What Crypto Mining Is and How You Can Get Involved with Bernard Dalichau
Spotify Podcast Episode: What Crypto Mining Is and How You Can Get Involved with Bernard Dalichau
In episode 16 of Freedom with NFT’s, our guest Bernard Dalichau shares with us what Crypto Mining is and how you can get involved.
Bernard Dalichau is an entrepreneur and president of Lavender Home Care Solutions and mining enthusiast.
.[00:00:00] Lauren Turton: Welcome back to freedom within NFT’s. I’m your host Lauren Turton. The topic of today’s episode is mining. When I first heard about mining, I was very overwhelmed, confused, and felt like this topic was very over my head. So I wanted to bring someone on to freedom with NFTs that could explain it in a way that was understandable and not overwhelming.
Our guests today, Bernard Dalichau owns lavender home care, which is a senior home care business. I’ve known him for many years. And when I saw him earlier this year, when I was back in my hometown of Dayton, Ohio, visiting my family for the first time, since before the pandemic, I was surprised to find out that he was deep in the mining space.
And when we were catching about family, his newborn, everything that was going on in our lives. He took the time to explain mining to me in a way that was very easy and understandable. And that’s what we’re going to be diving into today on freedom within NFT’s. Welcome Bernard!
Bernard. Thank you so much for being here today on freedom with NFTs.
[00:01:11] Bernard Dalichau: Thanks for having me. This is awesome.
[00:01:13] Lauren Turton: I’m really excited about the topic of your interview today because in past episodes, we’ve brought up the topic of mining, but we actually haven’t had a chance to dive into what mining is, how it works, why someone would want to get involved in mining. But before we get into those questions, can you tell us about your journey into the crypto and NFT space?
[00:01:36] Bernard Dalichau: Yeah, five years ago, a friend of mine named Nate, called me up and asked me if he could put in my office an ant miner. And I was confused by it, wondering what exactly is he talking about? So me, a business person, I’m like, what exactly is this? He’s like, yeah, it’s a box. It throws out all the rhythms and it mines for light coin. And light coin, I think was like in the forties, fifties at that point.
And now it’d be pushing 200. So, I kept asking more questions about it, cause I’m a business mind of it. So I’m thinking, you know, my energy is free. How much does it cost to run this thing? What do I need to do with it and started to, I liked the idea. So I bought four, put three of his in there. And I had a wall in my kitchen of my office and my home care agency of minors, so much so that it got so hot inside of that kitchen that my staff would leave butter out. And the butter would literally melt away. So they hated it, would tell me you got to get the heat out of here. So I would vent the heat through the ceiling and actually out the top of the building. So luckily I was on the second, but that literally was the start of mining. Just a mining for light coin.
And then watching my wallet, just start to put money into it. For me, it was like free money and beautiful. So it just made a lot of sense to continue to do it.
[00:03:02] Lauren Turton: So before we get even further into your five-year journey with mining, can you tell us what is mining?
[00:03:10] Bernard Dalichau: So mining and I’m a novice at this. So I’m not an engineer.
I’m a business person. So my definition of mining is very simple. It’s a computer algorithm that works with other computers around the world that are pulling together their computer power to go and break algorithmic kind of sentences like zeros and ones that we’re all used to. We all see, the matrix type stuff.
And basically what it’s doing is it’s breaking these codes so that you can get and receive light coin or any other Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency that’s out there and you’re getting this. So it’s the new age version of goldmining essentially. We did it with our hands before, but we’re technology-based now, so we do it with our computers and computer power here. But one computer can’t do it, so you compile pools of computer to use all of their power, to do it together, and then you end up splitting whatever you end up getting. So it’s pretty interesting thing. Well, it’s rudimentary basis.
[00:04:10] Lauren Turton: I appreciate that explanation because it was very simple and easy for me to visualize.
So you’re telling me there’s not actually people doing this mining?
[00:04:20] Bernard Dalichau: No, there are none. There are machines and computers, and now with the way we’re doing it right now, you’ve got kids that are mining with their gaming computers, because kids are buying these expensive gaming computers with a lot of processing power.
And that’s what you need, you need processing power and speed. And when you combine all of that, you get to break these codes and that’s what the software does. It goes and searches. And these companies that produce this coin and produce a batch of these coins, large batches, and there’s an inherent value to it.
And that’s basically out in what some people call it, the cloud, whatever you want to call it and you get to go find it and you have these machines that find it. So for me, it’s a very simple thing. It’s the cost of the machine and the cost of the electricity.
And then how much can I get and how does that offset? So it’s like any business it’s cash in cash out basic very simple.
[00:05:16] Lauren Turton: Again, thank you for such a simple explanation. So five years ago, you got into the mining space. Tell me where you’re at now with mining.
[00:05:27] Bernard Dalichau: So we mined light coin for two years. The beauty of it is I wasn’t paying for electricity, which is beautiful.
Light coins started skyrocketing and paused on the light coin because office spaces, we’re getting hip to the fact that you could lose space and just use the space to put a couple of computers in there and just mine. And it’s cheaper in some, in many cases. So can find a place like that great place, great thing to go do.
And now I have the machines. So I know with those machines, I think solar for me is probably the most important thing. Cause it’s, again, free energy. It’s an investment. I can keep them running 24 hours a day, but now what I’ve started to kind of dip into is helium mining. And what I like about a lot of the different cryptocurrencies that are out there is that they all have a purpose, but they’re all different.
So the blockchain is like the internet when it started, no one knew what the potential was. We just knew that it was this place that we could go to and we could gather information. Blockchain is pretty much the same thing. And you’ve got all of these different cryptocurrencies that are starting up.
You’ve got Cardano, you’re going to Helium, you get Bitcoin that everybody know. And they all have a purpose to it. So now I’ve moved into helium mining, which I’m looking forward to where that’s going to go because the numbers, again, they just make sense. I mean, it’s a very simple thing. I mean, if it makes dollars, that makes sense chronological. But I look at it again from a very simple business perspective of cashflow, because I see this as an investment, a long-term investment.
[00:07:01] Lauren Turton: So tell me about that. Why do you see this as a longterm?
[00:07:04] Bernard Dalichau: So for myself, I was able to take light coin profits and money that I perceived from light coin and move those into Bitcoin and Ethereum, and just the grouping that I have. And that’s an investment portfolio. What I consider as a long-term investment portfolio in cryptocurrency, I believe that I don’t know where different coins are going to go up to, but they’re going to go up. And I’m going to hold them for 10 plus years. I could care less where it goes.
I just know that it is going to go up. So my whole idea right now is how do I find machines and how do I find cryptocurrencies that I can mine easily that provide me the most amount of their cryptocurrency to transfer into the coins that I feel are going to grow over the longterm, because I also do believe not all coins are going to be here in 10 years.
A lot of them are just started just for the sake of starting. A lot of them are Ponzi schemes in some cases, but a lot of them have really good backgrounds to them. And a lot of good people doing a lot of cool stuff. And that’s the excitement about it.
[00:08:13] Lauren Turton: And let’s dig into that a little bit when you’re looking at these different coins and thinking about the longterm of them, what are you looking for to validate you saying that is a coin that’s going to be around for years to come?
[00:08:27] Bernard Dalichau: Yeah. I mean, she takes the helium network and helium is based off of which that’s probably grown extremely popular in the past six months, more popular than it was years ago, you look at the helium network and that basically is a network of internet kind of wireless boxes to provide free public internet to people. Plain and simple.
Eventually that could turn into phones. Eventually that could turn into a whole telecom system that would rival AT&T and such. Now, could it get to that point potentially, but the way that this company has decided that they’re going to build their network is to have a coin called helium to have an inherent value to that coin, which hovers between 13 and 16, depending on day in the month.
And in order for me to keep that box in my house and use my internet in my electricity to run it, that machine minds a certain amount of coin for me. And there’s people that you can go look at that are making a couple hundred bucks a month. There’s people that are making a couple thousand dollars a month.
And that’s pretty significant when you look at something like that. So they’re paying us to build their network, whereas instead of going out and getting investment like, AT&T does, and build up their towers, that’s the way AT&T and this is like the new way of doing it. Use us to build their network.
And that’s like one of the really cool things of that helium network. Cardano is probably another special one that is just doing a lot of interesting connections. And I’m still intrigued by what they’re doing and how they’re growing. Bitcoin is the biggest and the best and has always been around.
And I think it’s got name recognition. It’s never going to really go anywhere. Ethereum is the network that everybody talks about because it’s the network that a lot of stuff is built on. So each one you’re either the network or you’ve got a purpose. I mean, people are making coins right now to benefit veterans.
I mean, the purposes are like,they are there. It’s the wild west right now.
[00:10:27] Lauren Turton: It really is the wild west.
[00:10:30] Bernard Dalichau: It is. Like, you can do anything on there and it’s for a great cause and it’ll come out and it’ll level out after a little bit, but that’s 15 years down the line. Maybe even more, how long did it take for the internet to actually level out it’s been 20 plus years.
[00:10:44] Lauren Turton: Right. And that’s so interesting to think about. I recently spoke at my high school. I was brought in to speak to five classes and as I was walking through the school, I had a flashback from when I was in a computer class, my junior year. So it would’ve been around 2002. And I remember the teacher saying I want you to get on your keyboard and type this in http://www.google.com. This is a search engine, and you can type in any question you want and you’ll find the answer for it. But when you’re typing in these questions, you have to do it in certain ways. This was back when you couldn’t just type something in, and the answer came up, you had to use parentheses and quotation marks and different things like that.
And when you think about that was less than 20 years ago, that was taking place. And I know for the generation that I’m in, that you’re in, that we have truly gone from no computers in our lives, no internet in our lives, no smartphones, no cell phones, none of that, to being people that depend on technology.
Whereas people who are younger than us technology has always been a part of their life and with the internet and smartphone. So I know that for you and I, we can identify that where crypto, NFT, all of the spaces going. We’ve already seen it happen, but we weren’t a part of it. So I feel like you and I both can relate to the fact that we’re so excited about this world, because we’ve already seen, what happened about 20 years ago. Now we’re able to say, oh my gosh, this is happening again. And we can be a part of the beginning times of this.
[00:12:34] Bernard Dalichau: Yep. That’s a great feeling too, because I felt the sense of loss actually during that .com type thing. Like wow, this would have been fun, to always like, to do something in this, like this would have been great.
And that’s what this feels like. It’s like that cool opportunity to see where something goes. And I don’t know what’s next after this But yeah, sky’s the limit.
[00:12:55] Lauren Turton: Sky is the limit. Absolutely. So tell me now, what’s next for you in the mining space?
[00:13:05] Bernard Dalichau: So what’s next is to continue to mind helium to we’re moving in probably about a year where I’ll have Anchorage to where I can actually have the mining farm continue to do that, have it solar based. So it continues to, cause the whole house will be solar and continue to have that kind of running. Cause I do like the fact of just mining continuously nonstop and doing that. And you don’t even have other softwares, nice hashing and old computers you can use.
So looking forward to doing that and then also continuing just investments into some pretty solid. Like Cardanos and Ethereum and Bitcoin, and having those as part of a portfolio, because I don’t deal in stocks anymore. I deal mainly in crypto.
[00:13:54] Lauren Turton: Okay. Something I’d like to know a little bit more about is what does this mining farm actually look like?
[00:14:02] Bernard Dalichau: The other one that was there, the one that I had previously was basically just in aluminum was, you had those, what are those metal shelves, the old school metal shelving systems that you can buy the really solid ones that you can sit on. And they were sitting just like that and they had their exhaust. So you can exhaust the hot air cause you have to keep the hot air out.
The new one probably is going to be the same, just larger I’m looking for and the mining equipment is actually much more efficient now. So, and it’s going to be a mixture of just different types of coins, because while it’s hard to mind for Bitcoin. It is, there are other coins that you could mine for and transfer into the coins that you like.
We made a big step when you could actually trade Bitcoin for dollars. That was a huge step. And to be able to go back and forth and back and forth meant that you could put dollars in and trade to any other coin that you want. Or you can put any coins and trade two different coins, and that intrigues me. So as long as the cost for me is lower, the return on investment is good. Then I’m going to continue in the mining aspect in mind for anything. So what does it look like? My dream would be 50 to 75 miners running at the same point and consistently running nonstop. That’s nice. That’s like a retirement thing and just let it run.
I mean, you run that for five or seven years. That’s a good income right there.
[00:15:32] Lauren Turton: And physically I’d like you to break down for me what the space of this actually looks like, because I know for people who are just now hearing about mining, it could be a little bit difficult for them to mentally understand what this physically is going to look like.
So how much space are you taking up?
[00:15:48] Bernard Dalichau: I’ll probably with that with 50 to 75 miners, depending on the size of the miners. Cause now you can do miners, you can mind with graphics cards, so you can either have a small little mining system that sitting, like the size of like a small fridge. Or you going to have a whole room full of miners.
So my expectation is a 10 by 10 room with 50 to 75 miners in different types of miners, mining for different types of coins, because I don’t want to just mind for one, I like the different ones, just because you can mix and match and some are going to fall off. I mean, it just is what it is and they say 98% of them are going to be gone within the next 10 or 15 years. SO there is going to be a few that will stick around.
[00:16:34] Lauren Turton: That’s really helpful to hear just the 10 by 10 space. Now I can visualize what that looks like and what’s taking place in that space. So thanks for breaking that down. So for someone who might want to get involved in mining, they have some more questions. This is interesting to them. How can they get ahold of you?
[00:16:53] Bernard Dalichau: You can go on my Twitter. I own a home care agency and I know the medical device company. So my Twitter is LavenderHC and they can reach me on there and we can kind of chat through anything that they want to chat through. Or also I’d love to learn from other people as well. So if there are ideas or new coins that are out there, new mining systems that are out there aside from helium and henbit miners, but I’m looking for them and would love to learn more and also would love to work with other people do.
[00:17:20] Lauren Turton: Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today. Bernard, we’ll make sure to link in the show notes, how others can get ahold of you. And I really appreciate you taking the time today to drop so much valuable information. Before we wrap this episode up. Is there anything that you’d like to leave with our audience.
[00:17:38] Bernard Dalichau: Enjoy this timeframe and enjoy this process.
And even though there’s going to be some that are going to fail, I think over the long run, there’s going to be a lot of positivity coming from. So just enjoy it and don’t let some things pass you by try things out.
[00:17:54] Lauren Turton: Absolutely. I agree with you a hundred percent on that Bernard again, thank you so much for being with us on freedom with NFT.
Connect with Bernard Dalichau:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bdalichau
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bendali/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LavenderHC
Website: http://lavenderhomecare.com/
Connect with your host, Lauren Turton:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LaurenTurton_
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelaurenturton
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurenturton/
Website: https://freedomwithnfts.com/
