Bitcoin Mining, Geothermal Power, and How El Salvador is Leading the Revolution | Pierre Rochard

Live from Bitcoin Beach in El Zonte, El Salvador, I sat down with Pierre Rochard, VP of Research of Riot Platforms Inc, at the Adopting Bitcoin Conference, and we covered a lot. Pierre shared how he first discovered Bitcoin, his journey from traditional finance to becoming a leader in the Bitcoin space, and how his passion for accounting and open-source software led him to build tools like the Node Launcher and Lightning integrations.

We also dove into the challenges and opportunities in Bitcoin mining, especially in the U.S., where Pierre has been on the frontlines of regulatory battles to protect the industry. He explained why Texas is a hotspot for mining, how the U.S. can stay ahead in the global mining race, and why nuclear power could play a big role in the future.

Of course, we had to talk about El Salvador—what Pierre loves about the country, its leadership under President Bukele, and its potential to become the Singapore of Latin America. We even touched on Bitcoin mining here, using geothermal and other renewable energy sources.

This episode is packed with insights on Bitcoin policy, mining, and global adoption—and some great stories, too. Don’t miss it!

- Mike

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Browse through this quick guide to learn more about the episode:

00:27 - Introduction

01:29 - How Did Pierre Rochard Discover Bitcoin?

02:12 - What Was Pierre Rochard’s Biggest Bitcoin Mining Mistake?

02:39 - What is Libertarian Longhorns, and How Did It Shape Pierre’s Bitcoin Views?

05:00 - Why Did Pierre Rochard Leave Traditional Finance for Bitcoin?

07:12 - How Did Lightning Network Get Integrated at Kraken?

09:36 - How Is Riot Defending Bitcoin Mining Against Regulation?

12:36 - Do Bitcoin Miners Work Together to Fight Regulations?

20:19 - What Is Riot’s Strategy for Bitcoin Mining Success?

22:04 - How Much Does Electricity Cost for Bitcoin Miners?

24:59 - Why Is El Salvador Important for Bitcoin’s Future?

30:16 - Is Bitcoin Mining in El Salvador Profitable?

33:14 - What’s It Like Visiting El Salvador as a Bitcoiner?

Live From Bitcoin Beach

Transcript

Mike Peterson  
Pierre Rochard with me here today. We're at the Adopting Bitcoin Conference, which I gotta say, is one of my favorite Bitcoin conferences. You know, maybe I'm a little bit biased in my opinion, but I love, I just love the way that they pick the speakers. It's not, it's not, you know, a ton of like influencers or people like that. It's, you know, you got a lot of builders. You got a lot of very interesting folks that participate, and they don't have any headliners. Everybody's kind of on the same level. So I love that about it, but I'm excited to finally be able to sit down with you. We've we've tried a couple times before, and it hasn't come together, but I honestly don't know that much about your backstory, so I not just the audience, but me too, is going to be learning a lot here. So would love to have you just kind of tell us how you got into the Bitcoin space, and what things you're working on, what you're excited about. And then, obviously, we got to talk about El Salvador, and then things happening here. 

Pierre Rochard  
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I first read about Bitcoin in the context of the Silk Road. There was an article on slash dot. I don't know if the audience is familiar with slash dot. Back in the day, it was not. It was like a news, like Hacker News, you know, type, venue, and they had an article about the Silk Road. They also had one about Bitcoin mining. And I tried to download Bitcoin Core at the time, Bitcoin Qt, right, and mine, but there was no button to mine, and I didn't know that you had to go in the command line and actually, you know, generate coins. So I closed it biggest mistake of my life. That's okay, right? We have- 2011

Mike Peterson  
okay, 

Pierre Rochard  
We've all got our stories of regret, and then it came back into my life in 2012 towards the end of 2012 I was part of a libertarian Longhorns. So that's our mascot at the University of Texas at Austin, which I was attending, we had a discussion group the Mises circle that was talking about Austrian economics. And a big- 

Mike Peterson  
How big was this group that, like, I'm just curious, that's a very niche,

Pierre Rochard  
Yeah, 10 weirdos. 

Mike Peterson  
Yeah, that's still impressive, that there was 10, 

Pierre Rochard  
Yeah. I mean, there's like 50,000 students. So you're gonna, you're gonna, and so we were talking about and debating, fractional reserve banking, full reserve banking, gold and silver, Fiat and to the gentleman there, Michael Goldstein and Daniel Krawis,

Mike Peterson  
Hey guys, just a brief interruption. We'll get back to the exciting show here. But I just want to really ask a favor that you guys could make sure that you're subscribed if you're watching this on YouTube, if you are listening to this on a podcast, please take the take a second and review this. You know, you don't even have to write a lengthy review or anything at all. Just click the number of stars that you want to give us. It really helps us in the algorithms to make sure people are finding out about what's happening here. All right, back to the show. 

Pierre Rochard  
They were already full. You know, trading on Mount Gox, like talking about Bitcoin, and so they orange pilled me, and that's really kind of the beginning of my journey. And then I just went down the rabbit hole, as they say, right? Like, stay up all night, reading Bitcoin talk forums, reading Wikipedia, or there, there was a Bitcoin wiki, of course, and learning as much as I could because my background, I was majoring in accounting, and so that was my major also, okay, so, like, money is, like central to that ledgers. And before I majored in accounting, I was installing Linux on my parents computers. I was listening to Richard Stallman, you know, arguing that, you know, free software is better than open source software. So I was already kind of at that intersection of money and software, and so when I learned about Bitcoin in depth, that's when a light bulb went off. Of this is going to be huge. The adoption curve on this is inevitable. What year was that? So end of 2012 beginning of 2013 after I graduated, I got a tradfi job, as they say in audit at Deloitte. I didn't last very long there, like less than a year before I jumped ship to go work at Bitpay, which was a Bitcoin payment processing company, enjoyed my time there until they ran into financial difficulties during the bear market. 

Mike Peterson  
They were one of the first Bitcoin payments process, 

Pierre Rochard  
yeah. And so I was there 2014 ish, 

Mike Peterson  
how long did they last? 

Pierre Rochard  
So they're still around. 

Mike Peterson  
Are they still around? Okay, 

Pierre Rochard  
but, you know, they, 

Mike Peterson  
for some reason, I thought they- 

Pierre Rochard  
They evolved over time. And so, yeah, they had a round of layoffs, and I was back into tradfi During that bear market, it's like 215, 2016, and then, of course, we had the 2017 bull market. I got really interested in lightning, and I did a residency at chain code labs about lightning. And to do that, you got to do a project. And the project I wanted to do, with my back accounting background, was an Excel spreadsheet plug in that allows you to communicate with your lightning Node via RPC and to be able to get the data, but also to send out payment. 

Mike Peterson  
This is going to sound really stupid, but I'm not a technical person. What is RPC? 

Pierre Rochard  
Yeah, remote procedure call, so it's basically an API, okay? So that you're you're running your lightning node on your desktop computer, and then you've got your spreadsheet open with Excel, and you've got a ribbon at the top where you can send payments, you can get transactional information from your node. And so that way you don't have to go onto a website or some other you know, to me, it seemed to make a lot of sense for a business user. Yeah, the challenge for a business user was that you had to go in the command line to launch the lightning node and to launch the Bitcoin node. And I decided to tackle that problem, and I created the node launcher, which was this Python application, was cross platform with a GUI so that you could launch your lightning node. And once again, what's a GUI graphical user interface? So CLI, command line interface, Gui, graphical user interface, kind of what everybody uses. And so that way you could point and click your way to having a Lightning Experience. And this turned out to be somebody like me could actually do, yeah, exactly. It turned out to be hugely popular. People liked being able to access the light in the network so so easily. You know, there's lots of Bitcoin users who are not technical, you know, like C Plus Plus developers. 

Mike Peterson  
It seems like you have like the camp that comes from from the tech side, but also the camp that comes from the finance side. Seems like, for you, it was both, but for me, it was best. It was very much the monetary policy and hard money. But I'm not a tech person, so. 

Pierre Rochard  
I love building those bridges, yeah, and I was enjoying building the node launcher, and then at a steak dinner in New York City, ran into the crew from Kraken, and we started talking about, hey, let's get lightning at Kraken, that way we could onboard, I think, you know, millions of users onto 2018

Mike Peterson  
Okay, so that was very early. Lightning was still, yeah, very challenging to use at that point.

Pierre Rochard  
So it took a while to get to a point where we did integrate lightning, but, you know, we were able to do that. And then and was cracking, one of the first after, I think the major first was BitFenix, and then the major second was cracking. And then Coinbase joined very recently, gave them lots of grief for that. But, you know, it's good now everybody's on the same page after crack and I joined riot, where I am today as their VP of research. So the impetus for that was that after China banned Bitcoin mining, lots of debate as to whether they banned it or not. But putting that aside, lots of hash rate came to the United States. It got on the radar of a lot of people in the United States, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, who did not like this at all that there was so much Bitcoin mining coming to the United States, and to Texas in particular. And so Riot wanted to have a robust response to the attacks that were coming from Elizabeth Warren and her allies in DC, and so I joined riot. I hired Brian Morgenstern to be our Head of Public Policy. He had previously worked for the Trump administration, and he quickly got up to speed on all the issues, and we started firing back, including a lawsuit that against the Department of Energy, who wanted to get information about our energy providers and Dox them so that activists could apply pressure to energy companies to stop providing services to Bitcoin miners. 

Mike Peterson  
And what did they use to justify that? Like, what was Did they, I'm assuming they didn't say that that was the reasoning. Why did they say they wanted this information

Pierre Rochard  
That there was an emergency. So they they did this under an emergency process that Bitcoin mining was growing so quickly and that the bitcoin price was increasing so quickly that it was going to cause the grid to. A lapse. And so, you know, politicians love to say, hey, there's a crisis. We need more power, you know, in the negative sense. And so they were, they were leaning into the idea that there was an emergency. So we took them to federal court. We sued them, and we proved to a judge that there was no emergency. He quickly sided with us, slapped them with a restraining order and made them pay our attorneys fees as well. Yeah, it was really cherry on top. Yeah, cherry on top. And so it was a tremendous victory from a policy perspective. And then we put our public policy function. Brian and Sam Lyman, who's also been an extraordinary Director of Public Policy at Riot, really did a tremendous job of activating Bitcoin voters to help Trump get elected and to help get lots of Republicans who are pro Bitcoin, and there are Democrats as well who are pro Bitcoin as well elected in this cycle, so that now we're firing on all cylinders to make sure that Bitcoin gets the respect that it deserves at the federal and state level,

Mike Peterson  
and has that after you guys won that lawsuit was did that kind of put the brakes on them trying to come after you guys, or was that- 

Pierre Rochard  
It slammed the brakes on it, because they realized that this is not an industry that they can just steam roll over, that we're going to fight back and we're going to win, because the truth is on our side. The facts are on our side in that lawsuit, we didn't just talk about our facts. We brought in academic research, we brought in information from ERCOT, the grid operator, to really prove that there's no problem here. There's no emergency. The only people who think there's an emergency are activists who are fabricating information in order to kind of create this, you know, presumption of an emergency. 

Mike Peterson  
Well, I mean, anybody who's done spent any time looking into it, realize it helps stabilize the grid and it's beneficial to the power system. Absolutely, yeah, it seems like it's nice when you have truth on your side. It is be able to and to be able to utilize the court system for what it was you know, supposed to be for. Have you found, has there been much coordination between the different mining companies? Because, you know, in some in some sense, like if you're spending a bunch of money on that, and you can have people kind of free riding on your efforts, but have you found that people been pretty collaborative in that

Pierre Rochard  
They have, I mean, you know, I work for Riot, but we got to give a lot of credit where it's due, which is marathon, has also stood up a public policy function. Shout out to Jason Browder, who's done a great job there, and clean spark and other major miners have also done great contributions. So I think that as an industry, we realize that our number one risk in the United States is regulatory risk, and so addressing that risk in a robust manner that, you know, is not just yeah, the we're not trying to just compete against each other. Obviously we're competing against each other in the marketplace, but when it comes to public policy, we got to work together. Because these, you know, anti Bitcoin mining politicians. They don't care who you are. They're trying to go after the whole industry. And frankly, they're not just going after Bitcoin mining. They're going after Bitcoin writ large, right? So they want Bitcoin node operators to be subject to KYC AML regulations. That was Elizabeth Warren bill, and they want wallet providers to also be under the stranglehold of over regulation. So I think as a whole, the industry has come together. I also want to give credit to the crypto industry in general, right? So as a maximalist, I love to criticize all the token issuance stuff. I think that it's bad for consumers. But you know what? They're lobbyists. They don't try to attack Bitcoin mining. Quite the opposite. They've done a good job standing up for us as well, so that we're united in DC.

Mike Peterson  
It seemed like Sam bakeman was kind of pushing the other direction with where he was taking things, but you're saying in general that the crypto industry has been pretty supportive. 

Pierre Rochard  
Yeah, so the only bad actors in the crypto industry, SBF is in jail now, but the bad actors that are not in jail, it's ripple and XRP and Chris Larson. They're really the ones who have behind the scenes. They're talking about how environmentally friendly XRP is and how they're going to build CBDCs so that Elizabeth Warren can control everyone, and that they're the good people, and that the Bitcoiners, who you can't control, they're the bad people, right? And so, well-

Mike Peterson  
They're the ones that put a bunch of money to get a bunch of money to Greenpeace, right?

Pierre Rochard  
Yeah, they gave $5 million to Kamala. They gave more than 10 million or, sorry, they gave him $5 million The Greenpeace more than ten million to Kamala, and they're losing, and they're losers. And so I think that, you know, it's been really great to see that they are losing, but I think that they should be held accountable for kind of the negative effects they've had in DC. Yeah.

Mike Peterson  
So are you primarily focused on the policy side there, right? Or do you get into the more business end of things? 

Pierre Rochard  
I try to bridge the two, right? So being able to explain the economics of Bitcoin mining, not just to policy makers, but also, for example, to the energy industry, because they're trying to wrap their heads around, okay, what is the relationship between Bitcoin mining and electricity? And you know what their businesses are, and so explaining, you know, okay, here's how we can relate the efficiency of a Bitcoin mining rig to how many dollars per megawatt it is generating. And you know, what price do Bitcoin miners turn off at? What time price do they turn on? What is the regulatory environment that we need at the local, state and federal level to enable those economics. So it's really bridging the gap between the business and then kind of external parties as well.

Mike Peterson  
And do you think that, you know, 10 years from now, that the US will have a larger share of mining or less? Do you think it'll move to other parts of the world, or what's kind of your prediction for the direction of the industry.

Pierre Rochard  
So it, I think it depends on what the rest of the world does right now, the US, with the election of President Trump and with the cabinet that he's appointing, the US is going full steam ahead on energy abundance, all of the above. Let's produce as much electricity as we can, and that is going to grow the US market share for Bitcoin mining- 

Mike Peterson  
And we have, I feel like in the US, we have that competitive advantage of having one of the lowest cost overall energy systems in the world, especially for a developed country. I know certain places where they have a lot of hydro or something they may have, you know, one component of it that's cheaper. But in general, we pay way less for electricity in the US than they do in Europe, or, you know, other in Asia, just because of the I think a lot of it just comes from the natural gas abundance that we have. And so I'm just curious, is that, because you see a lot of mining moving, you know, places like Paraguay or places that have these huge hydro projects, but also, you know, Texas, and so I'm just curious, long term, what you think will win out?

Pierre Rochard  
Yeah, it depends on how scalable energy sources are, right? So when we look at hydro, for example, I think hydro is fantastic. There are scalability challenges based on how big the river is, and you know how much electricity you can generate from that. But it also comes down to how big the United States is. I mean, the United States is like several countries, 50 countries put together, right? And so the geographic diversity means that we have hydro, we have wind, we have solar, we have natural gas, we have coal, we have lots of resources, including nuclear as well. And there's a nuclear revival that is being instigated. But you know, if we look at Argentina, they also have lots of natural gas, they also have lots of wind and solar. It comes down, I think, to the regulatory interface, right? So how, how amenable are regulators to economic development, or how, well structured is the electricity marketplace in Texas in particular, we have what's called a deregulated market. And by that, they don't mean that there's no regulation. They just mean that there's actually competition on who's producing electricity and who's providing it to retail end uses. 

Mike Peterson  
Unlike in places like in place like California, I'm originally from San Diego. You got one provider, there one choice. I think we have the second highest cost energy in the US outside of Hawaii. Yeah, it's where in Texas, it's a very different market. 

Pierre Rochard  
It's very competitive. And in other markets, you've got a vertical monopoly that is regulated, you know, over regulated, I'd say to where now they, they'll, they'll hesitate to build an additional power plant for Bitcoin mining, because they might think Bitcoin mining is a scam or something like that, right? They have an ideological tilt, whereas in Texas, it's a free market. And so, hey, if you want to build a new power plant for Bitcoin mining, nobody's going to stop you. In fact, you know they're going to make it easy.

Mike Peterson  
No, I feel like in San Diego, they're always pushing to not have to. They don't want to invest more money in new plants, and so they're actually incentivizing less electricity use and pushing industry out. And I mean, obviously opposite of what we should be doing. So 

Pierre Rochard  
100% we see lots of people moving from California to Texas. That being one of many reasons to see that migration.

Mike Peterson  
Yeah. Now, do you guys only operate in the US? 

Pierre Rochard  
Correct. Yes. So we've got a big site close to Austin that's 400 megawatts. That was our first site, and that we own and operate. Eight. The second site that we're developing is close to Dallas. That's got a total capacity of one gigawatt. We just completed 400 megawatts building there, and then we just acquired sites in Kentucky as well. And so we're expanding within the United States. We're not opposed to expanding abroad. We're just looking for the right opportunities for the company.

Mike Peterson  
And are you guys solely focused on Bitcoin mining. I know a lot of companies in the mining space have gotten into AI recently. Also, I'm not sure with Riot what their mix is.

Pierre Rochard  
We haven't I mean, when we look at vertical integration, we look at it as how to serve the Bitcoin strategy of the company. And so, you know, AI, HPC, unless the you know, obviously, at some price, it makes sense to say, Okay, well, we'll take that price and we'll convert it into Bitcoin. But in general, the vertical integration approach we've had is, let's do the construction ourselves. Let's do the engineering ourselves. Let's we acquired an electrical equipment manufacturer in Colorado, ESS METRON, because we've been buying so much of their electrical equipment, it just makes sense to control the supply chain from that perspective, rather than trying to diversify horizontally towards other, you know, like AI HPC.

Mike Peterson  
That makes sense. Well, I know even in the electronic component space, there's been supply chain issues. So if you, if you control this company supplying you, it gives you a lot more flexibility, I'm assuming. 

Pierre Rochard  
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's going to be a big bottleneck. You know, bitcoin price keeps going up. There's lots of people who are going to want to get into Bitcoin mining, and they're going to be competing for transport transformers and switch gear and other, you know, electrical components. They're going to be competing against AI, HPC. They're also going to be competing against renewable generation that is also, you know, getting built like batteries, solar and wind. 

Mike Peterson  
Without disclosing anything that's proprietary. What I'm always curious when I talk to people in the mining space, what do you guys look for as far as electricity price in order to be profitable, for for a mining operation to be viable.

Pierre Rochard  
Yeah, I mean, I think all in you've, you've got to be below five cents a kilowatt hour. And 

Mike Peterson  
Does that keep compressing going down? Is that like so years ago, it could have, you could have been operating at 10 cents. Or how is, what's the direction of the mining industry? 

Pierre Rochard  
It has been compressing if we zoom out now if we zoom in, you know, it because of the Bitcoin price going up, that mechanically just raises the break evens in terms of revenue. A the most efficient Bitcoin mining rig today will earn you about 18 cents a kilowatt. Okay? And so then if you start thinking about, okay, the overhead, the depreciation of the mining rig, all of those other costs you've got to get to, you know, less than five cents a kilowatt for the marginal cost of electricity.

Mike Peterson  
And I know in the early days, the the rigs would become obsolete pretty quickly. Is that changing at all, or is that? Is that still, like, you need to replace miners, you know, every couple years.

Pierre Rochard  
I- it's, I think it's, it's changing. It's getting longer than every couple years now, it's not revolutionizing and like, Okay, now mining rigs are gonna last decades, because the efficiency of joules per Tera hash continues to improve with each generation. And so, you know, if we look at the s9 it was like 100 joules per Tera hash. Now the s 21 you're looking more at like, I think it's like 18 joules per Tera hash. So just that alone causes turnover from the physical depreciation of the machine. I think that that is improving, especially when we look at immersion technology. And so now that these mining rigs are in dielectric oil, you know, they're they're in a bathtub, they're not being exposed to the air flowing through the hash boards, they're going to last longer. So even if the you know, the efficiency improves. I think the older generations are going to last longer than prior generations from kind of the cooling technology improving.

Mike Peterson  
So we were talking offline before we started that. This is your third time in El Salvador this year, right? Yeah. And I'm curious what one just your general take on what's happening in El Salvador, and what role you see it playing in the overall Bitcoin space. But then I also want to follow up and just hear your take on you know, they've talked a lot about doing Bitcoin mining here using geothermal. You have volcano energy, which is a mining company and but you know, right now, they're starting off doing solar and wind, which I still feel like I can't get my head around how that's going to actually be economically viable. So just, but I know nothing about mining, so I'd love to get your opinion as somebody coming from the space so on those kind of two. So first, first, El Salvador. Then, then on the mining that's happened in El Salvador. 

Pierre Rochard  
Yeah. So this year, I came to El Salvador for the first time. I was invited by Kuo plus and the Bitcoin office, and they were doing an educational program for university students. And also there were government officials there as well. I ended up going for five hours doing a lecture on Bitcoin mining, kind of A-Z.

Mike Peterson  
You did to the Kubo plus, yeah, that's awesome. 

Pierre Rochard  
Yeah, that was a lot of fun. I, you know, got to talk about everything from what is a cryptographic function, a hash function, right, to what's a megawatt of electricity. And, you know, what are the different power generation technologies and everything in between. So that that was that, I think that's the longest I've talked about Bitcoin mining, and one sitting was five hours. 

Mike Peterson  
We're going to try to outdo that here today. 

Pierre Rochard  
It depends. You know, the students stayed awake. So if you stay awake, maybe we'll get to six hours. But, um, the I had slides to help me get through it, and great coffee as well. So that was great. And I guess they liked it as well, because then they invited me back to go to President bukele, his inauguration. And that was just an amazing experience. I'd never been to a state function like that.

Mike Peterson  
So did you have to buy a new outfit to be able to dress up a little bit?

Pierre Rochard  
I so I wore my suit, same suit I wore at my wedding a decade ago, right? And it was, it was hot, but I'll sweat for Bukele. You know, he's done a fantastic job here and now, yeah, back here for the third time, when I saw that, you know, adopting Bitcoin was organizing their conference and they had a call for speakers, I immediately jumped on to apply, because I was like, Hey, I definitely want to get to talk at this conference and get to meet more Bitcoiners and El Salvadorians as well, because, and honestly, to spend money here, right? Like I brought my whole family. We made a vacation out of it. I want to help support the economy. And, yeah, it's been a wonderful experience. It's it's safer than Texas is.

Mike Peterson  
So what you know as a bitcoiner and what's happening here in El Salvador. What do you think is the role that El Salvador is gonna play? Kind of long term?

Pierre Rochard  
Long term, I see it as kind of, it's going to be the Singapore of Latin America now, obviously, with its own character and its own uniqueness, but that it is going to be the economic growth I think here is going to outpace everyone else in the region because of the leadership that they have and the kind of the out of the box thinking that bukele has demonstrated, and not just him, but, you know, the people around him, the administration, he has some amazing Ministers and his cabinet, I mean, just some of the hardest working, you know, and out of the box kind of thinkers, and so he's put a great team together. And now with Trump in office, you know, when I came to the inauguration, they had a like party afterwards, and I ran into Congressman Matt gates there, and I got a selfie with him, and we got to talk about Bitcoin, and he's a fan of Bitcoin, and now he's going to be the Attorney General of the United States, which is just mind bogglingly awesome. So I think that the the level of international cooperation and diplomacy we'll be able to see, I think that there's, there's a renaissance, kind of a, you know, we call it a golden age, but now it's a Bitcoin age, way better than gold, and that's what we're going to see here in the the Americas, yeah, and with Argentina as well, with Malay. 

Mike Peterson  
Yeah. It was just there a little over a week ago, and it was, it was very encouraging. Just I talked to a number of different people, Uber drivers, you know, just people from like, you know, the high level to the low level. And overall, people feel like, yeah, things are tough right now, but this is what we need to do in order for our economy to prosper longer term. And so hopefully the people will stick through, stick with him as he kind of pushes these reforms and makes these huge slashes the government. 

Pierre Rochard  
Yeah, the latest kind of third party economic report I saw come out of Argentina October last month was that they were turning the corner so that there was a bottom to GDP, real GDP, and now they're seeing real wage growth and disinflation, right? So I think that they're definitely on the right path. They've balanced the budget, which is probably the hardest part to accomplish in-

Mike Peterson  
an amazingly short amount of time. Yeah, nobody thought that was possible. 

Pierre Rochard  
And you got to rip the band aid off. I mean, otherwise things drag on, you got to have a sharp drop, and then you have a recovery, V shaped recovery. And I think that they're. Now on the recovery path, and that their economy is going to be thriving in 12 to 18 months. Yeah, 

Mike Peterson  
No, I agree. So back to the mining question. Do you think it is economically viable for them to do mining here in El Salvador, and the way that they're attempting to do it? Or, just curious for your take. 

Pierre Rochard  
It always comes down to the specifics, right? Because El Salvador has great geothermal you mentioned. They've got hydro as well, and they've got solar as well. So those are kind of the three most cost effective technologies that El Salvador has access to. A little bit less cost effective is that they do have LNG imports to a new power plant that's a reciprocating engine. It's not a gas turbine, so it's a little less efficient than what we have in Texas. So I think that we can somewhat rule that out as being kind of the main source of energy for Bitcoin mining. Longer term, they are developing nuclear. So I think that if the strategy with nuclear should be to overbuild it, right? You build to you build more nuclear than you need, and then you sell it for cheap to the excess for cheap to Bitcoin miners, and so that way you'll help cover the capital cost of nuclear. But that's longer term. So I think that in the shorter term, it comes down to, you know, are you citing the solar generation in the best places, right? So there's specific places you know, on the correct side of the mountain, at the right angle that you're going to be able to get to that low cost electricity that then you during the day, you're good. And then at night, hopefully there's less people, fewer people using air conditioning. And so then you can be able to use the cheap hydro at night and the cheap geothermal at night. And then you might need to bridge that with some batteries. Batteries are getting cheaper and cheaper. Solar is getting cheaper and cheaper. And so the cost curve on those is very competitive, especially if you're getting a great deal from China, maybe, and so you can definitely get to a cost effective Bitcoin mining here in El Salvador. You might not necessarily have the lowest cost, but you don't need to have the lowest cost, right? So if the bitcoin price is ripping then you know you can get away with having a slightly higher cost of electricity, especially if you have a solid regulatory environment, and you know that your mining equipment is not going to get seized by the state, for example. You know all of that kind of jurisdictional risks that can come with other cheaper jurisdictions. 

Mike Peterson  
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, I know we got the conference going on here, and there's a lot of stuff going on, so we won't keep you too much longer, but would love to just make sure people know where they can follow you if they can. You know you have, I don't know if you have your DMS are open or anything, but

Pierre Rochard  
DMs are open, okay, at @BitcoinPierre on x and on LinkedIn as well. You know, feel free to reach out double check, make sure it's not an imposter. I've got impersonators running around, but yeah, I'm always happy to chat with people. 

Mike Peterson  
Yeah. And how's your family? Like in El Salvador?

Pierre Rochard  
They love it, yeah? They, you know, the they like the beach, they we went to a water park that was a lot of fun. The food is great. And, yeah, everyone's very long one week.

Mike Peterson  
Okay, that's a that's a good amount of time you get a little break from the cool weather in the US, and this is a good time to get down here. 

Pierre Rochard  
Yeah, it's beautiful.

Mike Peterson  
Awesome. Well, I'm looking forward to us having some follow ups. Now that you're addicted to coming to El Salvador, 

Pierre Rochard  
I'll keep coming back. 

Mike Peterson  
Yeah, so we'll have you back on. But appreciate your time.

Pierre Rochard  
Thanks for having me on.