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The Drive Program
The Drive Program
Will Skipper: Crypto Mining, Blockcaddy, Weight Loss, & Self-Accountability | #36
Will Skipper is involved in mining for cryptocurrency and if you don’t know what that is, we talk all about it. We also discuss cool ideas that might be emerging in the Web 3 space. Near the end of our conversation, we discuss weight loss, cardio, eating healthy, and what it takes to make a change in your life.
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welcome back to another episode of the drive program. My name is Tom driver and today my guest is, will skipper. will is involved in mining for cryptocurrency. And if you don't know what that is, we talk all about it in today's episode we also talk about. What cool ideas might be emerging in the web three space. Near the end of our conversation, we discuss weight loss. Cardio eating healthy. And What it takes to make a change in your life if you want to follow his company block caddy they. Our at block catty on Twitter. I'll put all of his links in the description below. I hope you guys learned something from today's episode. This is episode 36 of the drive program. With guests will skipper. All right. So we'll when did you first start getting into the crypto space and then specifically the mining space. When did you first start getting interested in that? Yeah, so I started my interest in crypto started way before I was able to get into the space like financially. I had been interested in crypto probably since, since we were in high school. I mean back back in like 20 15, 20 14, somewhere around there. But obviously I didn't really have the ability to get into it back in high school. I didn't have the money for it. I was just trying to figure out my place in the world. I, at the time I probably wanted to be a journalist or something, but now fast forward, to 23, 21 February. I've kind of graduated from college probably three years out now. I've got a marketing degree. I've been in marketing for three years now, professionally and I wanted to find something additional to add to my. Whereas I didn't particularly have to be so hands-on and spending my time with with making that money. I mean trading time for money is a big thing. That's what one, there's like four major four major categories in which people can make their money. Trading time for money is one of them. And I wanted to find a way where I could generate money by not really having to give that much time. So I figured out mining Bitcoin, Ethereum, even helium, and cryptocurrencies, such as that, you only had to tad to give X amount of hours of work and spent have X, X amount of background knowledge to start generating that income that was constant. No matter what. So, did you get immediately interested in, in mining the Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, or did you ever purchase any and try to just kind of trade or, or buy NFTs or anything before you started mining? Or was that just kind of immediately what stuck out to you is kind of what you wanted to get involved with in this space? Yeah, so interestingly enough, was most interested in mining first. I don't know why, but I never had traded cryptocurrency before I had never bought anything with cryptocurrency, but I knew a good amount about it. And I was obsessed with mining and just generating the currency rather than potentially feeling the burn. When you, when you invest at a point in the market and it goes down, I feel much more comfortable in, buying the product and setting it up and having the background knowledge of generating the currency rather than being a part of the market fluctuations, because it just is stacking for me rather than having to put a dollar amount in. So I'm pretty sure I fully understand what mining is, but I've actually never talked about it on my show before. So what kind of is mining for cryptocurrency in the basic terms like, so this is how I explain it to everybody that doesn't understand cryptocurrency at all. When you have$20, that$20 bill and you want to put it into your bank account you go to the bank of America, you go to the Wells Fargo, you take that$20 bill and you put it into the ATM. You expect for that ATM or whatever Wells Fargo bank of America to make a verification that your money is in the bank account. It is there and they show you a screen and it pops up your bank account information and your balance. So for mining, when you have a minor or any kind of mining hardware, it is in a sense doing the same thing, whether it be for a financial institution or a wireless network provider, or what have you. There's so many applications of that kind of thoughts of doing that validation process. So in this sense, my minors are validating that a person has bought X amount of Bitcoin or Ethereum. My minor is validating as an ATM would that their money has gone into the system. My minor, is solving an algorithm, which is based on the network. that it's mining. And it provides that validation. One-to-one that's this is a valid transaction and that money has been exchanged. Okay. in a system like Bitcoin, I know that everyone has to validate everything on the network. Is that correct? So if you were mining Bitcoin, you would be playing a small part in just kind of all the transactions that happen on that network and playing a part in validating whether or not someone paid someone else, or if the transactions are there or not. Is that, does that sound correct? Exactly. Yeah. Okay. And so then how did you go about deciding which coins you wanted to mine and what are some pros and cons that you would weigh out when making that decision? first, it was the accessibility of, being able to mine it. How easy was it for me to get the hardware, to get into this kind of project? That was when I started, when I was just getting, involved because it's pretty expensive in this industry where the hardware can be like 10 K to, to 25 K for one machine. So accessibility was first. And then the utility of the hardware. What kind of role is the hardware playing in the entirety of the project because for the most part, when you're talking about mining, it's not a perfect system. Not many people believe that mining is the forever solution to this. What it is though, is the jumping board for most projects to provide decentralization for their project before moving into a concept called proof of stake. And that is another concept in which you're providing a network validation based on a decentralized network, but those are two different concepts. Okay. So the, mining equipment is the first step to validating that this system could actually be decentralized, right? That's correct. For the most part, that's the first step. Whereas the. There are companies that will attempt to start with a proof of stake algorithm project. But the most popular way right now is going with the proof of work concept building off of that. And then graduating from that into something new. Okay. But are aren't you mining for Ethereum or at least in, you spent some time doing that? Wasn't that project already kind of proven to be a stable network already that you could join? Or were you helping prop up some networks that weren't already online yet? So I'm mining right now. I'm on Bitcoin, Ethereum, helium, and and DPN deeper network. But I do mine, Ethereum for a fair amount of the. Have the capability that I mind for. What's the difference on your end between those four projects? What do you have to do differently to set up your thing? Does it, does one waste more energy than the other? Is there a certain like currency that, you get more value from? Or what, what do you even think about when you're looking at those four different crypto projects they're all way different projects. So when you talking about helium this is the project where you are pretty much creating a 4g network bubble around yourself and other people that have this Tealium mining device are also doing the same, providing that same validation that we were talking about earlier as if I was mining Bitcoin, but validating a 4g networks or. So in a sense, helium is creating its own imagine at and T Verizon big cell phone wireless tower, but decentrally through mining. Whoa, that's crazy, man. Yeah. That's one of the concepts that we're mining on. Then there's GPU mining, which is the proof of work concept that we're mining for Ethereum right now. Then there's another, which is the deeper network mining, which allows you to, which is a crazy concept that when I was speaking on behalf of these areas that are very much censored at this moment in the world where you're not able to particularly search or have the privacy that you'd like to have necessarily to make decisions about what you want to see on the internet. Deeper network mining devices allow you to create a, a tunnel in a sense for others to utilize a decentralized, somewhat private internet service, anywhere in the world that they would like to, whereas locally, they would not be able to do that. Okay. Let's talk about block caddy for a minute. So this is the company you started, you do obviously crypto mining, but then isn't there, like you said, I'm going to be like a media aspect where you're going to make some sort of like YouTube tutorials for people to, set up mining on their own. What, what kind of led to that decision and how do you think about block catty? So block, he came as an offshoot from mining. Mining was my, was my original like baby, that was what I thought this project was going to be. But obviously I do marketing. I do affiliate marketing for my traditional nine to five position. So I'm driving bottom line revenue for a fortune 50 company where I partner with publishers within our service area. So they're creating articles about a subject it may be mining or anything kind of cryptocurrency. And we partner with those guys to put a hyperlink to our advertisers webpage in order to drive that bottom line revenue for that advertiser. Got it. Okay. So marketing is kind of like you said, your nine to five job, and so helping people promote their mining businesses through marketing, kind of just made sense for those two things to connect for you, right? Yeah. And now not just mining those. all projects and initiatives and crypto and web three. So I'm a, I'm really looking to support anybody. That's looking to drive bottom line revenue and brand awareness for their initiative or project through mainly in AR and primarily through affiliate marketing. And again, that's, working with popularized web service where web articles and publishers to get those qualified, qualified leads and traffic that you're looking for to your webpage in order to drive that conversion. So, what are some of the coolest ideas, do you think that are going to come out of web three, obviously, right. There's this decentralized networks that are popping up and you're even helping support those. So you probably have a better perspective than most people. Like what kind of interesting companies are you working with or just interesting ideas do you think can emerge from a web three slash decentralized, you know, systems like this? Like why should a normal person be excited about this? I was in Puerto Rico the other day and I met this girl. She was probably our age. Maybe it's going to be like 23 or something, but she was speaking about a project that her and her friend had been working on for farmer's markets. And this was. I won't say the product. I won't say their names, but it was, it was a product in a sense that people, that shot apartments markets go for a specific reason. They know it's there, there's a local aspect to it. And there's a chance to use a, crypto lake or native cryptocurrency aspect to that farmer's markets. So imagine going to a farmer's markets and saying, okay, I need to transact in farmer's token so I can get my rewards this week. Because if I transact at farmer's token, when I'm at the farmer's market, I get,$500 off next time I shop. There's things like that to where people are building projects right now. That are just crazy concept that are going to be involved in your daily life. That they're going to be able to create rewards systems for people that are going to be utilizing these, crypto decentralized initiative projects. If that makes sense, not only are the ones like Bitcoin car Dano, Ethereum, all of these massive concepts projects. these are all the, pretty much the internets of what's going to be the future of technological applications. So where you have the internet and then you have Facebook, and then you have all of these other applications that we've built within the internet. There's going to be now these systems that allow for these decentralized applications to be built on top of. So it seemed like one of the biggest reasons a normal person would be excited about this is something like you're saying these reward programs, because if you're logging into something like Facebook or Amazon, you're still just using someone else's place. It's like, it's like being a visitor in someone else's home, but if you're on this farmer's market app or something, that's build with a decentralized network, you're actually being a small part owner right. In that system. And you're going to be rewarded handsomely for investing in different decentralized systems, probably moving forward. Does that, does that make sense, right? Yes. So a great example of that. Another applicable one, I I've wrote down a few projects that I thought it would be applicable to just normal people, that aren't going to be just like a crazy to crypto, but another one is brave, right? Brave browser is just like your Google Chrome. It's like your internet Explorer. It's built with the same kind of back end applications like chromium. but it rewards you for certain teaching and being a part of the the process with breaking tokens or I think it's back tokens, but instead of being a part of Google's search process or internet spores search process, when you're just browsing the internet, for whatever reason you're going to be rewarded for doing so in that native currency through brewery browser. Okay. So just by using their browser, you're going to be rewarded a small amount in their currency. why though? Just cause you're helping their systems stay up and running. Like how, how can I afford to give all their users money just for using the. So that goes back to the proof of work algorithm and the, what we're doing to provide that validation. That's exactly what you're doing by being a part of the system and providing and searches and queries and things like that. You are creating a proof of work concepts in order to provide validations that this system is, working. It it's, it's the network validation concepts, where that's the power that you're providing and why you're being rewarded for it. So this proven work cost that that is sometimes inefficient with how it uses energy can be otherwise utilized in different ways, such as this other brave browser concept that is crazy, applicable and, worth looking at. Okay. So why don't more people set up mining rigs in their house? Like, is it, is it expensive? Is it hard? Is it difficult? If I were to ask you, Hey, will I seriously want to set up one of these in my house over the next two weeks? What, what kind of advice would you give to me? You want to see? One? Yeah, this is going to be over audio. So not everyone will be able to see it, but yeah, tell me about it. What is it doing that isn't a theory of minor. It's got six. It's got 6 30, 60 TEI. GPU's so it's, I guess it's considered a supercomputer. So imagine this computer right here. But with just six processors. And what that does is provide hashing power for the proof of work algorithm that is the Ethereum network at this moment. And so I guess the reason why people don't don't mind in their homes is one it's, it's not the easiest thing to learn how to build the rigs itself. The ones that I'm utilizing at least these are purpose-built. So I built them for this, for this reason you can buy like commercial minors, but you still need a two 10 volt outlets which are not typically available in the U S so it's kind of hard to do that, but otherwise it does use a lot of electrical. And you need to have a certain electric rate in order to be profitable. So, whereas I mine at about 8 cents a kilowatt and I'm able to be profitable. Some other people in other states in the us may mine at 12 to even higher and they can't be profitable. I was going to say, so that thing definitely uses less energy. Then big coin that it's it's mining, right? Like it costs less to run that, then you're making off of it. Correct? No, I would say this uses about 3000 Watts versus a Bitcoin miner, which uses like 3,400 Watts. So it's very similar. The electric utilization from the machine. Sorry. I'm not saying compared to Bitcoin, I'm just saying a theory. You're making more money off of that than you're spending on the electricity to run it. Right? Definitely. Okay. Okay. Okay. But it was difficult to set up and you had to go over some hardware and software challenges, right? Like, is there a certain language that Ethereum uses that you needed to basically upload some code for it? Or were you able to find that online or how difficult was the software aspect of setting? No. Yeah, I understand. There's no code that's necessary. Regarding setting up your mining hardware, everything is built. There are programs such as Bolina editor, which you will upload the mining platform, which you're going to mind on. So all you have to do is, upload a brain to a flash drive plug it into the motherboard. That is the the mining hardware that gives it the, the brains to mine, or do what it needs to do. So you're not having to really code anything. All you're having to do is upload a program from a website onto a flash drive, stick that into the four that you built in, and now it knows what it needs to be. Okay. And so how long would it take for one of those things to pay off? Like how much did all the hardware costs and did it take a year or two for it to pay itself off and then start making money? Like what was the timeframe? Yeah. Great question. So originally I started last year, February I went in for something like that, 30 K around there. And I was able to start with like 15 GPU's. So that's, like two or three mining rigs for Ethereum And so probably a three, three mining race. And that was during like the run-up of this year, a time where it was still kind of coming up. It think it was before it was at, even before it was, it was around 2,500 when I got into the miners and I was able to build everything and get it together. So there was still a lot of time to go. I think we ended the bull run at 4,500 or something like that. So during that time it took me about three months to get an up three months, maybe six months to get the original investment back to where I then took that and bought back in for more hardware. Not quite as much, but Bob, back in at like half of what I did originally and bought about half the horrible. Made that back in maybe three months and did the same thing again in just a few months ago. So it's definitely been a parent that I'm able to reinvest in order to grow the amount of hardware that I'm utilizing and the amount of crypto that I'm able to mind from it. Okay. So it took about three months, you said to make that money back and then you reinvested it, but that's pretty good then. Yeah. would honestly say probably six months, six months, and then that's fine, man. It's still awesome. It was absolutely fantastic, but it, it definitely took a learning curve. I definitely I'm thankful I had somebody I got into it by, on Facebook. I was just looking to buy some cheap miners and figure it out by myself. And this guy was offering consulting services. So I paid him like five grand to come down to Virginia and like papers, hotel, and everything. we stayed we had like 12 hour sessions where we would just be building and I would be learning in my basement and plugging up these minors. So from there I knew what I needed to do. And in fact, he is now Doing a much bigger service where he's providing commercial space where you can rent out mining space. So that's an even bigger project on his end and it's been great to be partnered with somebody that's been so influential in space and to be able to make connections that I have. That's awesome, man. That's one problem that I actually have, like on my journey as an entrepreneur is finding a good mentor. You know, I have a hard time trusting someone and letting them in and kind of opening myself up to being mentored. But I need to get advice from people, you know, so it's very difficult for me to find the right advice. Sometimes it's a part of the reason I created this podcast too, is to create a flow of just mentorship or, people who I can ask for advice. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Shout out to all the people that have been on this podcast, by the way kind of Tommy and I have been looking, I've been talking about me being on the podcast for a little while now. And I've been kind of apprehensive about it just cause I've, I've kinda, I told Tommy I was out, I wanted to wait for the perfect time, but I was, you know, in my head I was like, there's never gonna be a perfect time. There's never, it's never going to be exactly what I want it to be until it is. and maybe come back to it and maybe one day it will be. Yeah. Yeah. I was telling you that with my app I was always waiting for it to be ready and ready. It was never, it's never really ready. You know, it's something you're always kind of working on. So I'm glad you came on and shared where you're at, instead of trying to wait until everything was perfect, you know, but why aren't you at, where do you want to be at and what kind of have you struggled with, you know, to get there? Because to me, it basically seems like you could own like a whole you know, storage unit full of these mining things. Right. But the end goal for you seemed something more of a hybrid where you're you're you own a couple of these, and then you have like a, like an educational, YouTube channel type of thing. Right. But that's just kind of like what it looks like for me. What, what is your, your longterm goal with this and what have been some, difficulties getting there? That's a great question. Thank you for asking it., I know mining is going to be a part of my, of my long-term. Long-term learnings. I'm passionate about mining and what the technology, what the proof of work concept can provide to this space. And as well as alternative concepts. But I'm also in love with marketing. I've always thought that my calling has been to facilitate communication I feel like I can do that very well through marketing and even now even more so that I can apply it towards the crypto and my three space. Hopefully in the next five years or so, I can be a part of a company that's has a few employees that are similarly driven to. I guess, to optimize on the same kind of business concepts and projects and initiatives that that drive me, that interests me. That's why we're working. We were going to work with like the niche group of crypto and web three projects, blockchain projects, because those are what interests me. Those are what gets me out of bed to like excites me about the future of technology. And I'm excited to optimize those campaigns and get those, projects out there to be the next crazy technology that influences the world. It's possible, man. I already know some friends that are leaving their nine to fives to go work on some web three startup companies. I think, you know how there's so many people leaving their jobs right now, they're calling it the great resignation. I'm pretty sure that's because there's so many web three companies popping up right now. And it seems very similar to the.com burst of the late nineties, right. Where everyone was just leaving their company and starting a website. And they didn't really know the potential it had, and it's kind of hard to predict it, but it's definitely going to change the world as well. It's going to revolutionize everything. I just keep listening to podcasts and reading books about it and just getting excited. I mean, it seems like it's going to truly change the way we can govern ourselves too, you know, as a society. I mean, I don't think governments would adapt this type of technology as far as like lawmaking, but it doesn't matter, like with something like Bitcoin popping up, it's already governing the way that we distribute our money systems. So whether governments are involved or not, it's definitely going to be. A more of a libertarian power structures that are gonna be set up, Because of web three technologies, Yeah. It, it's, it's exciting, but it's also scary, I will say, because you kind of touched on the current financial aspects of how the world works and definitely understanding how many applications there are with crypto and web three and everything involved with it. You can understand how much money is going to begin to flow into the space and how much money will also flow away from traditional economies. That's a whole nother thing where it's kind of scary to think about the future Of investing where your money is at and if it's going to still be as good of an option as it is today in the next 20 years. Yeah. I mean, I think hopefully it'll just grow the pie, right? There's that mentality of like, okay, we gotta cut another slice out for the crypto space or whether crypto and web three, we'll just grow the whole pie and there'll be more value created in new places, which is what I hope will happen, you know, instead of seeing value or, or money being, like you said, pushed from kind of the legacy systems over to the crypto space. I hope that's. Exactly what happens, but I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. Yeah, no, no. I liked that opinion to do that. There is still enough pie to go around for legacy system and new, innovative different systems. I like them. Okay. Let's jump into how crypto has affected you create an Afghanistan. You were telling me right before we got on camera it's just super interesting. All of the, crypto initiatives that are applicable towards trying to create peace in in Ukraine at this moment. Whereas I know that it seems kind of crazy. Ukraine has a Twitter right now where they've posted their Ethereum and Bitcoin addresses. You can donate to this efforts where, the Ethereum foundation has already confirmed that this is their valid government address. And you can make a donation and try to make a difference in what's going on in that area right now. But also there are things like in Russia where you're not able to get the money that you rightfully own that you've earned out of your banks right now, because there's no ATS. You can't get a regular ATM. So now people are literally, as we spoke of earlier, having to rely on cryptocurrencies and minors, such as digital ATM's, so they can still utilize some money. So they can still transact somehow with some kind of currency. So the applications of cryptocurrency are being very well outlined in these, new times of war yeah. I did not know that that's wild. And you think that this is helping fund projects for Ukraine, that wouldn't have been possible before, like cryptocurrency or would we just got it there a different way? We may have gotten it there a different way. I don't think that there would have been such a public outpour of support though with these new technologies, people in the public like myself even are now able to quickly make a donation to Ukrainian efforts to support them. Whereas there's a reason why people haven't, donated through other traditional paths. It creates a new avenue to be able to to support well, definitely with the Russian currency plummeting, right. Then you couldn't have donated the same amount of funds over there, the same way. Right. You know, because it might not be worth the same. Right. And at a certain point. So I think definitely with the people of Russia, crypto is probably a very good asset for them at the moment. Is that fair to say other countries is the same with, volatile economies. So not only Russia is Russia experience in this, but other countries around the world experienced these volatile times and their currency where it's worth pretty much nothing. So they then depend on something that is a little bit volatile. Yes. Typically, but it's still there. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. I didn't know, just in general, like the fundraising world has gotten a lot easier with things like NFTs and crypto projects that get popped up. Right. It's just much easier for people to fund ideas in this space than ever before. It seems like no matter where those efforts are being head towards. Right? Yeah. Even my sister, she worked for quite a large finance company and she's also does take docks. She's known as trading the project. If you look her up, her team has, are working on fundraising and, community fundraising in the future and how that's going to be applied. So that's exciting, exciting research. You know, I don't know if you're gonna be able to answer this question, but I figured I might ask if you're in the marketing. Would you have any advice for me on how to market this podcast? Should I go about it through like Facebook advertisements or YouTube ads, or I don't know if that's up your alley, but what would you, what kind of, do you have any marketing bias, maybe general advice when it comes to online marketing? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Typically to drive brand awareness. It takes a certain, certain type of marketing. You don't want to waste money when it comes to marketing because it can be expensive, but there are avenues that you can go through that are just organic optimizations, such as creating a website that has a lot of utility to it, where people are going to click on stuff. People are going to interact with it all the time, and they're going to sign up for newsletters and they're going to do all of these things, engage with your website. That creates a community and a reason for our audiences to come back and a place for people to go to and engage and interact. Whereas a lot of people become tick-tock famous, They don't create a space that is optimized for their audience to engage with. So, whereas Tik TOK stars might get famous. Does not really a place for advertisers have their cut of the pie in there. So yes, it's been a painting. It's great. But to really start optimizing for yourself and for your audience and create a place for them become a community engagement with that's one of the most important aspects of creating a brand and marketing. I've heard recently that a lot of Tik TOK stars are trying to move to create a podcast or at least a YouTube channel, because the way the algorithm on Tik TOK works is that it's very user centric, not like follower, channel focused, so people could watch your videos every day on Tik TOK and not really give a crap about who you are. Or what you're doing, right. Because they're just kind of showing up on their for you page. And they're not really following you as a creator. Whereas like, if you get them even just onto a YouTube channel or something like a podcast, now they're following you and they're caring about the things that, you know, if you want to promote a product or something, they're kind of more invested in you as a creator instead of just getting their entertainment from you on there for you algorithm page. So I definitely see got into the right place, where they want to network with people that are, engaged with you. Yeah. So I'm definitely already putting a lot more emphasis on my podcast, Instagram account, just because the reels from Instagram will feed people back to like a place where they can get information about the podcast instead of just on Tech-Talk it's not really going to have the same retention, you know So what have your struggles been just like starting a company, starting a project outside of your nine to five you were saying you want to talk about maybe conviction or some general ideas about kind of following your dream, your passion, doing something extra outside of what's expected as an employee, yeah. I have a. Thing of my sweater that I've pinned right now, it says, and this is talking about crypto. It says beginning your crypto journey is like getting up early on a sunrise boss tour. It's hard as hell to get up early, but it's for sunrise bus tour, you know what you're getting, you're going up the mountain and you're going to get the beautiful sunrise and the beautiful peak that you're going to see. So imagine that is similar to beginning your crypto journey. So you're going to, you're going to get up. You're gonna to start going up the, up the mountain on the bus, and there's going to be options for you to pull the, bus cord and get off and get off at its peak, this beautiful overlook. That's going to be a beautiful opportunity. You'll probably make a lot of money from it. And if you stick to it, it's a great view. But you know that this sunrise mountain, top bus tour. So you know what the objective and the goal is, if you are patient and you wait to get to the top. And so you keep on going up the mountain and once you get to the top, although you've been patient and you've, been waiting where other people might have gotten off and spent their. Time, their investment elsewhere. You've basically waited to get to the top and you've gotten to the top where it's the best view possible. And you've done all the research that you could have done and you apply yourself everywhere you can. And that's kind of how I feel about my journey right now is, is kind of, I feel as though I've, reached where I wanted to reach, and I've learned so much about this space, I continue to learn every day. That it's really awesome. Yeah. That's really important, man, to have that kind of patience with things and not expect those immediate returns, what does it take like specifically to have patients with crypto and the space? Is it just understanding, right? Like the market will have these down moments and these moments Warren Buffett. He says, write something about buy when the market is low. What does the saying? Be brave when everyone else is being coward or, something like that. Right. Basically, what does it take to be patient with this industry? I think it's, it's really applicable to also the style of work that I've chosen to do in mining. Whereas though, a lot of people will argue and say, mining's not worth it. You can just, you can trade some beef and get that, get the same kind of profit like you were doing for mining in whatever. It's like, yeah, yeah, you can do that. That's an overlook. That's a peak that you can stop off and go enjoy. But. For me, I love mining. I love watching my investment grow and watching my investment ROI and then continuing on after that. that's been, what's fun for me. And what's been, what's been really successful as well. it's definitely, you know, you're setting up a whole system to be paid later, right? Like this is probably the most patient and long-term route with crypto, you know, other than just holding your coin, but actually setting up systems in your house that are going to generate money while you sleep, you know, are there any other arguments against mining? Do? People say you shouldn't do this and are there any good arguments as to why this isn't the route people should take? Morally and ethically? No. I would just say for people to mind their own business and live their own lives, but some people might say that, you're wasting energy. But for me, it's a way of life. It's a way to, take on your time and to subtract, from the time that you're working subtract from the time that you're away from your family. Having to give, time to other money-making objectives where you can do it 24 7. You can make money in your sleep. You can make more money when you're sleeping, then you can spend when you're awake. I don't really see any reason not to do it. almost want to go by my own rig and set this up to at least one of them, just to understand it and just to have some passive income, it seems like the way to go about things, Node mining as well. That is a new, style of mining. It doesn't require all the, bulky hardware aspects of it, but it's still similar just to kind of concept of the verification that's happening. What does the name black caddy mean? Yeah. Yeah. Blocked catty. So a caddy is typically the golfers assistant. Somebody's helping somebody out. And a block is the precursor to block chain. And I'm referencing blockchain, crypto services. So I'm a caddy for the blockchain and crypto space, a block catty. I should have been. I should've been able to figure that out on my own. I'm not, I'm not a golf guy. I don't know. I don't, I, I thought it was a clever when I came up with it, but who knows? I think it's a time will tell. I know square just changed their name to block, so, oh, really? That's interesting. I did not know that. I think CEO of Twitter. Jack Dorsey Jack Dorsey. I feel like he stepped down as the CEO of Twitter so that he could get more involved with crypto projects. That's my theory, at least. Yeah. I undoubtable I think he's for the Bitcoin lightening network. He's doing a lot of work for that for that, for that space too. There's a lot of financial institution projects such as PayPal, Stripe square. Those are not as massive, obviously as like visa and MasterCard, but obviously they are more flexible in their capabilities. And so what they're doing is creating innovation in the crypto space that the world will, I'm sure be grateful for in the next 20 years. What are some of the people you look up to in this space as Jack Dorsey, one of them, are there some other CEOs or Twitter accounts, are you tubers that you go to for your information and that you kind of are inspired by? Yet Jack Dorsey's a, an interesting individual and I definitely do follow him for his innovative teachings, but also I guess the Winklevoss twins. They're they're an interesting duo that have seemingly always been chasing something, you know, they've always been in the mix, whether it be with mark Zuckerberg or on the brink of a new, a new and innovative digital wallet, such as Gemini. they're behind that Gemini, the big boss twins they're either the owners or they, they have a large investment in it, they've done some work in the crypto space and I'm excited to see what they have to offer as well. What is your favorite like crypto wallets or crypto exchanges that you use or recommend these? Yeah, so I personally, and I haven't done much research in this space to be clear, but I use Exodus as my personal wallet. And I just used Coinbase and a and Q coin as my preferred exchanges, two coins and an interesting one, not too many people on it yet, but they've proven to be very trustworthy over time. I would not recommend Robin hood do not use Robin hood for anything. This is not any, if you're on Robin hood and get off Robin hood, that's Charlie said in, the interview you just listened to with him. He said that that's one of the reasons he moved over to crypto because of the whole Robin hood scandal made him uncomfortable buying and selling stocks like personally. Charlie's one that I him and I have started to talk more and more just about crypto. I mean, I've been friends for a while as well. So I'm excited to see where he goes in his uh, Yeah, I actually think it'd be fun to get like you and him or some other people on like a three-way call, you know, for crypto, especially cause I'm not as knowledgeable in this topic as everyone else's and so it'd be cool to get a couple of crypto heads on here. I got one more interview lined up too, with a guy he's creating some sort of video game platform for NFTs, where you can basically get paid to play video games, which I think is like another big cool innovation that's going to come with. Decentralized networks is like, I think we're basically on the cuffs of just getting paid to play video games because of the way these NFTs are so potentially valuable, the proof of work algorithm providing your. Power or whatever you're providing to a system. That's the same application as what you're doing in NFTs or in, in games where you're getting paid to play, you're providing some kind of service that is you doing something to earn whatever you're earning and whatever native currency. Yeah. It makes sense. If someone's getting paid, just like you were saying for using that browser, you know, if we can tie gaming into mining in a certain way, it's just going to be entertainment to go make money online, you know, and it's going to be a pretty awful. I love gaming and I can't wait to see what kind of NFT objects I can own and kind of forms that I can take in whatever virtual world that kind of okay. Metta verses and things. What have you they've been around for years? Let's be honest. They're just, they're just lower five game Arby's call of duty was pretty much the metaverse. but, okay. So given that Metta versus the concept is pretty cool with, with AR kind of virtual style glasses and so I heard an idea recently it was overlapping instances in which you've interacted with people before as a social concept. So you're wearing a style of AR glasses. And when you look at someone pretty much a pops over their head and says, reminds you where you've interacted with them before. That's pretty tight. Yeah. That is a cool concepts. I mean, yeah. So going off of that, I do think the AR and the metaverse is going to be really cool once they can kind of layer it over, you know, tech, I don't think we're going to be using screens the same way once we can just kind of put holograms places, right. Like that. But also to go back to the gaming, if you remember rune scape, I don't really play it, but people would make a lot of money playing rune scape back in the day, just by getting certain valuable items and selling them. So the whole NFT idea is not necessarily new. Like we've had systems like this set up before, you know similar like rune scape was in Barack all the times to selling, selling different armor and things I used to, I used to game, I played moonscape. Yeah. Oh my gosh. You could sing some hours into that game. Let's see. The other thing I wanted to talk about was just your fitness journey. So it was like 2020, I think when the pandemic hit, you lost like at least 30 pounds or 40 pounds or something. And I wanted to with chat with you then I don't know how your fitness journey has been since then, but at least what was it like? During the time period where you lost a bunch of weight and what kind of helped you get there? And yeah. What was that all about? This was, I don't know if you can see this, but this was my face in 2020. I see it. It's just like quite play round as, yeah, no, you're still looking good, man. You thin, but yeah, it's been great. this year I've only been drinking water other than some time in Puerto Rico where I had a little break, so I've only been during water this year, so no S no sprites. No, not the thing. No beer. But also I run a lot now I run probably 50 miles a week or so. Just I like to have a long, like a 10 K on a Sunday and then like a couple of miles every day, but that's been like a long, long time coming to be able to do that. That didn't start off that way. it started off when I was living in Arlington and I, and I lived with four roommates next to the Gold's gym in Boston. And one of my roommates was also really into fitness. So him and I would kind of. And now I've definitely dropped off. I dropped from like 200 pounds to about one 60 for the knife. I've got a congrats man. That's awesome. I don't know if I caught you right when that happened, but a late congratulations for me then you so much. It feels better. It influences the way I'm in my life now. And hopefully we'll continue to do so. Yeah, man. That's funny that you said water. That's exactly what Lauren said to if she could give someone one piece of advice. Right. And me too, I, I got one of those gallon jugs recently, or half gallon jugs and it, and it completely changed my life. You know, I even kind of replaced my, my smoking habit with drinking water. So, you know, I used to have like a Juul and I replaced that habit with just drinking water all the time. And it made such a huge impact on my life too, you know? Yeah, it's been awesome. Just a kind of seeing the changes and indefinitely trying to influence them by drinking water, eating a lot more food and different types of food has been really, almost scientific over the last couple of years, how I've applied different eating. And then when I eat and what I eat when I eat after I've done an exercise or what have you. Hmm. Well, how do you think about diet then now compared to beforehand? So now I believe that this is a time and place for everything. So if you've done a days long of, of running and, hard work, you can go have two pieces of bread, have two pieces of bread and a steak. That's totally fine. If not healthy. That's going to be more healthy for you than really, if you don't have that replacement of carbohydrates from after that long days of work. But before I started really understanding fitness sense and eating and nutrition things, I would do that as workout still and not have that bread or not have something that I felt as though it was not good for you. Now learning that everything pretty much is, I mean, other than a few artificial things, Mostly everything that's that's natural is it can be good for you depending on how you've run your day or what you've done in the day. Yeah, man, I definitely have learned carbs are a good thing. I don't know where that myth got started, and a lot of people are still on the keto diet and not eating carbs. I don't understand why they do that because I, a lot of carbs all the time, I think as long as you're working out, I guess, but even if you're not working out, you need them. I mean, if you're, if you're sitting in bed all day, if you're literally not doing anything, maybe don't eat a lot of bread or ice cream or what have you, but um, you are an active individual. There is nothing wrong with grades. what does it take to have this much motivation? Right. You're in good shape. You're starting, you know, a side project, you got bigger plans to expand it into media and stuff. And I don't know why, why are you so driven all of a sudden compared to like two or three years ago when you were out of shape? obviously I don't think you're an expert to talk on nutrition specifically, but you could be an expert on just how to make that radical shift in your life from someone who is apathetic, who doesn't care, who doesn't have big dreams, what caused the shift and like what does it feel like? What is it? Yeah. What do you attribute all this change to over the last couple of years? Yeah, that's a really good question. Thank you. I guess the timing of it was Right either before or right as a pandemic kit. So I'm not sure if it's really replicable in a way. But the disconnect from what was reality back in the day, that's that happened when the pandemic hit and, how I took that mood forward. Cause I mean, when the pandemic hit, I actually took my laptop, my work laptop into my car and drove around the country. By myself, obviously I didn't interact with hardly anybody. I slept in the back of my car. This was for two and a half months just driving around the U S just seeing everything, and that was big influential in myself because at the time I lived with three roommates, great guys, we all live near the gym and it was hectic. And it was like a guys frat house, which was fun. But I realized on that trip when I was going around the country the, the necessity of self-accountability and how important my alone time and time for myself was what I could really do with that time. And so I guess that trip that trip around the country, has it been an advocate really influenced me to take accountability of all that I was doing and figure out how I best can support myself and being better. Yeah, you wrote down here too, on our notes, that freedom was something that's important to you. It seems like the pandemic gave you an opportunity to kind of be free and to, you know, take that trip around the country. I think a lot of people got their own time back, right. Working from home and stuff. So you realize how valuable that freedom was and you wanted to create a company and create fitness habits that gave you more freedom and more ability to, to have passive income and to have, the fitness to go do adventures and, whatever you wanted to do with that free time. Yeah. I think being free to do what I wanted to do is important, but also utilizing the time that we have to the best of our ability for your passions. So it's important to me to do what you're passionate about and spend your time with those that you wanna spend time with. It's so important to, spend time with people you care about and make memories with the ones you love because those are the two most important things in life for me are our time and memories. Yeah, man, to tie back into the podcast. That's a big reason I did this podcast because as I started working on my app more and more, every year I was isolated myself from so many people, and then it became time to promote the app, you know? And so I built the podcast, but part of the reason I stuck with the podcast is because I finally was able to start connecting with people again. And I was realizing like the value of just building connections. And if I look back on my life and I had worked on this app all these years and it didn't do well, then I might regret it. But if this podcast doesn't do well, well, then these are still memories and time that I'm spending with people I enjoy. And it's always going to be worth it. Even if no one listens, for me to sit down and, and connect with people instead of just writing code for eight hours a day or, observing some marketing algorithm these things are great, but they're not. It wasn't allowing me to connect with people in a healthy way that I felt like I needed, Yeah. That's the same, kind of thing. I felt kind of when I was, when I was still working just a traditional nine to five and not trying to extend myself, to do more, now that I'm just a lot more full not, I don't know about full, but just a lot more, a lot more busy and a lot more kind of excited for what I'm doing today. I'm going to do tomorrow. Well, that's awesome, man. I love to see it when people are spending time on what they love, what they're passionate about. I really hope that the whole web three industry just does well over the next decade and that you're able to continue to progress with a block catty both the mining and like the marketing fronts. I think very exciting, very exciting space to be in some glad that I know you, I know someone involved in it right now, because like I said, I haven't talked to anyone who's into mining yet. This is definitely a an exciting conversation just to, just to sit down with someone who is so invested into it, yeah. I appreciate the time to be able to come in and then kind of talk about it. And and I'm excited for anybody that sees this. I hope you'll reach out and ask questions and try to learn about this industry because it's an industry where you can jump in and you can succeed and I I'm here to help. I want everyone to know that I'm down to help. Let me know, hit me up with any questions you have. You can reach out informally on my phone or through block catty.io. But yeah, I'm on Twitter too. I ad block catty. All right, guys, you heard him go reach out on Twitter at block catty. If you have any questions about crypto or mining thanks will and I think that's going to be about it. Well, that was really awesome. I'm glad we kind of hit on a lot of the topics and block caddy was a big one of them, and I'm really excited for anybody that reaches out. I think a lot of people probably are in the same space trying to learn about, the opportunities and in crypto. And I hope that we can be helpful Yemen.
