Heating Your Pool & Home With Bitcoin Mining Featuring Nicolas Drouin

Speaker A: So I was literally in the pool with my friend. We had all those miners running. I was like, we need to find a way how to transfer that heat to your pool. I mean, it's, uh, quite expensive heating a pool. So let's see if we can have like, you know, two birds, one stone. In winter time, you heat your house. In summertime, you heat your pool. So just like that, I began designing a, a machine for, uh, reusing the heat. Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome back to the Compass Mining podcast. Today I am here with Nick from Constellation Heating and we are going to talk or continue some of the conversations we've had around bitcoin mining heat reuse. Nick, how are you doing?

Speaker A: I'm great, thanks. Jared, how are you?

Speaker B: I'm, I'm doing well. It's a Monday. The week has started. Spring is here. You're up where, where? You're up in Canada?

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm based in Montreal, Canada. So the French part, uh, of Canada, yeah.

Speaker B: Lovely, lovely. Yeah. I'm over right now in Boston. So the spring is here. You know, when it's over for us, like 50 or 60 degrees, which, I don't know, what's that, like 16 to 18 degrees or something like that. It just feels awesome. Even though on the flip side, when it's the fall and it hits that it feels really cold. So anyways, we're in that beautiful moment of like perfect weather, especially if you like to get outside. So it's good time. Um, thank you for hopping on today. Let's just dive right in and talk about Constellation. I was looking at your background a little bit and it looks like your kind of dive into Bitcoin was similar to mine in the sense that it started with Ethereum and then you course corrected and, and got to the, got to the btc. So if you could talk to me about your cryptocurrency journey and then your mining journey, which to be fair, sounds very similar to mine.

Speaker A: Yeah, so I started, actually had no knowledge. I mean, I knew what Bitcoin was. I knew, barely knew what Ethereum was, but it was most actually a friend of a friend who introduced us to, um, mining. So he was building, you know, those back in the days, the GPU rigs. You know, you stack like six GPUs and uh, start mining with that. So we bought many of them. So knowing that this guy could help us, you know, figure out the. I, um, would say more the software side. My background is mechanical engineering. So, you know, having the electrical work done, the dock for, for heat managing, managing the Heat was not really well, was a challenge. But, uh, I was not afraid of this challenge to do it by myself. And quickly I figured out that even though those rigs are way less powerful than today's Bitcoin, uh, ASIC miner, dealing with the heat, when you're doing that inside of a house, it can be complicated. And then it was very progressive. Uh, okay, initially we used ac, just right next to the mining, uh, rigs. We thought, you know, having 2, 3, 4 ACs were enough to cool the room was not enough. And then we dug into the H Vac thing. We connected everything on the H Vac in the house. And then summertime came and then what are we doing with the heat? So I was literally in the pool with my friend. We had all those miners running. I was like, we need to find a way to how to transfer that heat to your pool. I mean, because, uh, it's uh, quite expensive heating a pool. So let's, if we can have like, you know, two birds, one stone. In winter time, you heat your house. In summertime, you heat your pool. So just like that, I began designing a, a machine for, for ah, reusing the heat. And through that journey I, I totally switched to ethereum mining to bitcoin mining. And then there was also the noise that was really a problem. Those ethereum rigs, I mean you can hear them, but it's not that bad. When you get into bitcoin mining, the high pitch of those fans, you need to get rid of that. So I learned a lot about immersion. And then, yeah, so that's how my journey. Basically I started mining back in 2016, end of 2016, early 2017 maybe. And uh, made the, how would you say that, the rightful course, uh, correction towards Bitcoin, maybe 20, 21 if I remember.

Speaker B: Yeah, I got into Bitcoin in 2017 and then in the pandemic was mining ethereum for about 16 months in my buddy's basement. And that was because the power setup that he had in his house couldn't really handle an asic. It would have been kind of dangerous. ASIC was too loud, as you said. And we couldn't really find one because the prices when we went to buy were just so high. Uh, and it was easier for us because we're in the pandemic. It was easier for us to source some GPUs. We got like nine GPUs, got that metal rack that everyone seen threw them on there. And we were just, you know, mining Ethereum and then turning it into bitcoin which a lot of people have done. And so similar, uh, similar that we were both kind of doing that. And then you talked about, you talked about how you then created products, right? You looked at heating a pool, which I think is fascinating. And actually I have a question before even getting into that, what are the differences between heating and, I just don't know, heating an above ground pool and then heating an in ground pool. Do you guys, does your product work for both or would it be better for one or the other?

Speaker A: And why, I mean it doesn't matter. So what's important is getting fresh or cold water to the miner so you can get the uh, you can keep the immersion, uh, fluid cool. That's the only, that's the only thing that really matters. So typically in ground pools are bigger. So I see, I see the, the pool as the heat sink. So for me it's uh, if it's a heat uh, in ground pool, typically what it just means is you can put more miners and you can cool more miners because above ground pool they tend to get warm, uh, faster. And uh, I mean if you design your system correctly, it can handle both with no difference. But there's no difference really between the two.

Speaker B: Okay, cool. So there's no difference. And I love what you just said. The pool is actually the heat sink, which is fascinating. And so you need the water to be cold. Therefore yes, it makes sense that the in ground pool would allow you to then have more potential miners or be able to cool the, the, the liquid immersion more. Fascinating. What? And now, and I just want to ask another question because I've just kind of geeked out here now that I was thinking about the in ground, the outground pool. When you go to a customer, you show up to their house. I'm trying to think of a way that we can talk apples to apples around a pool size. Because if you say a uh, pool of 2,000 gallons, that means nothing to me. I'm just not going to be able to picture that. Maybe people who are listening or watching can't picture it either. But you said, you know, you're at your buddy's house and you're like, wow, what if we figured out a way to heat this using bitcoin mining? And obviously we gotta follow the incentive. The incentive here is that your buddy's already spending X amount of money monthly in the summers or in the fall to be able to, maybe even through the winter to be able to heat his pool. Can you talk to me about the economics that create the incentive to the reason why people come to you and they're like, we want to buy these because, you know, heating our pool is so expensive.

Speaker A: Yeah, well there's, there's a few things you need to take into consideration when you want to do that. So the first thing I tell my customer, if you want bitcoin, just bitcoin, you, you, you don't, don't, don't buy my heater. I mean buy bitcoin directly. So you really need that heater if you want to use heat as a byproduct. So you need heat. Either you want to heat your pool because you don't have any eater or you already have a heat pump or natural gas heater and you want to replace it by something more profitable. So the uh, for me, what I, well it always change every day like the um, economical threshold where it becomes um. So typically I say my, to my customer around $0.13 US per kilowatt hour. If you, if you're below that, you're making profit not even reusing the heat. If you're above that, um, well then, then you need to, we call that sometimes sun cost or you need to compare to what are you going to use to heat your pool. Is it, is it going to be a natural gas, you know, burner or is it going to be a heat pump? So if you, if you take the cost of, I like to take the um, operating costs or the, the life cycle cost, um, because the machine, the capex investment or the initial investment to buy a, a bitcoin heater is going to be more expensive. I mean just those miners, there's, it's hard to find them cheap. So. And they're 80% of the cost of the machine. So initial investment is going to be higher. But if you plan on running the heater uh, for two or three years, you, you can do the math. But you'll find out pretty quickly that running a bitcoin heater, if you have like cheap power, I would say below 15 cents, um, within a year or two you'll have a payback or it's going to be more economical to run a bitcoin heater than a regular heater.

Speaker B: Yeah. And walk me through your products now and I'm going to shout out your website. So because I don't think you can shout out a website, you know, there's not too many times you can give the publicity. So constellation heating.com and it looks like you have the OG edition and then the Satoshi edition. Yeah, I'm assuming that the OG edition came out first, but I don't know, um, or am I wrong? And talk to me about the product development and the timeline and how you. I'm sure that to get the first one There was like 50 iterations before you brought the first one to market.

Speaker A: So how I started this, like I mentioned before, I was in the pool with my friend and decided to do so I luckily have done some, you know, CAD drawings at a previous job. So I knew a little bit how to do that. So I started doing that and um, and just posted a video a like a 3D like CAD animation of what the product I'm working on would look like and it, it went viral. I mean I've, I mean I've been on X for, for many years but having so much attention from one post I was like, oh, this is almost life changing. So this gave me really the idea of okay, let's pursue and let's do this not only for myself but more a, a commercial product. So yes, many iterations is probably the 10th one and been doing now. Um, but yeah, the um. It's, it's, it's been a kind of a, A long process to uh, to develop that and make sure, um, make sure it's you know, uh, there's a difference between doing something DYI or yeah DYI at your place and then. And sending that to uh, to customers. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, bringing something to market is brutal.

Speaker A: Yeah. And the, yeah. So the, the, the first version, the idea of the product that I had was a satoshi version. You know, because the goal was to, I wanted, I, I went through the process. I'm not a geek but I, and you know I've been building websites. Uh, I'm familiar with computers and I uh, love like technology. So. But I was thinking like my father cannot do that even though I, I asked him like connect your miner to a pool. So the idea was really to onboard more people to the ecosystem and basically at the end of the day almost make an abstraction of Bitcoin if people, they don't even have to know that bitcoin is the primary source of heat. Um, so the first idea was to have the satoshi version which is fully automated. You don't have to configure your mining pool, nothing. So you don't have to manage your miners. It's all automated. But it's a bit more complex to do that than simply build a, you know, a metal enclosure and a immersion tub. So, and a lot of people were asking me so how like true bitcoiners like, how does that work? And when they found out, I mean, these guys, they, they want to, you know, they want to play with the miners. They want to know how the miners are. They, they're not afraid to connect to the miners. So they were asking me, is there a version where it's not automated, where I can choose my own pool? And I was like, oh, I never really thought of that because there's already products out there, ah, doing that, like, immersion system. I was like, oh, um, but there's no immersion system for pool heating. So I was like, okay, maybe I can do that. It's going to be like a easier entry to the market first, less, no software, no, you know, less electronics, uh, to build so that it works. So, um, I started with that. But the initial idea was really the Satoshi, uh, edition where everything is automated. And it's basically you make abstraction of like, Bitcoin is a technology heating your pool. You don't have to know that.

Speaker B: Yeah, I saw and I believe it's on the website somewhere. And I think it's a really good disclaimer. And it's basically like, look, this is a tool made for people that are probably in bitcoin and bitcoin mining. They already have some background in that. Is that accurate? It's not something that just anyone can use if they have a pool. Like, my, uh, buddy has a pool and he's in an in ground pool and he does talk about the heating costs because it's like, you know, it's a, it's another variable cost that's tied to, uh, it's a variable cost. So would it be for him knowing that he has no bitcoin, uh, mining background? Would it be better if I had a pool and I can, like, you know, troubleshoot some things and even be able to communicate with you if I need, like, customer support?

Speaker A: Well, very good question. So you touched on two things. So your bitcoin knowledge,

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Speaker A: I would say 99. Like 100. Not 99, 100 of my customers are very familiar with bitcoin, but bitcoin, the technology, not bitcoin mining. So and, and I would say all of them, uh, they've never mined before. They know what mining is, but they never work with a miner for different reason. Because maybe the noise, because the cost or the power or um, yeah, they never did whole mining. So, so those are the type of customers uh, buying the machine so they want something automated. They know about bitcoin obviously, but they don't know. They, yeah, they never, you know, uh, went through the hoops of uh, learning how to connect a pool. And so we take care of all that. So eventually. And my, I mean I'm not doing a lot of marketing because um, developing a product is complex and I want to make sure the solution is perfect before I go to someone like your, my mother, my father, who has no idea what even bitcoin is. Because the idea is uh, at the end of the day, if you don't like bitcoin, you can use the technology to heat your pool, but you can convert your bitcoin instantly to US dollar or Canadian dollars depending on where you live. And um, and yeah, you get the instant payback. You don't collect the bitcoin so you don't get the potential future price appreciation. But I mean it's more economical to run a bitcoin miner than a regular uh, pool heater. So when the product is going to be um, stable enough and tested enough, this is the path we uh, want to go to. Um, yeah, opening to a larger audience that are maybe not familiar with bitcoin, but yeah, your friend that knows bitcoin typically is the, is enough to use this product.

Speaker B: That's awesome. And then, so the Satoshi edition was first and then the OG was the second. Like V. Whatever, you know, it followed the Satoshi edition.

Speaker A: Uh, well, yeah, the, the, the very first heater that I sold was an og. Um, so yeah, I live in, um, I live in Canada and the very first I sold was in Belgium just to make it easy. So you need to figure out the logistics of sending that oversea. The power grid is different over there. But yeah, the uh, the first units that we've sold uh, were the OG and for some reason, um, today they're not the most popular, uh, people, I would say 90% of my customers now they want uh, the automated version and we're working hard on a, an update. So there's a software on the heater that you know, talks with the miner. Make ah, sure your uptime is Is uh, optimal and you can um, you know there's a little bit of control. So if you want your pool, maintain your pool temperature so you underclock over uh, or, or overclock your miner, it's all done automatically and people uh, want that ease of use. So I would say yeah 90% of the customers now they want the Satoshi version and that's, and we're working hard on that. So the, the next step is the mobile application. So you can you know, remotely monitor control uh because for now everything is local. So if you're not at your, let's say you go out of a vacation and you want to make sure everything's still running fine. I mean customers right now they're calling me. Is it working? Yes, it's still working but eventually we want to get uh, you know an app uh release for uh, for people yet it's easier to control and to monitor.

Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. Everyone loves the remote control whether it's their. What's the name of that doorbell? The uh, we don't have the video door. Yes, yeah, the ring. Yes, exactly. So talking about each individual heater whether it's the OG or the Satoshi. But let's talk about the Satoshi. It looks like it is optimal for S19 S21 form factors. Is that. That's right. Yep.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So for now uh, all the experience that I had, I started mining with S19s and luckily when they released the S21, not the plus, not the Pro, but the S21 vanilla, it Ah, has the exact same form factor so it fit in the machine inside the heater. Um, I mean we're a bit dependent on, on a few things and we cannot uh, you know um, accommodate for all miners. In my humble opinion the bit mains are maybe not the best miner but this is what uh, the market is um, uh I would say not more evolved but all the products surrounding the Bitmain ecosystem is um, a bit more developed than what's miner for example. Um, but it's coming you know, after. We need an aftermarket software so we're not running the uh. So what's minor? They were a bit limited back then. It's getting better so um, yeah eventually want to offer more um, options to the customer. So the Watts Miner is our next big improvement. But yeah for now. So you get to choose either one, two or three miners. But for now it's only S19 S21. But uh, eventually, soon, soon enough it's going to be um. The Watts Miner will be available too.

Speaker B: I was also wanting to ask on that. I assumed the what's miner was going to be up just because when you look at the overall the amount of usage but Bitmain obviously is still pretty much in charge. One of the things I was thinking about though was uh Bitdeer, they're seal miners. Have you looked into some of those? Because those have different form factors. Some of the ones that are I feel like just strictly, strictly immersion have different form factors. And would that, is that something you're interested in? And would you know, would you take that? Obviously it would change the entire potential setup of what the physical product looks like. But maybe if it's more efficient and it. Because it's made for immersion. I don't know what like what does that look like?

Speaker A: It's definitely something we're looking at. And um, another big I mean every business owner has to uh, you know um, evaluate what the risks of their business are. So for now we're stuck. I see two main um issues with the uh, with the or people doing like uh heaters like mine. I mean we, we are completely dependent on the minor manufacturers and there's not a lot of options out there. I mean it's getting better but it's somewhat limited. And if you add um the firmware on top of that we need flexibility. We need to control those miners with a, APIs with a software. So the available miners that can do that, that's an issue. And so if they, if they decide for some reason to change the form factor we need to adapt. So. So the aftermarket firmware and the ASIC manufacturers are two big risks for anyone doing heat like heat reuse products. And um, again we have um, uh Block the Jack Dorsey's company now they call it Proto I think the, their mining division. So they um, they want to release like open source chips so you can build your own with their chips. So that's a game changer for like anyone serious in that business or you can do your own miners now uh, if you can use those chips. Uh that's something we also look at.

Speaker B: Yeah, I had Tyler Stevens on the pod maybe a couple months ago. I don't know. Time is absolutely flying. And he was talking about his bitcoin mining heat reuse manual that he put out on Brains. Then I had two tuan on from 256 heat. I'm sure you know both of these guys um either personally or they're in your, you know they're in your stratosphere as a, as a Heat bitcoin mine. Heat, heat reuse guy. And you know, at that time when they both came on, I wasn't able to ask them around. I wasn't able to ask them about macro risks. You've just talked about some pretty inherent risks that are part of, honestly, bitcoin mining. To be fair, any, any part of bitcoin mining, um, even when we think about putting up facilities, it's always interesting for me is I'm pretty removed from like energization deployment and that just how, you know, the 2 millimeter difference of a form factor could change the way the entire facility has to look because the racks just aren't set up for that. And so that seems like an inherent risk. Right. Literally the size of the miner. Um, but now I get to ask you something I couldn't ask Tyler and I couldn't ask Tuan because it wasn't relevant then how are tariffs potentially impacting your work? Because I could foresee a situation, and I love that you already talked about Belgium, where maybe you are, uh, you know, uh, importing stuff from Asia, potentially China. Asia. It's coming to Canada and then you can send it to Belgium. If that doesn't touch the U.S. maybe you're avoiding and it's like, cheaper. So maybe what I'm trying to say is your, uh, you know, your product could be cheaper than someone doing this even stateside right now for global markets, for someone in Europe. Um, how. How has that kind of impacted you both maybe positively and negatively?

Speaker A: Yeah, um, well, it for sure impacted me. Uh, if we go back, I think it was February 1st or January 1st, the first, um, time, uh, President Trump announced like, potential tariffs.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And so I wasn't, I was building all the heaters that I sold, uh, pre sale. So, um, maybe six months ago. And then I had to reshuffle everything. It's like, okay, I need to ship those heaters for the, the American customers first because I don't want to, uh, I don't want them to be hit with that 25. I, I don't even know what's the percentage now of the, the potential tariff. But, um, yeah, I had to like all my, my production, uh, I had to shuffle, reshuffle that to send the units to Bitcoin to American, um, customers first. Um, I mean, it, it got me really thinking in my growth plan. Ah, you know, I mean, US is a big market and for, for that type of product. So of course it was on my radar to maybe set foot in the United States. I was looking at different location. But the tariff discussion got me um, you know this has to be on the fast track. If, if it escalates and we don't know where, where it's going to end up. But if it really, if we're, if we're hit with tariffs, I mean those machines are already ah, very expensive and um, so add 25 on top of this. Yes, we have margins, we can absorb a little bit of that. But m. Most of the uh, the price increase will be um, will be uh, directly it's going to be a hit on the price. So the customer is going to, it's going to have a price increase. So yeah, the, the tariff situation got me thinking like I need to open a manufacturing facility in the United States. But that doesn't solve the um, the uh, where the miner is coming from. So in Canada we're not hit with Chinese tariff so we still have miners. Um, it's okay but, but I've seen a change. I don't know if um, your other people uh, you're talking to have said the same thing but uh, for the last month or two it's hard to get a hand on new machines. Um, I've heard stories like the, the customs they're, they're seizing or they're inspecting more, more deliveries coming from China. So it causes delays or, or simply the machines in never get to their final destination. But yeah, so importing miners from China for us in Canada, it's not a problem yet. But um, yeah, if you open a manufacturing facility in the United States, I mean those miners gotta have to get inside the United States and they will be hit with tariffs. And when I would say 80% of the cost of the heater or the miners, that's. It hurts. Yeah, it makes a big impact. So that's why the proto uh, team, what they're doing, um, I mean it's a lot of work to do your own miner but at the end of the day if your business has to shut down because you cannot get any new miners, I mean there's no other solution.

Speaker B: So yeah, it's tough if you can't get the miners right. And all the you know, uh, uh, a colleague of mine, he said that I need to get a book and I think it was like called the Chip wars or something. I haven't read it but it goes back and it talks about the creation of when basically the world decided that all chips are essentially going to be made in Taiwan and in that part of the world. And I need to read it because it sounds like from the beginning it was almost like uh, intentionally a monopoly. Like this is where we're going to make the chips. And so I need to read that because moving forward, I love what Dorsey is doing with Proto. I just think it's crazy. And one of the things that Tyler Stevens has talked about is like he sees a future just like the way when you want to build a PC you go get all the components and you put it together. And most people listening to this have probably done that, right? You're nodding your head so I'm assuming maybe you've done that. But I can totally see a future within the next three to five years where it's like I want to put together a miner and I have a customer and they can't fit the OG or the Satoshi in their thing. So let me go get their dimensions, come back, redesign it, give them a custom price. Right. For the custom work. Um, but you know, is that something that's on your radar long term, short term? Or are you already thinking about, you know, what the world would be like if you, if you didn't have to basically be beholden by the monopoly that. It feels like bitcoin mining is out of the software firmware and then the uh, hardware side.

Speaker A: Yeah, well on the hardware side I mean the um, the plan also is to target bigger applications. I mean for me a pool heating, house heating, it's a, it can be a big market, but it was a low hanging fruit. I mean it's a um, small installation, two or three miners. So. But eventually when the solution is a bit more robust and, and you know, tested, uh, there's a lot of industrial application as well. And this is where stacking just like the big popcorn the public companies, the, the mining companies are doing. For me, stacking like thousands of miners in racks. It's, I feel like it's not an optimal solution. It's like you don't need why I need one control board for three hash boards. Why can I have like one control board for a thousand hash boards? I'm saving on um, components there. And uh, yeah, having the flexibility to further optimize the um, you know, the mining components. Uh, this is what Proto is, is represents for me. It's like I can fully optimize and now it feels like a really nicely packaged commercial uh, product. So um, yeah, a little bit of cost saving but much more on the flexibility side I would say is uh, is better. I mean you don't, you don't need like 10 enclosures or 10 miners, I don't even need the enclosure, to be honest, but I'm stuck with it and otherwise I cannot connect the control boards and all the components required for the miners to work. So, yeah, um, it's more on the flexibility and the customization. This is a real advantage of what Proto is offering, I think.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm excited. Do you know what their timelines are? Because I've heard about that for a while. I think a lot of it was. Dorsey was just like manifesting it on stage, saying it out loud. Um, do you have any idea on the timelines of when that's going to be?

Speaker A: Last time I, I, last time I spoke to them was in 2024 and, and they were telling me like, February 2024, we plan on releasing them. Uh, obviously I'm not like a public company, so I will not be the first one they call when it's ready. But they were saying February, uh, of this year and I haven't seen anything yet, so probably some delay. I guess it's, it's normal when you, you have such a big project, but it should be in 2025, I guess.

Speaker B: Yeah, that'd be very, very exciting. I'm almost thinking, I believe, I believe Dorsey will be in Vegas. So I'm almost wondering if they're holding off for that. Um, Mining Disrupt just happened. You also have WDMs, which is right before Bitcoin conference, Las Vegas. So there's a couple public moments where maybe you could be. Um, a lot of also big announcements come out on October 31st. Right. That's a very like bitcoin date. So we'll wait and see. But I'm thinking in Vegas there's going to be some big announcements. You said that your first miner, or, sorry, your first satoshi, uh, edition or the og, your first product was shipped to Belgium. So we're going from Montreal to Belgium. Where are your customers? Because clearly they're already in Europe, in North America. Do you have any in South America? Asia? Africa? Africa? Where are they?

Speaker A: Yeah, well, the, the first one in Belgium. I wouldn't say it's a, it was a mistake, but it, it made things way more complicated. Um, like shipping. Those machines are heavy. It's like £500 with the fluid and, and the miners and the heat exchanger. Like a lot of metal. So it's very heavy. It's expensive to ship. I would say, um, customers are,

Speaker B: I'd

Speaker A: like to say it depends, um, region where there's a lot of solar. Uh, so bitcoiners with like Solar installation that they're net metering and they're selling to the grid. They have excess power. So Las Vegas, Arizona, uh, a couple customers there, uh, few customers in Idaho, uh, Wyoming, you know, where the power is very cheap over there. So I mean they, they don't even have to reuse the heat. It's profitable, you know, off the shelf. And uh, a lot of Canadian customers as well, obviously because it's my region, I know a lot of people around here. And again the power is very cheap here. It's like $0.06 equivalent uh, of yeah, 6, $0.07, uh, per kilowatt hour. So and everybody here I think in the world, we're in the, it's a place where the like pools per capita are the highest. So uh, it's a good product fit, um, for, for uh, eastern Canada as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to ask about the product fit because I do think it's such a, such a unique thing. Like you're not gonna be in Florida even though there's a lot of pools probably in Florida because they just don't need it because it's, you know, you don't need your pool heated maybe like one month out of the year, you're like, oh, we want to get the pool heated. So it is a unique regional product, uh, fit. So that's good to know that you're in the, it's in your backyard, you're solving a local problem.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, looking at the, at the year, uh, you know, I just called out, you have WDMS that's going to be in Vegas, I think then the next weekend or like five, six, seven days after is bitcoin Las Vegas. Talk to me about where, what conferences you're trying to go to, why, which ones are optimal. And I also give you the out of saying I'm a small business, I do not have the budget to go because many people who come in the pod, they're getting projects up and they're like, yes, I could go spend three or $4,000 to be at Vegas, nevermind, get a booth because those are a little bit more expensive and they're just like, honestly I can just do more on X. So how are you thinking about getting out and like networking?

Speaker A: Um, well, the first conference, Bitcoin 2022 in uh, that was in Miami. That was my first bitcoin conference. I went there. I didn't have my company set up yet, but I wanted to go there because I didn't know where to buy miners. I mean you can buy them on eBay but I was like, I need to buy like over $10,000. I don't want to do that on eBay. EBay. So I was like, oh, let's go to, uh, Miami to, uh, you know, meet, um, vendors, distributors there. So that was my first, um, trip. But as a, like, as a business owner, uh, lucky, uh, enough. The Canadian Bitcoin Conference, uh, was in Montreal last year. So I was like, I cannot miss that. And it's my. It's in my backyard, so I need to bring, um, a heater there. And I was hoping to do some sales and to talk to people and show them like, it's possible to do that. And um, the, the, the, um. The one thing I came back from, from the conference was like, talking to people there, you know, what their concerns are. And I, I was like, I need to go back to the drawing tables and I know I, uh, need to open my CAD software. I need to make a lot of modifications from people were, were asking me. And the main comment I had is like, okay, if it's profitable, I need to run it like all year long. What do I do when my pool is closed? I was like, that was the question that was coming back over and over again. So I was like, I need to add something or modify my design because if I don't have any pool water coming in, I cannot cool it and it cannot run. So I added a, A dry cooler based on the, um, uh, is fully integrated with the machine, so just if it overheats, it just sends the extra heat, uh, to the dry cooler, which is like a separate radiator. And those conversations, those discussions, uh, well, it happened with real customers, uh, people who know Bitcoin. So there's a lot of insights to get from those conference. But yes, like you said, it's. It can be expensive. I will be in. I was hesitating this year to go at the Vegas, uh, conference as a, and, and as a, well, sponsor or having a booth. But yeah, it's very expensive. I felt like I, I could spend that money on, you know, building more tools or buying more tools and, and you know, producing more heaters, buying more inventory to, um, you know, fast track the delivery of. Of my heater. So I decided to go there only as a, A tourist. I, I will talk on the panel at the, ah, conference. But, um, yeah, and one other very important conference. But you go there only to meet with people. You talked about Tyler. Uh, he did the Undermine Summit back in February. I was there. And I mean, when I go to Those bitcoin conference. I spend 99% of my time on the bitcoin mining stage. Ah. So yes, the big names like Sailor, they're always interesting. Uh, but 99% like most of the time I spent it on the um, on the uh, mining stage. So that event, the Undermine event uh, that Tyler put together with Cody, I mean it's just people doing the stuff you're doing like concentrated into a room. And I've been, I've been into bitcoin ah for like six, seven years now and I uh, felt like I was the dumbest guy in the room. Like so much knowledge in that room. So it was good to talk to people. So you go for on different event for different reason. Uh but this one, the Undermine Summit was, was very good. But yeah, um, a lot of good conferences that you, you need to go there, you need to go out there. X is a good place. But um, a lot of people um, or customers, I told them, or potential customers, I told them I will be in Vegas. And the, it was the same thing last year in Nashville. They all go there. They're buying like $30,000 of mining equipment, heat reuse equipment and it's, it's good. They like to see you. Ah so just to show up to those conference for that kind of reason, it can be very helpful as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love hearing that positive feedback about Undermine Compass was uh, sponsor and that's in our backyard because that's where our service center is. Our main service center is the States and so there's a huge Compass footprint and many Compass employees were there. And I think that it means you were in the right room. If you quote, felt like you were the dumbest in the room. Which was not the truth I'm sure. Was not the truth. But even just feeling like that means that you are going to learn a lot, right? You want to avoid situations where you are the quote, smartest or most experienced in the room because then you're just creating bad habits. To be fair, um, you're going to be in Vegas. Very, very cool. And I definitely think as a small business it's really difficult to have a booth and be an exhibitor or a sponsor or whatever the words are are to basically say you're going to pay us a bunch of money to have a, have a, you know, have your stand. Um, I think for the size of your business it may not make sense. But I love that you're going to quote go as a tourist and then be light and be hanging around the mining stage. And be buzzing around talking to people. Um, can you. Besides the website, are you guys on X? And if not, um, is it okay if I put your X? Like, where's it? Where are the places that people should be looking to get in touch with you?

Speaker A: Yeah, well, the best place or there's a newsletter. So if you go on your, on my website, you can subscribe, uh, to the newsletter. I send email, not very often, so don't worry, you won't be spammed. Uh, X. My personal account. I do have a Constellation account, but I, I never post that. Uh, so all the people working with Constellation, no one is doing marketing. We're developing or, uh, 3D, uh, drawing. But, uh, yeah, so the, um, marketing side will come soon, eventually. But, uh, yeah, my personal account is where I post, uh, all the updates and, you know, features and how to contact me. This is the best place. Yeah.

Speaker B: Well, sweet. I'm going to put that together in the, uh, episode show notes for everyone to go check out. And you got to check out the website. I think the website is cool. Gives a good background on yourself, shows the products, talks about, uh, kind of the philosophy. You have a vision on there, which I think is really great. And I think you're totally executing on that vision. Right. Bringing more people near bitcoin mining, even if they don't know that they're near bitcoin mining. Mining, that is ideal. Um, if you were watching this on YouTube, please subscribe. Listen to this on a podcast platform. Please go ahead and subscribe and be sure to be following us on X, LinkedIn and YouTube @Compass Mining. Nick, thank you once again for hopping on and talking about Constellation. Um, I hope you have fun in Vegas. I'm still trying to figure out if I'm going to be in Vegas, but if I'm there, we'll definitely, hopefully meet up.

Speaker A: Thank you, Jared. It was a pleasure talking to you today.