Oct 7, 2026 · 1 hr 15 min · 11 segments
What does the next era of Bitcoin mining actually look like? On Episode 19 of The Bitcoin Mining Show, Cinco sits down with Bob Burnett, founder of Barefoot Mining and Executive Chairman of OCEAN…
Bob BurnettGuestJoe SpencerHost
unfortunately i think it's actually getting worse okay um and i think what has happened is like a lot of what we do is in uh rural communities um and we try very hard to be good citizens but we have a couple things working against us the first is that early bitcoin miners left a bitter taste in the mouths of a lot of people.
So there's a lot of people that came into communities in the early days of mining, which when I say early days of mining, I say early days of what I would call commercial mining, which I think commercial mining probably in the 2016, 2017, about when I got started, was that was the conception point of people starting to do things at scale.
And it got wild into the early 2020s, 2021, 2022, especially on the heels of the China mining ban in 2021.
And a lot of people came in, either poor business people or shysters or, you know people with poor intent and they would come into these communities they would put up pretty shitty operations they wouldn't care about sound they they wouldn't pay their bills they would you know you could make people were making enough money in some of those periods if you were mining in the summer of 2021 the fall of 2021 you were making unreal amounts of money.
A lot of people took advantage of that period um some of them were desperate with a lot of this equipment coming over from china and just like anything they could do to get it to run and um so they left a lot of what i'm saying is they left a lot of bad tastes in some of these communities um left town in the middle of the night without paying bills leaving environmental messes um they they left messes like really poorly designed not to code electrical fires things like that it's very difficult to get insurance even today as a bitcoin miner very difficult to get uh property and casualty insurance and um liability it's very hard and very expensive there aren't many carriers that will do it because these early people did that sure So there was that bad taste.
Secondly, the early AI people, a lot of them kind of did some of the same things.
And so, like you talked about, they tend to be noise-related and water-related.
There's a lot of wokeness still, right? There's a lot of climate focused people, or at least they fly under the banner of being climate people.
And so what happens is, like as an example, we are putting up a new site in western Pennsylvania on a stranded gas well.
And we must file air permits because we're doing our own energy generation there off of stranded natural gas.
The DEP of Pennsylvania, which has been honestly fairly reasonable to work with, hasn't caused many problems for us.
However, whenever you file for what's called an air permit there, there's a public comment period.
Now, some of the people commenting are just regular folks who've been this poisoning of the narrative.
And so they have a right, and I don't have a problem with it, a mother saying, hey, we live out here in the country and I have these small kids and I'm worried that It's going to be too noisy.
And there's I've heard about health problems or my dog might have an issue or my cattle might have an issue.
unfortunately i think it's actually getting worse okay um and i think what has happened is like a lot of what we do is in uh rural communities um and we try very hard to be good citizens but we have a couple things working against us the first is that early bitcoin miners left a bitter taste in the mouths of a lot of people.
So there's a lot of people that came into communities in the early days of mining, which when I say early days of mining, I say early days of what I would call commercial mining, which I think commercial mining probably in the 2016, 2017, about when I got started, was that was the conception point of people starting to do things at scale.
And it got wild into the early 2020s, 2021, 2022, especially on the heels of the China mining ban in 2021.
And a lot of people came in, either poor business people or shysters or, you know people with poor intent and they would come into these communities they would put up pretty shitty operations they wouldn't care about sound they they wouldn't pay their bills they would you know you could make people were making enough money in some of those periods if you were mining in the summer of 2021 the fall of 2021 you were making unreal amounts of money.
A lot of people took advantage of that period um some of them were desperate with a lot of this equipment coming over from china and just like anything they could do to get it to run and um so they left a lot of what i'm saying is they left a lot of bad tastes in some of these communities um left town in the middle of the night without paying bills leaving environmental messes um they they left messes like really poorly designed not to code electrical fires things like that it's very difficult to get insurance even today as a bitcoin miner very difficult to get uh property and casualty insurance and um liability it's very hard and very expensive there aren't many carriers that will do it because these early people did that sure So there was that bad taste.
Secondly, the early AI people, a lot of them kind of did some of the same things.
And so, like you talked about, they tend to be noise-related and water-related.
There's a lot of wokeness still, right? There's a lot of climate focused people, or at least they fly under the banner of being climate people.
And so what happens is, like as an example, we are putting up a new site in western Pennsylvania on a stranded gas well.
And we must file air permits because we're doing our own energy generation there off of stranded natural gas.
The DEP of Pennsylvania, which has been honestly fairly reasonable to work with, hasn't caused many problems for us.
However, whenever you file for what's called an air permit there, there's a public comment period.
Now, some of the people commenting are just regular folks who've been this poisoning of the narrative.
And so they have a right, and I don't have a problem with it, a mother saying, hey, we live out here in the country and I have these small kids and I'm worried that It's going to be too noisy.
And there's I've heard about health problems or my dog might have an issue or my cattle might have an issue.
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