bitcoin mining. The bigger the infrastructure, the bigger the input, the bigger the output. The proof of work in, in iron mining is building and digging and producing and proof of work in Bitcoin is very, very similar. The bigger the infrastructure, the bigger the [00:02:00] payload. So, that's basically where I started, operating haulage trucks, running drills. 20 15, 16, they automated my drill. So, I ended up sitting in a pickup truck watching the drill operate while a couple of my friends started or they actually worked for the local nonprofit internet service provider.
So, we'd sit around talking about how they. If the nonprofit wasn't doing what it could do, they were on, cable at that point. A lot of ideas for fiber to the home. We decided to start a company. I was basically sitting on the drill, on the truck, watching the drill, not really doing anything. Cell phone booster on my truck started this business, big line networks where we would, look to do internet service, network communications, et cetera, with an intent to put internet in the community of Churchill Falls.
So Churchill Falls is on the map for the world, basically for the 5,000-megawatt hydro generating station that was built in the seventies. Much of the power goes to Quebec, but since the seventies, Labrador West, has been powered by electricity. All the heat, is electricity and [00:03:00] basically renewable energy and all the carbon footprint from the project is pretty much consumed at this point. So sitting there started this internet company and we were trying to figure out how somebody gives us. Money to put fiber to the home. In this Church of Falls community, young guys don't really have much credit or history and we're sitting around my garage one day 2016 and one of the guys like, why don't we mind Bitcoin to raise money to put internet in Church of Falls? I'm like, what's that? And basically, the rabbit hole opened. We started with one miner on a shelf in my garage and basically spun on from there. We applied for power once we realized, the very low rate of power. so, we started applying, looking for places where equipment, where now Newfoundland Labor's largest Bitcoin miner, about 14 megawatts built over there past, , seven years or so. Eventually did get an RFP to put fiber in Churchill. Churchill Falls launched Big Link internet, which we're a fiber ISP now as well. So didn't actually have to use the Bitcoin money for [00:04:00] that, but it started down that road and then Block Lab actually spun out from Big Land Networks and became its own entity and started getting a lot of traction here with this renewable energy, coal climate that we're in. So, you got the first minor plugin. What year was that in the, it was 2016, it was a batch two s nine, we basically all threw in a thousand bucks each or something, and bought this mine and put it on a shoe rack in the corner of my garage. And, a week in we're like, why did we buy s nines when we could buy 10 s sevens for the same price? Very little power price.
The Canadian 3.10 cents for residential, somewhere around, I think 2.2 us. So even residential power is very inexpensive here. So , we realized very quickly that waiting for Bitmain to ship a new batch of high demand miners versus going on Amazon somewhere and buying 10 s sevens.
Get 40 or 50 Tara hash for the 13 or 11. I think at that point you would've gotten so realized very quickly that we didn't [00:05:00] need to be cutting edge with our power prices so cheap. So bought 10 s sevens next, and then eventually took over an old grocery store, put 150 s sevens in just basically the chiller power that was in this old grocery store that basically got us going.
Eventually, we swapped those in rat knots and, started applying for bigger power.
JP: And that's one of the biggest things about Bitcoin mining that I see outside investors don't really understand is, let's say the power cost, how that scales and how it allows you to run these machines for a much longer lifespan. And to your point, I can get s sevens faster. I can get them so cheap back then.
And you know, the example would be maybe s nineteens today because no one, people aren't really making much money off of it, but having to send power is. Almost twice as good as having like 4 cent power, then like four times as good as 8 cent power. But you don't really think about that when you're getting into the industry.
You're like, oh, I'm gonna try running at six and a half [00:06:00] cents and that can still be a very, very profitable business. But you guys have really found the gold in Labrador port per se, out of these iron mines and they're like, we have so much cheap electricity, and not so much of it, but just cheap electricity in general, which gives you a much longer lifespan lets you run a very different business where your capital allocation strategy is to just tear hashes less efficiency.
So tell me about that journey of building from the grocery store into the 14 megawatts today and highlight maybe the biggest kind of operational challenge you guys faced and how hard it is to run a 24 7 operation in a small town. That is, is more remote than, let's say a big city like Quebec or outside of New York City or.
Curtis: Absolutely. Yeah. So, it’s, we like to joke that, if we take no for an answer, we would've been gone long ago. We started basically in that garage. We outgrew the garage pretty quickly, got that grocery store and [00:07:00] realized that there's power here in Labrador. Not a ton of available power because the contract with Quebec to export the power, is a long, drawn to contract that we could talk about for hours.
But, realized very quickly that residential power at 3 cents, Canadian commercial at 2.3, industrial at 1.6. Rarely do you see these big jumps lower in power from bigger consumption. So we actually applied in 2017 for 20 megawatts in Labrador West province. Premier came out and basically said, yes, they're getting 20 megawatts hydro.
And the hydro utility came back and said, we don't have that available. We need to study what we're we've got for power. We can give you 7.75. So, okay, off to the races, we've got 7.75 megawatts, cheapest power in the world. We're ready to go. Banks don't like Bitcoin at that point. They still don't finance answers when, again, back to the thing where we're young and don't have a lot of history, really hard to finance these things even though we're soaked in it and really believing, that we can do it.
But [00:08:00] one of those things where you've gotta build, you've gotta order transformers. We have a 46,000-volt standard. Energy grid here in Labrador West, which was built by the mines in the sixties, seventies I guess they got it on sale or something at 46 kv. It's not a very common voltage. So next thing our engineer is like, you have to order custom transformers.
There's nobody that makes these. You need to go find somebody that will make a 46 KV transformer 50-week lead time, et cetera. So, , all off to the races, and then hurry up and wait. You sit there and wait for your equipment. Even at that point there wasn't a lot of pod manufacturers and so on.
So, we bought one pod, built our own after that because Labradors climate is challenging. We get snow in late October. We have it until just last week. The snow melted here in May, so it's, cold climate, very windy. So, we ended up building our own pods for that site. During that we ended up with a somebody reached out to us in 2019.
There was a local group here that had power. [00:09:00] They were building. They went outta business famously great North Data, if I'm sure your listeners have probably heard of them. They had everything ahead of them, and we were one minor on a shoe rack in my garage when they started building, but they kind of pre-sold their next site to pay for one site, and they ended up getting themselves pretty backwards on, on their infrastructure.
We had somebody call one day we're sitting there waiting on our transformers that are gonna be a 50-week lead time. This guy calls and says, we're sick of our tenants. We've got a site in Goose Bay, Labrador, which is in Labrador East, six megawatts. We're sick of these guys. We wanted somebody to come make an offer and we know you guys are, in Labrador West building.
So, took a drive. My wife's actually from Goose Bay on the other side of Labrador, so took a drive over and walked into this site. Transformers are sitting there. The owners are ready to make a deal, so. Through the jigs and the reels. We ended up making that deal with them. The site was ready to go.
Basically. We had to finish the connections and finish the actual mining infrastructure, but, , managed to get it online. We took over in 2019 and had it online early 2020, which [00:10:00] really saved us because waiting those that lead time for your transformers, you're sitting around spinning, burning capital waiting to, to be able to build. So, luckily, , managed to get that site and build it up, and it's, been running now since 2020. So six megawatts on basically the cheapest power in the world that I know of.
JP: Love that. cause it truly is the cheapest power in the world. Now, let's zoom out, and just talk through why it's the cheapest power in the North America and also why it isn't a hundred-megawatt public mining companies there. So, there's two, I think, very unique, opportunities that came about. Cause you are a local and because of your ability to navigate local politics. So, talk more about how important that is as a minor, but then also what gives this area the cheap energy.
Curtis: Yeah, so basically the RO mining, industry, basically in the sixties before they had roads, into Labrador, they were [00:11:00] flying infrastructure in to be able to build these mines. So Twin Falls generating plant is a 200-megawatt generating plant that the r and o company of Canada built in the late fifties, to power their site in Labrador West when Newfoundland Labrador Hydro started this deal with Quebec to build the Churchill Falls generating station.
About 5,500 megawatts built. Completely with no roads into the region. , They dug through a mountain. The actual spillways and turbines are all built inside of a mountain. Made a hundred plus land Earth dikes. No
JP: mean that number of megawatts, why do they choose? That's so much. Why would they choose that? Was there like a bigger vision that you're aware of?
Curtis: No. So it was basically the Churchill Falls was a waterfall on the Churchill River. So very early on, in, Explorer's history they discovered that the potential water, if they were to dam off, make a reservoir, they'd had this, power. So, Quebec really needed power, even then.
They still do now make a deal with Newfoundland Labrador to build up this [00:12:00] site. British Newfoundland Co is what the company was originally. Winston Churchill was involved in this development basically. And during the middle or so of the build. The, a plane crash happened.
The plane was coming, into Labrador West, crashed with the entire C-suite of Brico on board. Thought the mine lights of IIOC were the lights of the runway crashed into the mountain, completely wiped at the C-suite, of Brico, Quebec took advantage of that opportunity, basically not to comment on whether it was good or bad, but they ended up getting a very, very sweetheart deal to finish the project for Newfoundland where there was no escalator clauses.
They ended up paying 0.02 of a cent, so 0 cents, per kilowatt hour up until 2041. Basically, what this deal ended up with, about 5,000 megawatts of the 5,500 megawatts. So, over the last 40, 50 years, Newfoundland has made into the hundreds of millions. Quebec has made multiple billions on this project.
So the power was basically [00:13:00] required for the iron mine development as well as exporting to Quebec. So. That's why they built it. And when we were sitting there realizing, look, we've got tons of power here in our backyard. We can use this to your question. Many companies did come in here. There was at 1,800 megawatts of applications, for power, for cryptocurrency miners, , early, say 2020 ish.
2021. We put in, we had heard talking to the executives and so on at hydro, that thousands of megawatts applied. So we applied for 1100 megawatts. We're like, we're gonna, if somebody else is gonna have it, we're gonna have it as well. So put it in. That was around 2020, they came back and said, pay a thousand dollars per megawatt, if you're serious.
The 8,000 went to 1800, 600 of that was us. We borrowed the money, we put the money on file, told 'em, yep, we want it. Study it, we'll fund it. And 12 months later, the Newfoundland Lavender government put an order in council in banning cryptocurrency from foreign power. Gave every penny back. Didn't study it basically for the year like they had agreed to, because [00:14:00] I guess we called their bluff and that just, they're contractually obligated to sell power to Quebec. So as much as we see, there's 5,500 megawatts at that point, 800 more came out with Muskrat Falls a couple years ago. There's 2200 more in G Island to be built. Now. Over the next little while, Churchill Falls has an upgrade project to add another 1100 megawatts.
Plus, they've replaced their turbines, which adds another thousand, about 10,000 megawatts of energy, hydro energy on this river and the answer is still, from their point of view, we don't have power. So, it’s, very troubling, from our point of view, we ended up building, the black eye, great North data put on the industry. Didn't help us in any way. So, we were very adamant in getting out to the community, getting our logos out, sponsoring teams, sponsoring whatever we could. Getting message out there that this is an industry that is not r and mining, it's not linked to the R and mining cycle. Why not hedge your bets a little bit? 32 employees at this point now that, all get paid by Bitcoin, being generated.
JP: And with 32 employees. [00:15:00] I understand if you're in your house or you're in the grocery store and you're just starting the company, but with 32 employees, do you feel like the community now looks at you guys like a real industry? Like does do the, how does that feel? I.
Curtis: locally, the community does the province still. We made an argument, uh, at one point we're like, we have 32 employees. This is block lab. And our group of companies, the internet service provider that serves internet to indigenous, reserves, et cetera, we're like, we have 32 employees making good money in Labrador that aren't Aren based.
Their answer is, well, we've got 30 people in the export division trying to export the power outta the province into New York and New England. So it's one of those things, the Energy Control Act of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Public Utilities Act of Newfoundland and Labrador was set up for in, for development of the province first, maximize revenue after that by exporting.
No other industry has been told, no, you can't build here because it's better for us to export power because of , the ability to [00:16:00] get more revenue opportunity costs, effectively that, , we could sell the power outta the province and somebody in Quebec can build a data center , and hire these people, but we get a bigger kilowatt hour price than we can get from selling to you.
If they were to look at IOC, they iron our company of Canada and say, we're gonna raise your rates by 5%. Even it would destroy the business case. They have 250 megawatts running now. They have 2000 plus employees, so it's easy for them to say. We deserve the megawatts of cheap power and that's the argument the province generally makes. They don't quite get the bitcoin mining side of things. They don't get that Bitcoin mining can be a load control. The only load control that CFL Co, which is Churchill Falls has, is to open the dam and dump the water over the waterfall. So when they have ice conditions going into Quebec, when they have any kind of issues where they need to slow the turbines down, the only way to do it is dump water.
They don't have any kind of controllable load where we're sitting here, like you mentioned, or I mentioned, s sevens, at near free [00:17:00] power. We could probably still make money on s sevens if we had a load bank set up at the generating station, et cetera. S nines can still be profitable here. It's just a space; we don't have enough power. it's something that education wise and I think like the AI push and everything now, people understand that. So, it's something that, we're pushing in as well to say like, you can build AI on firm power, any kind of non-firm power, you obviously can't. So, let's find, a merge together where we can use Bitcoin as the fringe or Bitcoin to build out the infrastructure and then look at higher tiers of data.
So that's basically been our push and feels like it's been a hundred years, but it's been about eight now at this point. And.
JP: So, if you could solve like one energy or policy hurdle overnight to accelerate projects like yours to reshape your local community and bring development and jobs into it. 'cause it's not just those 32 jobs of you guys providing stable employees. It's the electricians, it's the truckers, it's the HVAC guys, it's the concrete guys, it's the [00:18:00] local internet company that if you're not getting internet from yourself what's a policy that you think really moves your community forward?
Curtis: Well, I think the biggest thing, like I like to joke, if Tim Horton's wants to open a new Tim Horton's, nobody's looking at them saying, we could sell that power to New York for more than, then you'll pay for it. A McDonald's, any kind of business or service, they don't look at Bitcoin as real and that was fine. That was an argument. When Great North Data went out business went out with 13 million in liabilities, a couple million to the government, basically, right? So, I understand the back black eye, but when you're in business, six, seven years at this point, building, continuing to push, it's not so much a nascent industry anymore. We're here, our people have families here. It's something that I'm hopeful that the new premier of the province , just, , took over and he has a more forward-thinking idea , that even going back to the Energy Control Act of Newfoundland Labrador energy was supposed to be for Newfoundland and Labrador.
First. Quebec got their deal on [00:19:00] export and that got the project built. And now there's a new deal with Quebec and Newfoundland to build the new projects where Quebec will get a lion's share of the power. Now they'll pay a little bit more for it and, , make Newfoundland a little bit more whole. But why are we rushing to send their power to the province? For secondary value to be added in another province or another state. And it's a typical issue with, even with iron ore producing, we produce some of the finest iron in the world. It's sought after worldwide, , even better than Australia, which is world known for iron.
We have very, very high-quality iron ore. We ship it out, let somebody else make steel with it. We ship it out for all the other added values. We make the raw material. And sure, that's an economic driver, but why aren't we producing steel? Why aren't we producing value add products? And that's similar idea to our side. Why are we sending the power thousands of kilometers over transmission lines with losses when we can turn it into Bitcoin, move it anywhere over a fiber line. So, it's something that [00:20:00] hopefully as we're, I think we're talking right now during all time high zone. So it’s, hopefully those types of things will show this young blood that are joining the political side that. It doesn't have to be all iron. We're not looking to take away power from the iron mines. We could go in and heat their water. We could go in and heat their spaces. We can complement them. It's really what we want to do here.
JP: And so effectively the one hurdle or one shift is put the province first
Curtis: Absolutely.
JP: Be province first. Don't be, let's find how we make a few pennies here, a few pennies there by giving all the value to
Curtis: Yeah. Yeah. And like, I love my home province. I don't like, to poo booo on them very much, but that's been a traditional Newfoundland attitude. Let's get our quick buck, get our bird in the hand instead of the ones in the bush. And, and Max, like, instead of maximizing the true value of a resource that you have you're making that quick sale and shipping it out.
So I'm hopeful that we'll see those shifts. And like I mentioned at the top of the call, we won't take no for an [00:21:00] answer. We continue to push our message. And from that first monitor in my garage, we were cutting holes in my garage trying to get the heat out. , Even then we're realizing that, like we're in Labrador, the two main communities, 30 20,000 of the 30,000 people that live here have electric grids for heat.
They were built in the seventies for electric heat. So, we're here producing heat that we're dumping outside in cold weather when we could be utilizing that. So, it's something that we're pushing on the data center side, but at the same time, repurposing that already existing grid is something big to us that, that is what spun Hasia out from work lab.
JP: And so, let's get into, because I think you guys were one of the first groups to say, wait a second, Bitcoin mining produces this thing called heat. And everyone just throws that away for free. But maybe that's the product for a lot of consumers, and I, if I'm, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you guys were one of the first major companies in that [00:22:00] space.
Talk to me more about the design, maybe originally and then how it shifted to what the design is today and how consumers can, should be thinking about the problem that they might not even know they have about their current heating system in their house or business.
Curtis: Absolutely. So, like I mentioned, we're cutting holes in my garage trying to get the heat out. It's, it might be minus 40 at that point where I've got electric heaters in the walls of the garage producing heat while we're dumping the heat from the computers outside. So by the time we had to cut the heaters out to add more miners. Okay, well this is a problem that we need to solve. So very rudimentary. We built a duct system, a couple fans set on a thermostat so that when you need heat in the garage, the fans come on and dump it in. And that was probably early 2017 really, that we were recapturing the heat from the operation in my garage.
By the time we did the grocery store, we're looking at ways that we can get heat up into the tenants that were above from the basement and basically just ways that [00:23:00] at that point we want people to not complain about the noise. You know, hey have some free heat. 'cause the miners were just sitting on shelves, and very noisy and something that anybody knows about Bitcoin mining, you can tell a bitcoin mine from the noise, from the heat.
So we've just made that rudimentary kind of by necessity to be able to get that extra 5,000 watts outta my heaters that I had to cut out to be able to add those couple miners extra. We were repurposing the heat. And then my engineer that came on to build, actually build out our sites. He's a very smart electrical engineer.
He spent a lot of years in the iron mines developing and innovating. So we're talking about building data centers and dumping heat. And I'm kind of like, say one day to him, like, 'cause he's, he looks at something, he looked at the first ant miner and he is like, we could cut the fans off this and be more efficient.
We could eliminate the power supply and put it on a VFD, like all these ideas. That first day I met him, I'm like, whoa, don't reinvent the miner. Like de design me a Bitcoin mine, right? And [00:24:00] he's like, okay, well I'll design you a Bitcoin line and then you'll listen to me. Is that a deal?
I'm like, yep, deal. So, he designs the Bitcoin line, and he's like, if we started eliminating power supplies at that point, , the S nine was on a 12-volt architecture that you could have actually put a VFD. In series to each other, et cetera. The newer miners scrapped that idea, but through the conversation with him, I'm like, he's I'm all about eliminating waste heat. So the power supply loses five or 6% or whatnot in transformation. And I kind of just say one day I'm like, what about the other 93% of heat? And you could see the gears kind of grind a little bit and he's like, oh, it's all heat. And then that was like, the aha moment where even my engineering is like we can make heaters. We can make heaters that mind Bitcoin, and pay people. So it's where it
JP: what year was that? Because I mean, you guys, like I said, were pretty early on in this I,
Curtis: Yeah. That was 2018. We started down that road. We, we took over our landlord actually for one of our sites. We took a little space in our [00:25:00] shop and built a little room where we could do an RD facility. And within months we were heating her shop. , By late early 2019, we had taken built some engineered but home built units that we replaced the heat in the local ski lodge.
So the ski lodge here in, in Labrador West is a non-profit ski lodge and was built in 1965 or something. Used to host world downhill ski championships. Very poor insulation, obviously for this building that was built 80 years ago or whatnot. We went in and replaced the heaters with s nine versions, of our furnace that basically removed the noisy fans, put one central fan and started pressurizing the building with heat.
So since early 2019, we've actually donated the heat to this nonprofit, basically donation in lieu of rent. We donate the power bill, we actually get the Bitcoin, from the operation. So it's. It's, a great way to donate really. But, , that was 2019. And then at that point we're like, okay, well we need to build something that we can certify, that we can install anywhere, air handling unit [00:26:00] furnace. By late 2020 COVID came on. It slowed us down, obviously a little bit, but we put our first unit in our own building in Goose Bay in 20 21, 600 volt, 80 kilowatt furnace. So it actually has 21 watts, miners hung up inside of it and, fully automated to be able to dump heat into the building or dump heat outta the building Transformer
JP: that's a huge furnace. 21 machines. I mean, no one is really building at that scale. And this is kind of where you guys started, which was let's heat a, how much square foot or
Curtis: that's about 10,000 square feet in our climate. And that was kind of the thing we, my engineer and I drove around the community, , like the, there's 4,000 homes here, in the region. The industry is big. So like you're talking haul trucks that are 50 feet high and a hundred feet long. So a garage door in minus 40 that has to open to let one of these trucks in or let equipment in, , you're losing all your heat even at 2 cents.
It's still a couple hundred dollars. Basically, you're spending to be able to open your garage door in [00:27:00] the winter. So that's really where we spotted the first niche market is all of these buildings have to open their door. If a truck shows up with equipment, or if a truck comes to pick up equipment, it doesn't matter what the temperature is, the door gotta go up and minus 40 Celsius is minus 40 Fahrenheit.
That's why I like, to compare to that for, your American listeners. But minus 40 is cold. It's like two or three minutes exposed and you're, you've got frostbite. So even for the people working in the shops. They've gotta put their coats on, they've gotta get bundled up before a truck can come in or go out.
So that's where, why we went with such a big unit first. Basically the idea being in Labrador West or Labrador in general. We can walk into a business and say, we'll put in the unit for free. We'll maintain it for free. We'll pay the power bill based on the power meter that we've built into the unit.
You'll get free heat; we get the Bitcoin. Don't, you don't need to understand any of that. We'll maintain the internet connection to it. We'll, we'll change the filters because we obviously want the best uptime for our equipment. So, that was the way to get people who [00:28:00] don't need to really understand what's going on Since then, now we've got some people that are like, I want the Bitcoin. I'll just buy your furnace. That's perfectly fine as well. But the power is so cheap here. The energy is already here. The grids are built for heat. So 55 ish megawatts just in our, one of our industrial parks is there for all the buildings that are there just for heat. The big thing with the hydro utility, they're like, well, we don't have enough power.
We can give you non-firm allotments. We can allow you to run and curtail when we need you to, because we need the power for heat. So we can go into these places, and we don't put any more load on the coldest day of the years when the grids are at tr at risk in Labrador versus many grids are in the hot summers, but we don't have a lot of air conditioning here because we don't really need it. So the, , they're here saying, well, we might need you to curtail your data center because we need heat. So we're like, okay, well, where the heat? And in the summer the unit dumps outside. More kilowatt hours are being consumed on the same grid, no [00:29:00] extra maintenance. We're not, we're very careful to look at sizing our equipment for the building and not blowing transformers up, et cetera. So overall, really efficient.
JP: So how many of the local population businesses have hestia units, even a percentage? Are you guys at 10%, 30, 50? Like where do you
Curtis: So all the 50 megawatts were just about two megawatts so far. So it's still , little in its infancy. Now we've got six in Quebec that our manufacturing partner who actually builds the units in Quebec, he replaced oil furnaces. So a little different of a model where he's paying six or 7 cents power, but he's eliminating oil. Plus , he built our data centers, built our units so he understood the Bitcoin side of things. So it doesn't make sense for us to say, we'll go in and maintain and et cetera. But that type of stuff. Now you, we, you get more and more of companies coming around Quebec. We've got a few people in Manitoba interested in our equipment as well, that you've gotta pay for the heat anyway.
Bitcoin is the byproduct at that point. So that's one of the taglines that [00:30:00] SDS had like. Heat is the product in this unit. If you need heat, even a few months of the year and your prices is decent enough to make it make sense Bitcoin becomes free generation at that point for the times that you need heat. So that's the market we started in and now we've developed products all the way down to three kilowatts where we can go into homes, garages, residences, commercial offices, et cetera. Where in Labrador, we still won't look at that model where we give you free heat for a small unit because I'm not gonna go to a person's house and change the filters at two in the morning or whatnot because the machine's acting up.
But you give somebody, you say, look, you've gotta pay for the heat anyway. It's very cheap. , Your heating costs compared to most places, but why not make money while you do it? , There's no such thing as a smart heater until we came along.
JP: And you guys, as I mentioned, really I think revolutionized and started that conversation of. Get heat to the people. Don't worry about Bitcoin. And to your point, as the price goes up, people are like, wait, what's that device doing again in my house? Like, I want to, I want some of that Bitcoin, which [00:31:00] is good. You wanna bring the person across the journey. , And when it comes to local customers, , are they coming from the us they coming from other cold climates as well? Or you really focus just on the Canada market and kind of That’s, where the growth has been the most.
Curtis: So far the growth has been mostly here, like Labrador and Quebec. Now Quebec is 46,000 megawatts of hydro energy, so we have about 10,000 eventually when it's all built. We're small compared to that, but 4 million homes in Quebec. Whatever number of businesses. So that, obviously that market very close to us. Makes a lot of sense to go after. But our units, when we built them, our patents that, we've achieved on them, we just received a unitary patent for the European unitary countries. Many coals climates in that area, renewable energy. So those are markets that we wanna reach out to. We've certified the unit as an air handling unit for anywhere in North America. So for an electrical permit, you're not installing Bitcoin monitor, you're installing a furnace and it's just a tick box, just like a heat pump and whatnot on the note. So [00:32:00] right now, like for our hash rate, for our decentralized development, we're looking at Labrador, but kind of the goal is if I sell two units to Manitoba or BC or whatnot, we'll take the revenue from that, put a unit in Labrador to build their hash rate. So the goal being, we've got a team here at Block Lab that our hash rate technicians. A little bit more maintenance on having a vehicle to drive around versus having everybody on one site. You buy electric vehicles. So we've got a fleet of Ford Lightnings costs us next to nothing to operate. So really the opex difference, is not much, 1.60 cent power on our traditional data center, 2.30 cents, on the, heater.
Half a sink gets eaten very quickly when you've got snow clearing, property tax. All of these overheads that come with a traditional data center, along with the fact that you've gotta build custom transformers and deal with outages when a transformer blows up, et cetera. When we're going in the 600 volt or four 80 for many US areas, it's already there.
It's already there [00:33:00] oftentimes for heat. So we build the final step transformer into the unit. We actually capture the heat loss of the transformer in our process as well. So nearly a hundred percent of the energy that goes into that unit, it's coming off as heat and we're capturing it and allowing people to use it. So, it's a really kind of what Satoshi intended in decentralizing the mining. And when we get into the smaller units now, the home units, that's micro data centers that, that can be installed anywhere.
JP: And with, these micro data centers, do you see the ability to do de demand response like in Europe and other places as you expand? Or are you really truly focused on just providing them the heat or, have you looked at that?
Curtis: Yeah. So demand, it's something that we've actually offered we're the only, we have a, one of our sites, block Lab does, we're the only curtail non-firm customer of the province currently. We can shed load; we could do it within milliseconds if they wanted to on a frequency response.
But right now, we actually developed the system for Newfoundland, Labrador Hydro. They can call these one 800 numbers [00:34:00] that even, I don't know the number to, but it will ring everybody's phones. Let us know the site. Let us know what you need, and, we can demand response like that. Hestia is a perfect way to be able to do that on a bigger scale, because every heater can be on our network, especially the ones that we own here in the community.
The only thing with that is oftentimes when there's a grid issue, it's heat. Heat is the what you want to keep. So that's the beauty, of it, because you can't take people's heat minus 40 you can take the data center and shut it off, but if the data center is the heat, you can't shut that off.
People will freeze. So, it's, useful tool for other options, , other issues other, than a grid response because of heat. But that is something that, we've talked about with the hydro utility. We can get very granular. Every one of our units is on a map basically to show you what it's using at any time.
And you can pick a spot on the grid and say; we need load response here. And we could log in, and, ramp the units down. It's something the hydro utility hasn't really felt like they need to take advantage of. We [00:35:00] actually ask them in a public utility board intervention on, their non-firm rates. How do you load control? What do you do for demand response? They're like, we open the dam. That's basically all we can do is dump the water and make no revenue
JP: saying that, they're like, duh, you know, like, of course we do
this, and you're like, well, do you have another option if the dam is, can't be opened or if you have an issue?
Curtis: Or why would you want to, when you open the dam, that's revenue that you're dumping over the falls. So, like as public owned. Your requirement is to make revenue, you should want to find a user of last resort. You should have somebody set up to be like, yep, we'll take it when you need it. We'll ramp down and when you don't need it, we'll ramp back up. And we can do that on frequency, if you wish, because everybody's doing it already. So I'm very hopeful that this new non-firm rate application that they have to file now in the next six or eight months, we'll get some more insight in. We've been very adamant. We actually appealed their decision. We're the only operator actually operating under, the non-firm rate. But one of our sites here actually in Wabash was [00:36:00] 14 cents in January, 14 cents Canadian when we were 1.60 cents last January. , And their ice, their lines were froze up into Quebec and they had the falls open. So even that type of things that they didn't really foresee in these options where it's like you should interruptable tariffs work for Ercot. You should give us a user of last resort price and if you need it. Pay us to shut down when you don't need it. We'll take that. Use our last resort. You never need to dump water.
You can let us be your capacitor. So hopeful that they've learned over the last year or two, , while we fought and continue to operate in these variable prices. Luckily, our goose base site grandfathered in on the industrial rate that, that the iron mines pay. So, , for the iron mines, like I mentioned, if they saw a 700% increase like we did in January, they would have 2000 people laid off and be completely shut down. So, types of things where we want to build the education and let them know that these grids, , even from your podcast with Dennis, the grids are operating more efficiently because of these [00:37:00] miners acting as these load banks and, Quebec , and Labrador should be no different.
JP: And I guess I don't, I feel like , the energy industry and the local politicians that regulated or on the boards don't necessarily understand. I. What a 700% increase does to a local business, even to one that's energy intensive to a manufacturing. If you are having that much fluctuation in your energy prices, you are destroying your manufacturing base.
it seems like it's just like laissez-faire, like, oh, no issue. Like when you look at home energy prices in the us it's 17 cents a kilowatt hour, 14 cents a kilowatt hour. Why is it so expensive? Why don't we like as a society, number one, care about our energy price in your opinion? And number two, care about how that energy price impacts our community and the jobs we can provide to our community.
Curtis: absolutely. It's something that like coming back to, . Like you [00:38:00] mentioned at the top of the call asking how we were lucky enough to be in Labrador. It's one of those things where if I wasn't from Labrador, I'd be long gone. I'd be gone to anywhere, Alberta, Ethiopia, many places with arms open, looking for people to come in, and develop this industry.
Luckily I'm raising children here. I'm second generation living here, luckily, or unluckily I guess you could say, because, they don't get it. And the ones and zeros they don't get because they come out and say, no cryptocurrency. But AI or other tiers of data, would be fine, but like, how are you going to tell us what we're doing unless we ask you to come in and see what's on our shelves?
Like, it's one of those things where anybody else, if you're gonna open a McDonald's, they're not asking you if you're gonna be profitable or what you're gonna do. They're like, if you go, if you wanna pay for it, you pay for it and you operate your business. , It's something that people are afraid of, they don't quite get.
, And you're right, they're not really thinking about. The overall societal benefit that can happen. And we've built the internet companies, we've built the indigenous relationships. We've built many, [00:39:00] many times. Those small companies that are part of our group of companies didn't have enough money to get a project over the finish line.
Where'd it come from? Bitcoin. We sold our Bitcoin and paid and loan money here and loan money there. So this bad, big, bad Bitcoin that people are afraid of, , has built societal benefit internet to , underprivileged communities that would've not otherwise had a chance. We've done these ops these projects and it's something that, it's, like I say, it's just a miseducation part that people are afraid of that, , you might be a fly by night operator, but again, 30 of the 32 people, there's 20 plus of us that were born and raised here.
That would've left software engineers, electrical engineers, , network engineers. There's no other real high-tech jobs here for people to keep people in their home province. , And it's something that. Really should have a bigger light shine on it.
JP: And what I'm hearing from Hestia in Block Labs is that you guys really have a people first, but also an engineering first mindset. How have you developed that in the company , and how, what do you suggest other CEOs do to have a [00:40:00] first principle approach to problem solving?
Curtis: Well, I think the big thing, what we learned in Labrador versus somebody say in Montreal or somewhere else, if you have an outage, you're down and you're in the middle of nowhere. So spending that extra money, you've got that good, fast, cheap triangle where you can do something. You can pick two of the three good, fast, and cheap.
And many times, people pick fast and cheap and then they're up and running, but a transformer blows up or something like that happens and you're in trouble and you didn't build to the right quality. For instance, even a like a firefighter response might not show up and actually help with an issue because they don't know what you've got in there.
They don't see any drawings, et cetera. So that's something that we learned very early on, luckily, because we, the engineer that we hired was an I Iron O engineer, 25 plus years innovating at the Iron O Company of Canada, which has a very, very low tolerance for, near misses or issues they wanna engineer to the highest standard and, , [00:41:00] be , the best practice set.
So luckily, because very early on I'm like, Hey man, can't we use this? Do we need to do this? Like I was the CEO that needed to be able to get it built. So luckily he was adamant enough to say, look, if you have an outage, if you have an arc flash in this equipment, if you have this go on, you kill somebody, you're going to jail and your business is done.
So luckily we listened to that, and built to those higher standards and then that transcended. So our site in Goose Bay that we took over. One wing of it is hot aisle, cold aisle, loud, noisy fans, two properties over. Luckily there's no properties on that side, but two properties over, they can hear our noise. Well, by the time we engineered our wing, we built everything inside. We actually built a tower where the fans are in the ceiling, pressurizing the attic of this old army bunker. And that basically was the first hestia because it's the same technology we're using in the smaller scale. But we were building that first to mitigate noise from neighbors, then to look at, well, if we eliminate the fans on a [00:42:00] megawatt, that's 40 more miners that combine.
So your power usage efficiency can go way up if you're actually eliminating fans. And then Hesia basically piggybacked on that technology to be able to build these micro data centers. That 65 decibels from a meter away from this unit with 21 Watts monitors. And anybody who's ran a Watts monitor, they've heard the Rick Flare.
Woo. It's, . Something that is very iconic for Bitcoin mining specifically, that you come by a building. You can tell, like if you're a miner, if you're a Bitcoin person, , you can almost tell what type of miner is in there by the noise. You hear our unit. , Unless you're actually digging into the unit, you don't know that it's anything but , a air handling unit.
JP: And so that, I mean, that's a crucial change to mining for local people running this in their house. And so to, so you guys basically remove the Miner fans and then are deploying, , a central exhaust fan. Effectively. , Is that the case? Is
Curtis: Yep. That's pretty much it. , It's not really much of a secret sauce there. It's use [00:43:00] the right fan, not the fans. axial fan doesn't have a lot of. Lanar flow, for instance. It's not super efficient. And back when I said don't re-engineer the miner let's build a Bitcoin mine.
He was right. You know, it was, uh, something that came to us later. And if you can move air efficiently we can attain 10 to 15% overclock on air, , when people have to go to hydro or immersion to be able to do that, use the right equipment and you can save all that infrastructure and still get the same type of overclock and stability.
So a lot of what we've been doing now is profile management, et cetera, so that you can take one of our small units. Our three kilowatt, seven kilowatt units, they don't necessarily have to be ducted. So in a higher price power area where you only want to mine while you need the heat, you can have it actually ramped down so it'll get more efficient.
Follow its profile down so that it uses less power, gets better watt per terahash to heat your space. If you're in a place where you wanna mine maximum Bitcoin, you [00:44:00] ducted it, you set it up on the automated system, so it only dumps heat in when it needs it. So, even similar to us picking s sevens over the s nines today, if I was buying miners, it'd be an S 19 xp. I wouldn't look at 20 ones, really, because what's the point in paying so much more for a little bit better efficiency? So the miners in our hestia, same idea. If you wanna maximize your Bitcoin mining, you don't care about the efficiency so much. , You ramp it up as much as you can and dump the heat out. If you do, if you're in a higher price area, 6 cents, 8 cents, et cetera, then you ramp them down, you under clock and get the heat that you need. For the space that you need. So a lot of what we've done with our app is basically giving user control where you wanna mind Bitcoin, you don't quite understand it. An immersion system is really not for you. If it's your first setup, hydro maybe, but depending on your cold climate, et cetera, you got a lot of risk of freeze ups. So, these units that we sell, you could buy it with the miners included. You plug it into a regular 50 amp outlet or a 60 amp, depending on the size.
Scan the [00:45:00] QR code on the unit, add it to your wifi, put your wallet in and away it goes. Two weeks later, you're like, holy crap, I'm making all kinds of money. So I'm gonna buy one s 21 user open, open it. Put your miner in. The app picks up what kind of miner is in it, upgrades to the right firmware, put your wallet in and you're back mining again.
So it's, the idea for that is to be very user friendly because being in a small community and building, this project, I get a lot of people, friends, family, even strangers, Hey, how do I mine bitcoin? Okay. Do you have an hour? Let me get a whiteboard out. It's something that, in a grocery store anywhere at all.
I'm talking about this and basically comes from that. , We've made it as simple as we can for somebody to mine, actually mine, you can pull it. You won't, it's not like a pickax, which I also love. I think it's really the whole idea of bringing Bitcoin back to the masses. But our units in places where you need heat, 3000 watts, 7,000 watts, 10,000 watts.
Then we have the 80,000 watts and we've actually got a [00:46:00] 225, which is like large industrial c camm based unit, that similar technology where we drop it outside your building, ducked in, dump it when you don't need it. So, goal for us being anywhere that needs heat, we wanna be able , to step in and at least offset the cost, if not eliminate.
JP: And when it comes to certifying these, and you mentioned getting this patent for these heaters. Talk to me more about that, how that process was. I mean, you're trying to bring this to a new type of clientele and the branding and the certifications really matter. How was that , and what does that process even look like?
When it comes to certifying , a machine, you're not even making in the sense that you're not making the asic, but you're then putting it in another device and then trying to certify the whole device and sell it as a one enclosure.
Curtis: Yeah, so a lot of that came from the engineering side and where, like I mentioned, he was engineering for perfection in the iron mining industry, et cetera. So a lot of that went into the development, a , few iterations back and forth with the the inspector to [00:47:00] basically. Understand what was going on.
The unit actually ships with no miners in it. It's all CSA certified cables and whatnot. You can pick what you wanna put in it. So if something, if a miner comes on stream that has no certifications, whatever user risk you can decide to put that in yourself. It's basically mini-infrastructure is really what this unit is.
It's a shelf space for 80 kilowatts or it's a shelf space for 10 kilowatts. But through the patent work and everything, it's basically we went down that road. 'cause some of it is novel and, we wanted to make sure we were trying to do that work. But I look at patents a little bit like proof of work.
It's really, you show that you did that work. , Am I going after people for trying to use our designs? Probably not, because our industry is all about finding innovation and being able to do things. , We're building these units based on asics that somebody else built. So it's not so much as a patent trolling or whatnot, but we wanted to do that work to be able to make sure that we were, .
We were showing people that it's not just a fly by night idea. We actually put the effort in and went through the [00:48:00] work. Luckily, our first patent from start to issued was about eight months, which was way quicker than we were told , by the patent lawyer that was starting it. We just happened to luck out, I guess.
The next couple patents were a little bit longer, but the newest one we actually were looking at coupling the ev charging. So basically, in Labrador, many cold climates like we , we have EVs in our fleet and generally people think EVs are no good for cold. They're great as long as you don't want to go far our distances outta town, five, 600 miles or whatnot.
Even that you can do with the chargers along the way. But you get to a charger in the middle of Labrador or say for Churchill Falls and the Charger's outta service because it's snowed in, now you're stuck there. So, we can heat the charging area and we don't care if anybody ever charges because we'll ramp our equipment down when you plug in to be able to mes load that you need.
Then we'll ramp back up when you drive away. So the proliferation of charging network is one of those chicken and egg scenarios where nobody's buying [00:49:00] EVs because there's no charging network. Nobody's building charging networks because there's nobody using the charging network. So we don't care if you charge, we'll, mine, whatever we can mine, you'll pay more per kilowatt hour to charge on a fast charger.
Then we can mine even with an S 21 or something really efficient. So we'll happily stop mining for that hour for you to charge. Off you go. We turn back on the unit, start heating the space so the unit's up the internet connectivity is paid for because , we're running. So that's basically our next product that we're working on now that we received a patent for about three or four months ago to, to couple that technology together.
So really think that's something that, it's pretty novel. It's something that, , we're. Uniquely aware of because we have one fast charger in our community, one in Churchill Falls, and , I've been that person get to the charger and it's outta service because snow got in the, built in the cabinet. So like I lived it and my backseat being like, what are we doing like waiting for somebody to bring us in a gas vehicle so we can leave this thing here and [00:50:00] drive on? So it's something that stubbornly we went down that road as well.
JP: And I think you mentioned this earlier, is like Bitcoin mining being the buyer of last resort. But maybe what people don't fully understand is that Bitcoin is a pioneer species. And what I mean by that is in ecology, it's moving to areas like these EV chargers that have a problem that can't be solved without.
Creating costs for society. And so Bitcoin, as a pioneer species says actually we'll use that power when no one's using it and we'll fix the main cause of the problem of why these chargers aren't working 'cause they're too cold. 'cause there's too much snow. By using the heat that we're creating to make sure that this local environment can be used for its main purpose, no other asset, no other use case can do that because Bitcoin connects to this network of money.
And so as you think about Bitcoin money and you say, well, all that [00:51:00] darn energy usage, why is it good? Because it can happen in areas where energy usage is needed to create the ideal outcome for everyone, which is this decarbonization, which is this increased quality of life. This making sure heat's always available to that the consumer.
How do you view? I mean, you've already mentioned a lot here, Curtis, but like Bitcoin being a pioneer species, and for those who haven't read the article on this, I will link it in the show notes so you can read a very detailed article on this metaphor. I.
Curtis: I think it's spot on. It's something that we've seen along the way, like from our , heating exposure from the ev charging. Even going into your picture, say a Costco or Home Depot would love to provide free charging to their customers, but they've only got so much infrastructure, very expensive for network addition.
You can install a heating system where you've got a thermal mass tank of water, et cetera, where when someone's charging, you shut the heaters off in the building and let somebody charge. So these are ways to be [00:52:00] able to proliferate this network. And like you mentioned like , natural Resources Canada was actually the ones who put out the first charging networks at one point.
About a year ago, 55% of the charging networks were down at any one time. 'cause nobody will fix them. So somebody gives you funding and you'll put a charger in, but. You don't care if it's running because you're not making any money on it. So why would you do it? And then a family gets to a charger and can't charge.
So they sell their ev and now , you're stepping backwards in, in productivity on building this newer new energy, for mobility. So it is something that no other energy use can do. Any other tier of data, , can't just shut off momentarily. There's punitive issues with contracts, whereas we can shut offshore, we lose the revenue for the time that we're down.
We can get it for every minute that we're up. And infrastructure development for ev charging specifically. Even like when Newfoundland, Labrador Hydro looks at us and says, we've got no power. And in Labrador West, a business right now wants to build, there's a 200 kilowatt [00:53:00] moratorium that you've gotta pay.
I think it's like 465 KA megawatt or something to actually develop out infrastructure for any business or for anything because , their argument is like, well, we don't know where we're gonna get the revenue back to make this make sense. So same thing for us. We're like, well build
JP: I think I wanna comment on that 'cause that's really, sadly. Not true because you have been allocating capital underneath the same premise for the past 70 years that you will not know if it's gonna get back unless people use your grid. But guess what? That's why you build an electric grid. And so now that everyone's like, oh, new loads coming online, we don't know if it's gonna be here.
That is going to restrict your community, restrict the jobs you can bring in, restrict your tax base because you don't have a forward-looking approach on how do I deploy , the energy infrastructure in my system? But a lot of people are like, oh, because the prices are high, we don't wanna raise them on rates.
Well then look, let's look at why the prices are high, 'cause the prices should be dropping as more [00:54:00] usage is increased across the system.
Curtis: Yeah, exactly. It's funny because 20 19, 20 20, the public utility board of Newfoundland and Labrador sets rates basically, hydro has a set margin, a profit margin that they can make. So in 2020s, not, or rate application or somewhere around there, due to increased data center usage in Labrador, the industrial rates went down 1.30 cents.
So we were at like 1.75, we went to 1.67 or whatever that number was, like already the cheapest power in the world and it went down. So hestia now, we are adding kilowatt hours to the consumption with no extra infrastructure maintenance. So to me, in the next application that will happen whether or not they actually admit it or whatnot.
But the rates should go down for everybody. Not only the people that have free heat because Hestia is heating , their business, but all summer long when the waterfall would be open or when the turbines will be slowed down. We're using that power no extra maintenance. We're not blowing up transformers.
You're not [00:55:00] degrading a transmission line by moving more electrons over it. It's only when you overload cause issues. So to me, it's coming specifically for Newfoundland Labrador. The public utility board is gonna look and say, why did you make a. 5% more revenue than you did last year. You've made too much profit.
Give a rebate to every customer in the province. And those are what you mentioned.
JP: and that rebate should be branded hestia, , reap RA or rebate. Like , that's amazing. I'm so glad to hear that Curtis, that like you guys are seeing the penetration and seeing what happens when we take two megawatts of usage that isn't being used efficiently and maybe not always on and making it to always on running during the summer and the winter.
I mean, that's real impact in your community.
Curtis: absolutely. Yeah. Hesia very quickly mentioned that, so Hesty was the goddess of the hearth. So the fireplace basically. So if you put a fire in the fireplace, we all sit around and get free heat. So basically that's kind of the idea where Hestia came from is, everybody sitting around the [00:56:00] campfire, whoever started the fire gave everybody free heat.
So that's kind of where Hestia came from. Just for your listeners to, to know.
JP: No, I love the naming. I love the branding. You got the bright orange colors for the people that haven't checked out the website. So if you are building a new home or looking to upgrade your existing heating infrastructure, definitely check out Hestia high quality products Well engineered team, as mentioned by Curtis here, and people that care about not only Bitcoin, but the system working for you.
So Curtis how do you see the future of this industry? I mean, 2030 Bitcoin mining, where are we? Bitcoin, where are we and. Is the public there yet, are they saying, wow, this is an amazing technology, or do you think we're still a, this isn't what we are expecting. This is Bitcoin mining.
It's gross. How do you view the narrative?
Curtis: I think we've come a long way from the growth side of things. I think in say the next having cycle or the one after that, [00:57:00] you will get to the point where. Just traditional data centers. Dumping heat is really not gonna cut it. It's. Your overhead is gonna end up killing these big miners because if you can be the heat, like I mentioned, Bitcoin is the byproduct when you're the heat.
So becoming foundational, getting into these places that need energy or need have excess energy and they need to be able to offset their costs. That's where I think you will see that push. And we are seeing much more heat recovery, in this most recent having cycle. But I think the people slowly but then fast.
I think it's been traditionally the model, , we do like locally here, we do get more and more people asking, daily inundated about. Hey, how can I mine Bitcoin? Tell me more about your products, because we're trying to push that out there and like, but even back when I was still in the iron mine telling everybody about Bitcoin, telling everybody I was gonna quit and I was gonna go full-time at this.
And everyone's like, no, you're not. You're stuck here. The iron mines pay really, really [00:58:00] well. Very few people I know were able to get out without getting their 30 years punched. I got about 12 years. It's about four years of working for my companies while sitting there. But, , all that, while those people are like, no, you're crazy.
This Bitcoin thing is never gonna work. I see these people in the grocery store now four or five years later, and they're like, how do I get involved? How do I add one of these to my house? You know? So it's slowly coming and I think that is where it's gonna go. And I hope that's the case because Satoshi's vision was that everybody can mine Bitcoin and you can do it at home.
So I do like, like the Cannan Avalon series. We actually just partner with them. We're a distributor for them in Canada for selling their smallest units. They're Avalon s. Not the smallest units, but smaller than ours. We won't go into that small level because why would we compete with an ASIC manufacturer that already has had that light bulb moment?
So, , I love that. I love the BID X, all the versions of BID X that are coming out. It's really what the tosi want. Everybody can be a mine and where we should go in the next decade.
JP: And Satoshi's vision of all, [00:59:00] everyone decentralizing the mining power and changing the proof of work system forever, I think is truly fundamentally is changing local communities and reality across the world. So Curtis, thank you for doing your part, and thank you for continuing to innovate in this industry being, you know, full lighthearted and really just, I would say genuine about what is going on.
And is there anything else you want to dive into before we wrap it up for today? Anything else on your mind that you know, you really want to share with the community?
Curtis: No, I think we've had a great discussion here. I would tell people certainly go to hesty heat.ca if you're interested in learning more and again, I appreciate your candor on that. My whole team, we're basically, we live and breathe this and it's not one of those, let's get rich quick, you know, 2021, we had every public company you can imagine flying here at Labrador during the last bull run.
Ofcourse Scientific's Jet [01:00:00] picks us up and we go over looking around because everybody wants to be in Labrador and offers come. And we were like, no, we're gonna give up too much control. We wanna be able to help steer this industry. And again, it's something that if I wanted to get rich quick, I would've done it in 2021. And I'm still here pushing because I believe that. Bitcoin is the right money. Digital gold is very correct. And , that's part of what I tell people. I'm like, how are you gonna move a million dollars’ worth of gold without trusting somebody, you know? That's not something we have an issue with in our industry. So it's something that I believe in and I hope that, , your listeners, I'm sure are feeling the same way as me.
JP: And share this with someone. you're listening to the podcast that you know doesn't understand the benefits of the heat, we capture and , might be interested in a Hastia product or might be interested in even understanding how they can heat their barn, how they can heat their workshop, how they can heat their house more cost effectively.
And remember guys to mine on and celebrate Bitcoin Pizza Day [01:01:00] and Bitcoin at $111,000. US.