Ep 71: Revolutionizing Money: William Szamosszegi On Bitcoin & CBDCs

William Szamosszegi is the CEO and founder of Sazmining Inc., a retail-focused Bitcoin mining-as-a-service platform. He also hosts the Everything Crypto Mining Podcast. He is bullish on Bitcoin's future as the dominant global digital reserve asset.

This episode is about Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and how William Szamosszegi, the CEO and founder of Sazmining Inc., learned about it. William believes Bitcoin is the solution for layer one sound money and sees it as a store of value primarily for people with a lot of money in the West. He also believes that bitcoin is revolutionizing money by making it easier to send money to family in other countries without worrying about fees or assets being seized. William believes Bitcoin is not the perfect technology for every use case, but smart people will continue to build on it. He is cautious about CBDCs, believing that it gives governments too much power, and could be used in nefarious ways by tyrants. 

In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. How Bitcoin is revolutionizing money and providing access to reliable banking and currency to those who may not have financial privilege.

2. How Bitcoin is creating a digital reserve asset and how its utility is saving lives.

3. How Bitcoin is being compared to the Internet, with the potential to revolutionize the global financial system and provide private property rights.

Connect with William:

Website: https://www.sazmining.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/sazmining

Podcast: https://anchor.fm/sazmining

Free Download:

The Words of Web3 - A comprehensive glossary of terms used in the space https://mailchi.mp/9d043022b5a0/words-of-web3

Connect with me:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbrooksheehan

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DrBrookSheehan

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/drbrooksheehan

Transcript

[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Hey, dr. Brook here with another epic episode through the wild, wild west of web three. I am joined by my copilot today, William. William, will you please say your last name for me one more time?
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Yes, Szamosszegi.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Szamosszegi. I am here with William Szamosszegi. Guys, that last name is a little tough to say, but William is the CEO and founder of Sazmining inc. Which is a retail focused bitcoin mining as a service platform which we're going to get into today. And he also hosts the everything crypto mining, the Sazmining podcast. He is bullish on bitcoin despite this bearish market we're in as the future or on bitcoin's future as the dominant global digital reserve asset and believes bitcoin is the solution for layer one sound money. William grew up in maryland and studied psychology and management at bucknell university. He spends his spare time working out, seeing friends and reading my favorite pastime as well. Welcome to the show, William. So glad you're here.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be your copilot on this episode.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Nice. Yeah, it's going to be a fun one. So, first question out the gate I always ask my copilot is, what is your intro story into web three? How did you get here today?
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Yeah, well, ever since I was young, I just always enjoyed building things, building organizations, and as I got older, I was just naturally drawn to technology. And when you look at this entire ecosystem, and by ecosystem, I mean crypto, but also particularly bitcoin, it's almost like you have a time machine where you go back in time. It's like looking at the internet in the early days. And I just knew that if at the end of my life I was looking back and I didn't get involved in the space, that I would regret it. And so that's really what led me to pursue the dream and go after Sazmining and started the company back in January 2018 and it's brought us all the way here today.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Awesome. So 2019, is that your first introduction then to bitcoin, or did you hold bitcoin prior to starting the mining company?
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Yeah, that's a good question. I've been I'm trying to think when I was first introduced to it, it was probably a few years before that. And at the time I was building a separate company. It was dealing with technology, it was a mobile application. And some of my buddies who knew that I was working on it just kept saying, you got to learn about bitcoin, you got to learn about Ethereum, you got to learn about this technology. And I like everyone wishes that they had gone and looked into it sooner, but after diving in, I was hooked. And as you know, there's always more and more levels and layers to go down and it's kind of incredible just to think about how much my views have changed just in the past handful of years after learning about the technology.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 I know it's crazy to think because Bitcoin white paper came out, what, 2008, 2009 period. So it's literally less than 15 years old. There's so much that has transpired in the entire crypto ecosystem or the whole blockchain space, and yet it feels like even you say just those handful of years, it feels like so much like you've uncovered so much, you've learned so much, you've really just dived deep into this space. So it's really interesting to see. I always tell people we're really early on, even now. So if you feel like you're sitting here in 2023 and you feel like you've missed the boat, you have not.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 I tell everyone that it's like, we're in the first chapter of this thing. Let's be grateful that we heard about it as early as we did. I mean, a lot of people, when you look at the Internet, people, they don't think of the Internet is just so ingrained in culture today. The Internet is boring to many people in the sense of like, okay, what are the companies that have been built on top of the Internet? Like the Amazons fill in any company, everything is using the Internet. It's embedded in business. And I think that in the future, you're going to see that same type of thing happening with Bitcoin, where it won't be this flashy new, exciting thing anymore. It'll just be bitcoin. It's boring now. There are other applications being built, like the Amazon, et cetera, but for web three and Bitcoin.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Are you a bitcoin maximalist.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 It depends on how you define maximalist. I have very extreme views. If you record the views and you put them out into the mainstream narrative, I'd probably seem like a crazy person because I do have a tremendous conviction on this technology. And when we talked about how my views have changed over time, it's by learning about Bitcoin and learning how all these other industries work as well.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Yeah, I think it's fascinating. I've had obvious conversations with many people doing different things in the web three space. Some people very hardcore on Bitcoin, other people hardcore on other blockchains. My perspective, and I really would love to kind of hear your viewpoint and where you see things going. Is Bitcoin being more of like a store of value or a financial way of interacting in the world with a currency and not so much being utilized as an actual blockchain, where Ethereum, Tesla, Salona, all of these other ones are allowing applications to be built on top of it. You talked about the Internet, other companies being built on top of the Internet. Do you see Bitcoin actually becoming a layer one solution beyond just a currency, or is it just going to stay at that?
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Yeah, great question. So to start up, I do see Bitcoin as a store of value. Primarily, that's from people who have a lot of money, who are primarily based in the west. A lot of the mainstream, they look at it as a store of value, and it can serve that purpose. But I think you see a tremendous amount of utility in bitcoin, particularly in places around the world where you don't have the financial privilege of having access to reliable banking or reliable currency. And many times, I mean, bitcoin is saving lives out there through its utility, because if you need to send money to your family in Nigeria or Ethiopia, bitcoin makes it so you can actually get that money to them reliably. You don't have to worry about your assets being seized. And I think in those cases, bitcoin plays a very different purpose. Now, to the second part of your question, in terms of where I see the future of it, and this is one of the areas where my views have changed. I used to see it in the way where they serve completely different purposes, and bitcoin wouldn't be able to fill that gap where other applications can be built on top of it. And then as I dove more into learning about the technology, I realized that right now those applications are being built on bitcoin. It's just going to take a longer amount of time. And the bitcoin blockchain isn't as responsive. It's much more slow to make changes. So if you think about it as like a technology stack, you have Bitcoin, which is the base chain. If you want to draw an equivalent, it's like the central bank, the central banks where it's very difficult to make changes to it. But then you have all these other applications that can be built on top, and you see things like the Lightning network being used, and then companies that are utilizing the Lightning network to, for example, make cross border payments more easy. So I think that a lot of these applications, there are going to be many that are going to be built on bitcoin in the future. There are going to be some where it might make sense to go and build on another chain. But I think that almost all aspects of technology, you got to think, what's the best use of this technology? The Internet is not going to solve all the world's problems, but it's a great piece of technology that can be used in all aspects of building a successful organization. And I think that bitcoin is not going to be the perfect technology for everything in every use case. But I think that a lot of the use cases that are being built on other blockchains aren't necessarily the best served to be built on those blockchains.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 I agree. That last part, all of the other pieces, that was something I get to learn new things on this podcast, which is cool by talking to people like you, because I do know about Lightning Network and I know about all these other applications. But I guess because I'm not so much into the bitcoin ecosystem as an isolated piece, but just overall blockchain. And looking at what other things are going on in there, it was cool to hear your perspective on that.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Yeah, the lightning is exciting. I mean, lightning is in the very early days as well. You're seeing more and more volume come on to lightning, more and more value being locked up over time. And I think it's so important to really realize why you don't want to move fast and break things when you have a lot at stake. We recently saw a failure in the lightning network, and it's a great thing that it failed without trillions of dollars on it. But I think that it's just over time, these things are going to continue to grow. The technology is going to get better. And yeah, I don't have a magic ball that I'm going to tell you this is every single thing that's going to happen. But the technology is there, and smart people are going to keep building things.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Definitely, I agree with you there. So before we get into what you're doing with the mining, I want to know from your perspective, and maybe you've already hit on this, as we are talking about, how do you believe that bitcoin is revolutionizing money? I know you talked about being able to send things to Nigeria or family members and not having all those transaction fees or getting it seized or locked up. Is there other ways that you see bitcoin revolutionizing money, or is that kind of the big key takeaway?
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Yeah, well, it's revolutionizing the way that the global financial system operates in certain areas of the world, as you mentioned, making it very easy, where you don't have a single government or banks and large organizations that can suddenly snatch your wealth. I mean, it is like giving you the apex private property rights, because at the end of the day, there has been no technology ever that has made it so easy for you to safely store your wealth. If you want to go and earn dollars, you've got to go out into the economy. You've got to go and work and provide value. And someone else in the economy who's worked and earned money has to part with their value to you for you to earn that. So there's real work happening. If you might go buy some food, you might go buy clothes. That all takes work and money. And at the end of the day, the way, unfortunately, the system works today is that certain small groups of people can decide the fate of how much money is in circulation. And the thing is, if you're diluting the amount of money in circulation, it dilutes value signals across the economy. It makes things much less efficient, and it gives people a way to exploit the system to get a lot of free money. And that's really dangerous. And I feel like it's a difficult concept for a lot of people to understand. But if we just use very simple numbers, let's say that you have $10 and all of the work in society is represented by a $100, right? If all of a sudden I go and print a trillion dollars, you can purchase a lot less of the goods and services and everything in the world because there's so much more money in circulation. Even if I just print, you know, another hundred dollars. In this scenario, you can purchase half of what you could purchase before. And so I think that this is broken and it's not fair. If you work hard and you go and make a living, then you shouldn't have this covert depth of your wealth happening if the dollars that you hold are being devalued. And that is, I would say, the biggest realization that I think more and more people with the era of COVID and everything and the stimulus that people.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Are starting to see absolutely okay on that, I really want to talk about this. It does not have to be a long discussion, but over the past probably ten episodes now, I have brought up the whole CBDC and every single country, like bigger economies are now coming out with their central bank digital currency and what they're doing. For those of you who might be listening to this episode, it might be your first one. Basically a CBDC is the government's way of creating their own, quote unquote, cryptocurrency. What are your thoughts on the CBDC? Negative or positive?
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Just like Bitcoin and the Internet are new technologies. They can be used for good uses or destructive uses. And I believe that what we're seeing here is governments getting control of a currency, using new technology and getting control of it in a way that no, it's a power that no civilization has ever had. And so it's basically like an experiment here. How is this going to play out? And my personal view, I could be completely wrong, but very confident in this view is that it's very dangerous. You can very quickly and easily imagine a world where this could be used in nefarious ways because a lot of times people say, hey, we should go and give this new technology or we should go and give this power to an organization. But they think about it with the ideal person running it, right? And a lot of times you might like the guy in the seat today. You might like the guy in the seat for the next hundred years, but afterwards, eventually there's going to be someone that you disagree with. Eventually there's going to be a tyrant holding that power. And do you want a tyrant holding that type of power over a currency? If you're very tyrannical and you're trying to control your population, you could very, very easily take money right out of people's bank accounts very quickly and very like automatically you can make currency expire, you can incentivize spending within your population. There are so many new, better things that you can do with the technology. And at the end of the day, you got to ask yourself is, do you want the person who you disagree with most having that type of power over you? Because it might not be that person today, but it could be in the future.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 That's a fabulous answer. I'm like, yes. So ten out of ten people I've asked have had viewpoints very similar to what you have said there. My viewpoint is like yours as well. It is definitely not a positive for the entire nation, global, all of it, just because they can control a lot of things. And you talked about currency expiring, like, they can tell you you have X amount of time to use this money on food, and if you don't use it by this date, it's gone. And they exercise that control. So we definitely need things like Bitcoin and the companies or the projects that are building good things that are like life changing, world changing products in the space doing what they're doing because they are working for good. All right, cool.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Glad you like the answer.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Love the answer. I don't know that there's very many people in the web service space that actually think positively about the CBDC. The only people I think may be seeing Positivity about it are the people who watch mainstream media who talk about FTX collapse and how crypto and Bitcoin going to zero all the BS noise that we hear in the space. Those people might be looking at like, oh, yeah, we need the government to save us. But anybody who's really, truly here, they know that this is just a big ploy to make sure that the CBDC becomes a thing. And so they want to shine light on all of the craziness that's happening and not look at what is truly happening.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Yeah, I'm sure that if you ran that exact same poll with the broader population, I would not be we were seeing that.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 I agree. I totally agree. All right, awesome. So tell us about Sazmining, bitcoin mining. Let's talk about that.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Yeah, well, I mean, there's a lot to talk about. Where do you want to take it? Do you want to talk about the environmental side? Do you want to talk about mining, the technology?
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Yeah, so I want to talk about what you're doing right now with the company mining as a service, and then let's see where it's going to go, where you see the future of that happening. Because with the having coming in, all of that, I want to kind of get into.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Yeah, 100%. Well, I'll give a little bit of the history on size mining and then talk about what we launched. I almost said earlier this year, forgot it's the new year, right? But yeah, so when we initially started, we were a mining company. We had actually been mining some theorem. We'd done some z cash bitcoin. And over and over again, I realized that there was this hole that wasn't being serviced, and that was the hole that, let's say that you wanted to start mining bitcoin today. Just think about this question, like, how would you do it? And the thing is, is that you look at the world today or the current environment, and it's very easy for you to go and buy bitcoin. That is something that has been solved, hit line and sinker. But no one had cracked the code of really providing that type of experience for someone who wanted to begin mining. And we just saw that there's something out here that we could do. We could make it accessible. We could build the social fabric of the bitcoin network. Because at the end of the day, the people who have the strongest conviction in bitcoin are the people who are the miners, because they're not just holding the asset, they're holding a physical asset or running a physical asset that is generating new bitcoin. And so the miners, at the end of the day, are at the heart of the technology, the social fabric. They're the ones that make the network function. And I think that that was something that a lot of people were just cut outside of. And we realized that we had all these connections in the space. Let's build this product. And then on the energy side, we planted a flag in the ground that we're only working with renewable and carbon negative energy sources. And this is pro to push out more renewable energy sources around the world. But also, if you just think about it from a logistic perspective, on the business side, you're seeing a lot of people come in with the pitchforks against the miners for using too much energy, which is just an absolutely stupid argument if you actually understand the facts. But they're doing it. And the thing is, as a minor, you got to take that into account. And so we're also making sure that, hey, we're going to try and bring forward renewable energy sources and make sure that the business is protected from the hate mob that may be coming.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 The green movement.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 And it's crazy too, because the one point I will make is that a lot of our team, they came over and joined our company because they're so passionate about stopping global warming. And the mainstream has not yet realized that the killer application, I like to call it satoshi's second revolution, is the revolution to the energy sector. If you actually understand energy, you realize that you want a buyer and consumer of energy that can generate value, continue to pay their bills, but also that you can shut off on a dime. Because when you're operating the grid, I'm assuming that everyone listening to this, when you flip your light switch on, the lights are on, you always have access to energy. It's not like there is the exact amount built for consumption. You need to build enough that you can service every person's energy needs at the peak, and then at the trial of that consumption. And the bitcoin miners make it so much easier for you to plan your load, your energy consumption, where you're putting it out, and it just makes the economics better. So it actually fixes many of the problems that the energy group faces. It reduces waste. It bootstraps new energy assets. And these people coming in and criticizing it know nothing about bitcoin. They know nothing about energy. And there are some very smart people who are environmentalists who really took the time to do the research, like Daniel Bat and Troy Cross. They've changed their views on it. And I think that you're going to see more and more people doing that over time. But until then, you're going to have a lot of people looking like idiots. Yeah, I'll pause.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Isn't that why Musk stopped using bitcoin or allowing people to buy Tesla's with bitcoin? And he said, I'm going to go with Deutsche Coin and do that because it's more energy efficient and all of his commentary on it.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Yeah, well, I mean, he's also in an interesting position, right. Because he's the CEO of Tesla. He's got a lot of things that he has to maintain, and he benefits from being a very renewable, focused company, an environmentally friendly company. And so at the end of the day, if you're running a business, you got to make the right decisions for your shareholders. And Tesla, they're not primarily a bitcoin company. And if his bitcoin exposure, whatever it may be, is hurting his business, underlying business, his image, whatever it may be, and he has to find an alternative.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Yes.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 I think that if you really dive down into Elon Musk's points of view, I mean, no one out there would disagree with the fact that he's a genius and he understands how the financial system works. He understands money. I think he understands it better than almost anyone in the world. I mean, by nature of him building PayPal, I'm sure that if you go and listen to a lot of the things that he's saying, you'll realize that the man is a huge proponent of bitcoin. And I'm surprised by how public he's been up until this point with the support of bitcoin as well. He really is a true believer.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Yeah, he is. I am definitely pro Elon musk. He hadn't made that statement and great points that you made, because he does have to protect his company and the image of Tesla. He's already getting tons of backlash with the whole Twitter CEO stuff, and so now he's making the decision to step down. But that's a whole different episode. Exactly. Okay, but the thing that I may be confused on is how does a person like myself interact with your company? Is it something that I turn around and I say, hey, William, I want to lease some mining equipment from you and let Sazam mining do the bitcoin mining. You keep a percentage, I get a percentage. How does the typical person interact with your company?
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Yeah, great question. And so this is going back to what I talked about earlier, is that what the market hadn't really solved is making it so you could own and actually be a minor. Like you own the minor, but not have to really do any you don't have to become a professional bitcoin miner because it takes a lot of time to do that. You need to have industry context. You have to understand how the industry works. You have to know how to run the machines. The barrier to entry was so high. And so going back to your question, the way that we solved this problem is we wanted to make it as easy as signing up for a netflix subscription for you to buy and become a bitcoin miner. So now you can go onto a website, you purchase a minor or hop on a waitlist if there's no more spots, and you can purchase a minor. And we keep 5% of the bitcoin that's mine from that machine. And so you just have to sync up your bitcoin wallet, and then the bitcoin that your machine is generating is deposited directly into your bitcoin wallet, which is a pretty incredible thing to think about when you now own a physical asset. You're not just a bitcoin owner, you're actually part of the mining network. And then you're just seeing the satoshi's, the bitcoin, pop it into your wallet. And there's something special about that. I kind of call it like the moment. It's like for people when you first understood bitcoin and became an owner and realized that you could transfer it and hold it on a ledger. This is your money. This is your bitcoin. No matter what, this is yours. There's something special about that. I'm not sure how to articulate the feeling of it, but there's a similar type of feeling that I think that you get when you're a bitcoin miner and you realize, okay, I am generating an asset and I own that asset. And you could be mining directly to your ledger. You could be mining directly to a wallet on an exchange. But whatever it is, you're generating that bitcoin.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Yeah, it's almost kind of like creating your own bank account or your own bank. Yeah, having your own bank. So do you pull out also go straight to the person's wallet, the ledger, and you guys keep 5%. Are costs associated with the energy in mining that bitcoin taken out from the mining or from the good question.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 This is another thing that I really like about the system, is that we make it. So at the end of the day, we're just sending you the bitcoin, and then you just have the power bill that you're paying so you can decide to sell that bitcoin to try and pay for the power. Or if you're very bullish on bitcoin, you can hold that bitcoin and then sell at whatever price you want to sell at. But at the end of the day, it's like you're the captain of the ship with it, you have bitcoin and then you pay for the electricity and you can decide to hold the bitcoin or to sell it.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 That's so awesome. I love that.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 And it's all powered on renewable or carbon negative energy, which is also, I would say, something to be proud of if you're a miner's. Like, hey, this is coming from 100% hydro power here, right?
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Are you guys doing that in Maryland or is that happening somewhere else?
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 No, that's in Wisconsin.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Wisconsin?
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Yeah. Someone wants to go see the video of a facility. You can go onto the website, there's a video of our president and chief operating officer giving a walkthrough of the site.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Yeah. Awesome. That is so cool. Okay, so then I have to ask this question, because for those of you who may not know, and you're listening, there is only going to be over 21 million bitcoin mined. That's it. I think we're at 19 point something right now. As a bitcoin mining company, how do you see the future of your company existing after that 21 million is hit?
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Yes, this is a great question, and when I first actually dove into the research on this, my mind was blown. And so I'll share that this findings right now, I'm assuming that your listeners know about the having every ten minutes, there's a block reward that gets cut in half every four years, roughly.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Yeah.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 So the last bitcoin, if you were to guess when the last bitcoin is going to be mined, what would your guess be?
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Well, I thought Satoshi in the white paper said 2050, but it looks like it's going to happen way sooner than that at the rate we're going.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Yeah. So this is the thing that blew my mind. The last bitcoin is going to be mined in the year 21 40. That means that we've got 21 40. Yeah. That means we've got almost 120 years left of bitcoin mining. And this is when we talk about yeah. And the thing is, this is the beautiful thing about bitcoin. It's not like any no one in the world can tell me how many dollars are going to be in circulation ten years from now, let alone 100 years from now, a month from now.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Exactly.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 I can tell you because the policy of how bitcoins created and minted is built into the code. The miners that are running and supporting the bitcoin network, they all have to follow the same rules. And the rules are that you have the having that's going to continue to happen every 210,000 blocks. You have the difficulty adjustment. And you just know how that bitcoin is going to come into circulation. Now, for the other part of your question, what happens when all the bitcoins mine and how do you operate as a minor? Well, making a prediction for over 100 years out is very difficult. But what I'll tell you is that you're going to have a much more robust mining network. I think that you're going to see the miners integrated with the energy sector completely. And the price of a single bitcoin, I believe, is going to be so high that it's going to justify the price for just the transaction fees. So in a world where bitcoin is the global unit of account, which I think it's going to happen far quicker than the next 100 years, I believe it will happen much quicker than the next, like 50 years. But once bitcoin is the unit of account, it's like, oh, the United States, the GDP is denounced. It's like 140,000 bitcoin. It's like the GDP of the US and China. It's like 130,000 bitcoin or whatever it is. When bitcoin is the unit of account and things aren't in clown world and all tied to the dollar, where the dollar can just be printed more, doesn't make any sense. Your grandkids are going to think, we used to have a money that was tied to a dollar and the US. Could just print more dollars. That's ridiculous. So when bitcoin is the unit of account, the price of a single bitcoin is going to be unbelievably high at that point. And the way that the protocol works is that the transaction fees are going to pay out and compensate all the bitcoin miners because there's a bitcoin reward, which is bitcoin circulation. Then there's the transaction fees. And the block award is a very large proportion of the total prize for vendors transaction fees. That kind of negligible right now. But I believe in the future that that transaction fee is going to become more and more important and the block award we already know is going to be very low in the future.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Okay, first off, my thought process was we were going to hit 21 million by 2030, right?
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 That's what a lot of people think.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Because we're already at 19 point something and it's literally been less than 15 years. So I'm like, holy freaking cow, we have less than 2 million to go.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 The human brain is not very difficult to think in exponentials. And it's like that thing I'm going to mess up the story, but it's like that little tale where it's like, okay, well, if you put, like, one grain of rice on a chessboard and you double it 64 times and you can do that with money, whatever it may be. It's very hard to think in those types of terms over large numbers. And right now, you have so many havings that are going to be happening over the next 100 years. So it's like, okay, like 12.56,253.125. My math ends there. But it keeps going, going, and going. And then before you know it's, like, the block reward is such a little part of transaction fees.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 That makes total sense here. I'm like, in my brain thinking, like, hey, William, like, your company is going to exist.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 You better enjoy it now.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Exactly.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 It's all downhill. You thought this bear market was bad, right?
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Exactly. Oh, jeez. Oh, my gosh. Well, that was awesome. Is there anything that I didn't ask you that you'd like to talk about? Whether it be bitcoin web, three blockchain, anything?
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Yeah. Well, I think that a big thing that I want all your listeners because a lot of times, like, people will hear about bitcoin, and, like, the automatic point of attack is like, oh, it takes up too much energy. I've talked about, like, the bitcoin protocol. I'm actually more fascinated by what you see on the energy side. And so many people don't know this, but methane is 84 times more warming. It's worse for the environment. 84 times worse than carbon dioxide. And everyone's like, oh, carbon dioxide is awful, which it is. Yeah, methane is exponentially worse. The big challenge is, is that in the world today, you have no real good economic solution to the methane problem. So what you have is, let's say that you were emitting methane. You have a couple of options. Like, option number one, you plug the well where it's leaking. Option number two, you burn it off at the site so it doesn't all go into the atmosphere. And then option three, you just keep polluting and you don't pay money to reduce your methane. Yeah, this is another prediction, and we're already science feet come true, but it's going to be crazy once people realize what's going on. Bitcoin mining is the solution to global warming, bar none. You can quote me. I'll stand by that. And the reason why is because bitcoin miners are the only viable solution to methane. Because instead of having to have it as a liability as an energy producer, where you're just like, shit, I have this methane. It's like costing me business, or it's costing me money to fix. A bitcoin miner can come capture that methane and use it to turn it into electricity and power mining. So all of a sudden, you have a liability that now can be turned into an asset and bitcoin mine with. And so you can go and capture all this pollution and methane and use it to actually produce economic value. And so you're going to reduce a tremendous amount of carbon dioxide and methane going into the atmosphere. You're going to produce economic value from it. All the miners are going to try and do it because it's the cheapest form of energy, literally pollution, or it costs you money to stop it. So it's like free energy. And at the end of the day, you have this network of miners that are going out around the world capturing the pollution. There's no stronger incentive than the incentive that people have to go and make money and build businesses within a super competitive industry like mining, that's going to go and clean up the atmosphere, like mining. So these bitcoin miners are currently doing this and they're just learning that they can do this. And more and more are doing this. And I believe that the bitcoin mining network is going to be a massive carbon negative gift from God to the population. And people are going to realize that by 2025, bitcoin is going to be carbon negative. Roughly at around that point. At 2025 is my prediction. And at that point, all additional miners that are coming online are just further reducing emissions.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 That is so fascinating. Such like something that I've never thought about.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 All these people getting upset at bitcoin's energy use. Some like, listen, you say you care about the environment, but you are literally attacking the strongest force for cleaning up the environment and combating global warmth. So I do think it's important. Like, anyone, if any of your friends tell you, hey, bitcoin is bad for the environment, you should really have them look into it and be like, look, bitcoin is actually the strongest lever we have as a society to fight global warming. Yeah, I just want to pepper that in there before we close up here.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 No, definitely. I love that. That's a great ending point. How can people connect with you, connect with Sazmining, all of it. Tell us. And then I'll also put links in the show notes too, so you don't have to spell out anything if you don't want to.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Okay, sounds good. Yeah, I don't want to spell out my last name or anything. 30 minutes, right?
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 Exactly.
 
 [William Szamosszegi]
 Yeah. The best place is really just going on to the website Sazmining.com. We also are active on Twitter and LinkedIn, so myself as well as the company accounts, and then we have a podcast that is on the podcast channels where you can go and look it up there. The last thing I'll say is that if any of this resonated with you, we'd love to have you come join us on the journey. Cleaning up the atmosphere, securing the bitcoin network by building the social layer of bitcoin through bitcoin mining. And yeah, thanks again for having me on your show. This was a lot of fun.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 It was definitely a lot of fun. Great conversation. We went in all different turns and windy roads and I loved every aspect of it. So thank you so much for being here, William. And for those of you listening, if this is your first episode, you don't know, but as we pull this train into the station, I want to make sure you exit to your right and we will see you on the next one.
 
 [Dr. Brook Sheehan]
 You made it. Congratulations. That wasn't so bad. You made it. Congratulations. That wasn't so bad, was it? I hope you laughed and learned a little bit more about this web three universe and how simple and fun it can really be. Would you be so kind as to leave us a review and share it with your friends and family? It would mean so much to get this out to more people as we embark on the greatest transfer of wealth that has ever happened in human history. Can't wait to see you on the next one.