We interview Fernando Rivero, co-founder of the Mining Disrupt Conference in Miami. July 2020 will see the 2nd mining-specific conference organized by Fernando. He has been working in the blockchain industry for over 5 years & currently plans educational and networking events related to the blockchain realm.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/crypto.mining.tools/permalink/468750640705576/
https://www.pscp.tv/w/1vOxwaowQALGB
Transcription
Speaker 1: Ethan is our cohost. I’m the host of the Crypto Mining Tools Podcast, and Ethan, why don’t you go ahead and introduce?
Ethan Zurka: Yeah. Hey, everybody. I’d like to introduce our guest today. Fernando Rivero, he is co-founder of Mining Disrupt. Fernando, can you tell us a little bit, how you fit in the whole world of crypto? Tell the audience.
Fernando Rivero: A little bit about myself. I’ve been in the crypto game for a couple years. Started trading crypto in 2009, and noticed that there was a gap in education of crypto. There was a mystic feel towards blockchain, cryptocurrency, and Bitcoin. We started hosting events and eventually landed on Mining Disrupt, which was the largest mining conference for 2019. Our goal is to educate and make connections, as much as possible, between people in our network, and people that come to our events. That’s what we’re looking to do and continue to do.
Scott Offord: That’s awesome. I went to the Mining Disrupt, the very first one last year, and it was amazing, honestly. This isn’t an ad. It’s not a commercial, but it was exactly who I wanted to be talking to. As an ASIC mining equipment broker myself, all of my customers were there, all of my prospects, all of my vendors. It was just amazing for me personally.
Ethan Zurka: I can’t wait to go myself, so I’m looking forward to going to the next one.
Scott Offord: Fernando, what else do you do other than that event?
Fernando Rivero: Blocktech Network is one of the co-founders of Mining Disrupt. It’s a company that I co-own. We host monthly events in multiple cities, as well as multiple countries. What we’re trying to do is, we host free events, as well as paid events, trying to educate people around cryptocurrency, blockchain, and mining. It’s kind of all encompassing. We use those events. Most of the events are in [inaudible 00:02:16], Miami, New York, Atlanta. We also have some events in Venezuela and other countries, but we use those events to bring awareness to other conferences or events that we’re doing.
Fernando Rivero: For example, this Saturday we do have a tokenized art event that we will be hosting at the 1 Hotel in South Beach. Then, January is actually a very big month for Miami. We’ve got the Washington Elite Conference that’s going to be coming down, which is big from an AI, blockchain perspective. That’s going to be hosted by Bruce Porter and Washington Elite folks. We also have the North America Bitcoin Conference that’s going to be going on that same week, that is pretty much a staple for blockchain and Bitcoin. A bunch of people are going to be there, everybody. It’s going to be a who’s who of folks. Those aren’t necessarily our events. We co-work with those conferences to bring awareness to their event.
Fernando Rivero: We host events around that and try and host workshops as well. Anything that we can do to bring awareness to mining, crypto, trading, anything along those lines is really our niche. Hopefully we can start expanding that into different types of blockchain specific businesses.
Ethan Zurka: Fernando, you are involved with educating people about crypto, correct?
Fernando Rivero: Correct.
Ethan Zurka: Is there just one thing? Let’s just say I know nothing about crypto, but there’s just one thing that everybody in the world should know or needs to know. What would that be?
Fernando Rivero: That’s a tough question. To answer it in one word, I would say the decentralization of it. I know it’s very difficult to explain, but the fact that it’s decentralized, to me, is one of the highest values that are there. I know that people speak about, or folks speak about the security around it and the speed, but I personally like the decentralization of the currency. I recently had a check that I cashed in my bank. It was a cashed check, and they held the funds for about two weeks, where they said, “We just started a new process. You can’t have the fund. You can’t have the money,” and it just drove me nuts. That’s something that wouldn’t happen with crypto. I think the concept of decentralization is something that is difficult to comprehend from a non-technical person, but once you get it, it definitely has value. I would say teaching and understanding the decentralization around blockchain is vital, and probably one of the most important questions to get.
Fernando Rivero: The most common question I get really, is what is Bitcoin. Either that or … Actually, that’s a lie. The most common question I get is what money do I put into … Or what cryptocurrency-
Ethan Zurka: Which one do I buy?
Fernando Rivero: [inaudible 00:05:16] Yeah. When’s the next big boom? The answer to that is, if I knew the answer to that question, I probably wouldn’t be speaking to you at this moment in time. I’d probably be purchasing it and investing in it. It’s definitely something that nobody knows the answer to that, I don’t think, and I think the most important thing to learn around cryptocurrency is the decentralization.
Scott Offord: Ethan and I were in Las Vegas recently. We went to the World Crypto Con there. Every time we got in an Uber, what we’d try to do is ask the Uber driver about … Did they know what Bitcoin is and all that. One of our Uber drivers was a little shy. He didn’t want to be preached at. He didn’t want to be roped into some MLM scam. One of our drivers in particular was like, “Bitcoin? I haven’t heard of that before.” That was so crazy to think that us guys, we’re so deep into this, that we wouldn’t even give that a second thought. To think that some people right in our own backyards haven’t even heard of the word Bitcoin before, it’s just amazing.
Fernando Rivero: [inaudible 00:06:34]
Ethan Zurka: Especially with it going on all week, you would think they would’ve crossed paths with somebody in Vegas that would’ve told them before us.
Fernando Rivero: At some point, right?
Scott Offord: Yep.
Ethan Zurka: What do you do, Fernando, to help people learn? Have you found any effective tools or effective ways? Do you think that people are learning better just through talks, or are they learning better through audio visual presentations, or is more like a face-to-face thing? Do people learn better through human interaction? What’s your take on that?
Fernando Rivero: What I’ve found from our events is that there’s different niches and groups of folks that exist. I went to high school, I’ve got my buddies. I’ve got about five to 10 friends that I talk to, and we’re constantly talking about things that we know. Out of my 10 friends, I’m interested in blockchain and crypto, and I want to talk about it, but none of my friends are interested in it. I’ve found that a lot of our events are people that want to talk about blockchain and crypt, but they don’t have anybody to talk to with, or talk about it towards. They come to our events and the mix and mingle specifically, people come and they just want to talk about blockchain and crypto, whether it’s the project that they’re working on, the cryptocurrency they’re trading, what’s the new thing that’s out there. They actually start learning by “teaching.” I’ll put that in air quotes.
Fernando Rivero: As some folks who are novices and they want to learn about blockchain, they’re there to learn the decentralization aspect of it or the mining aspect of it, and then the folks that have been in the game, let’s say, recently, a couple months that they’ve been doing some research, they start teaching these folks, and they start adding to their bag, let’s call it. Then, the folks that have been in the game for quite a while, they’re going in there specifically to network. There’s usually three different levels of people at our events. It’s the people that absolutely know nothing. They’re looking to learn. The people that know a little bit, who I guess, solidify their education, and then the third one are the folks that have been in the game for years. They’re mining, they’re trading, they’ve got maybe a crypto business, and they’re looking to network, maybe find funding, things of that nature. That is also something that we help with. We try and connect individuals with investors, and that’s kind of the structure on some of our events.
Fernando Rivero: The panels also help. Folks love the panels. The only difficult thing on the panels is feedback is always mixed. It’s either you didn’t deep dive enough, or we-
Ethan Zurka: We went too deep.
Fernando Rivero: Either went too deep or we went too far. Or we didn’t go deep enough. It’s mixed. What we try and do is, we’ll host panels and we’ll keep an open section towards the end for our smaller panels, where individuals can go up and speak to the speakers and ask those questions that they want to ask.
Scott Offord: For me, particularly with that Mining Disrupt Conference … I just can’t get off that topic, but what I enjoyed the most was just meeting other people, schmoozing, because on a day-to-day basis, I don’t really talk to people in the blockchain industry very much. I’ve got my wife and family and some of my friends. If I start talking about Bitcoin too much, it’s just … Their eyes glaze over. It’s really great to be able to just talk with other like-minded people. I really love what you guys are doing.
Fernando Rivero: Thank you. I agree. Once you get into hash rate, people’s eyes start to glaze over.
Scott Offord: Difficulty. Hash rate.
Ethan Zurka: Fernando, you’re currently in Miami right now, correct?
Fernando Rivero: Correct.
Ethan Zurka: Can you tell us-
Fernando Rivero: Nice and cold over here.
Ethan Zurka: Yeah. Can you tell us, because it sounds like you organize a lot of events, and so maybe there’s a lot of travel involved in your life. What’s your day to day life like?
Fernando Rivero: I’ve decided to not travel for the rest of this year, but-
Ethan Zurka: Okay. That’s just two weeks.
Fernando Rivero: Fair. I’m definitely platinum status for 2020 already for some airlines. I travel … Let’s called it 60% of the time.
Ethan Zurka: Wow.
Fernando Rivero: It’s something that’s great in the beginning and everybody wants to travel, and once you start doing a little bit, it gets tiring, especially staying in a hotel when you have family and kids. We do travel a lot. We try and go to different events [inaudible 00:11:47] Blocktech Network. What we do is, we try and find individuals in different states, cities that are interested in networking [inaudible 00:12:01]. We network with these folks to host events with us. We collaborate, we do events with them, we show them the ropes on how to do the events. The goal is for them to transition to lead that chapter. We have chapters in multiple cities and states, and that’s how we do all of our events. Sometimes I travel to these events, which is the bulk of what we do, as well as other conferences. We couldn’t go to World Crypto Con, but it definitely was one of the events that we wanted to go to.
Ethan Zurka: Fernando, that’s just amazing that you travel so much and you still look so young. You haven’t gone gray like myself.
Fernando Rivero: It’s there.
Ethan Zurka: I’d like to take this moment right now to say thanks to NovaBlock, our sponsors for this episode. NovaBlock started around four months ago back in August 2019, and they’re now in the top 15 of public polls that are available for mining. They just have a really interesting philosophy that as China moves their hash rate out around the world and decentralizes, they want to be a part of that decentralization, while at the same time giving their customers transparency and educating them on what is the best mining poll for their needs. I think they’re fantastic, so thank you NovaBlock.
Scott Offord: At the same time, go up to their website, novablock.com, and on the top right corner there’s a sign up button. If you use the invitation code Offord18, that’s O-F-F-O-R-D one eight, you get a permanent reduction in your mining fees down to 1.8% for life. Or if you have a lot of hash power, sign up with them and you can get even a lower rate. Thank you NovaBlock.
Ethan Zurka: All right. Fernando, what do you see in the future? Where’s this going? From your perspective. You said you’ve been in this since, what, 2009?
Fernando Rivero: Yeah. I heard about it first in ’09. Ended up buying my first Bitcoin, I’d say 2011. Around there.
Ethan Zurka: Wow. Early.
Fernando Rivero: Yeah. I think it was a little bit under 500 bucks each one at the time. I started buying at that point. Ethereum was around, I believe, super cheap [inaudible 00:14:32]-
Ethan Zurka: [inaudible 00:14:32]
Fernando Rivero: Woulda, coulda, shoulda. I’ve been in the space for quite a while. As far as where I see it going, right now, my stance is that I’m expecting blockchain, the technology to be used with folks to not know that it’s happening. It’s going to be used, let’s say, in third party systems, CRM systems, transferring of data. It might even be used in the banking system in the backend, but nobody will know that it’s actually being used. I think that’s going to be the first wave, and then hopefully once people are using it without knowing that it’s being used, they will start earning a little additional trust towards it, and then maybe start using it a little bit more.
Fernando Rivero: I am concerned what’s going to happen once the last Bitcoin is mined. What’s going to happen around validating trades. I think that’s going to be an interesting point in time for cryptocurrency in general. I do think the first step or the next step is using the technology as a behind the scenes kind of tech, and then eventually once people trust it, believe it, understand it, and it’s not used predominantly for drugs and all that fraudulent, unlawful things that was used for in the beginning, once that moniker is gone, I think it’s going to be a little bit more mainstream.
Ethan Zurka: Do you really feel that trust is an issue? I’m just kind of … I know a lot of people that have a mistrust for corporations, and so I’m just wondering how you’re connecting the dots where corporate adoption to utilize the technology, the blockchain technology for their benefit, is somehow going to instill a public trust. How do you connect those dots? For me, when I explain Bitcoin and I show people a dollar bill, I tell them, “This is just a piece of paper.” Technically, it’s not a piece of paper. It’s actually made out of linen, but you trust it has a value and everyone else trusts it has a value. The hardest part, I guess, for people that I talk to, for them to trust is because they can’t see it, they can’t touch it, they can’t feel it, that’s why they don’t believe in it. As soon as I set up a wallet for them, and I send them some coin, and I show them how they can cash it out and how they can put it in their bank account, that’s when it all clicks together to them, and that’s when they begin to trust it like a dollar.
Fernando Rivero: I think it’s a combination of two different types of trust, if I’m saying that correctly. For the novice user in your case, I think it’s, “I’ve heard these things about Bitcoin. I don’t trust it, but once I make a wallet and I see those transfers being done, then it kind of clicks in my head and I somewhat trust it.” Those are some of the users. Then, I’ve also seen the other users that, it’s not that they don’t trust Bitcoin or blockchain or cryptocurrency. They don’t trust themselves, or they don’t believe that they’re not going to screw the pooch and lose their private key, send the coin to the wrong wallet. I find that people are more nervous to send a transaction because they’re not sure if they’re going to do it right than anything. It’s like they don’t trust themselves to believe that what they’re doing is the right way to do it.
Fernando Rivero: When I first sent my 10, 20, 30 dollars worth of Bitcoin to someone, I just wanted to see what it was, how it worked. I was freaking out, and “Did you send me the right wallet? I copied and pasted the address 10 times. I tried to check it as many times as possible.” I even dropped it in Excel and said, “Is this equal to that true perfect?” Then, I finally made that trade. That was years ago. I still do that today sometimes. I think there is a little bit of nervousness when it comes to keeping your money in your wallet and how to send it, as well as keeping your money on exchanges. Some folks [inaudible 00:19:08]-
Ethan Zurka: Yeah, definitely.
Fernando Rivero: You got to keep the money on the exchange if I want to trade, and then taking it out, and putting it back in, and the fees around that. I think there’s a combination of things there. I personally don’t trust some of the, let’s say, pools. I’ve always felt like there’s a potential for me to be earning more based on my hash rate and maybe they’re just giving me a lower rate. I’ve never known if that was the game or night. I’ve read some articles back in the day where they said ASICs were mining more, and they were keeping some of hash rate for themselves. I heard a bunch of stuff. There’s a lot of hearsay around blockchain and cryptocurrency, and that’s causing a lot of issues around trust.
Scott Offord: I think what you’re doing with your education and the networking events and whatnot is definitely very helpful to bring that trust, and to even just bring up those issues and to make them live and public.
Fernando Rivero: One of the things that we like to do when we can, for some events, is do a raffle at the end, where we raffle cryptocurrency. We force individuals to get a wallet and receive [inaudible 00:20:36] It’s definitely eye opening. Sometimes folks do own a wallet, so we’ll try and use a cryptocurrency that they don’t have. For example, in Coinbase, you log into your Coinbase account. Everybody has multiple wallets. You actually don’t have an EOS wallet until you make a transaction into Coinbase. Little things like that. We’ll try and send coins that maybe they don’t own. Some coins require more information. Think of Monero. Just so that they can be familiar with what different coins are doing and how to send those trades. The more trades you do, the more comfortable you’re going to feel using it.
Ethan Zurka: I remember the first time I … I can totally relate with you. The first time I ever did a transaction and I sent Bitcoin, I was shaking like a leaf and beads of sweat were coming off, and I was like, “Should I press the send button?” What made it even worse is that I had friends behind me, who, they see me as … Just because you know technology, doesn’t mean you understand everything about everything. A lot of people think I understand everything about everything, and so they’re putting all this weight on me to do this transaction and show them how it’s done. It was very nerve wracking.
Scott Offord: You get your ledger or treasure involved, and that’s another step. You got to press all these buttons and confirm and go back and forth. It’s crazy.
Fernando Rivero: Not to plug anything in, but I am working on a project where we’re trying to bridge the gap on multiple exchanges, something that we can connect all those APIs and use one central location to be able to trade between exchanges. Hopefully that’ll increase volume, decrease price differentiation, eventually eliminate arbitrage opportunities that still exist. It is what it is, which is good for the folks that got into that early in the game.
Ethan Zurka: Fernando, I’m wondering, what did you do before all of this? What’s more of your background?
Fernando Rivero: My background is in finance. I did do my Master’s in finance. I’ve always thought that I wanted to do something in numbers. My options were either accounting or finance. Accounting is the money I had and how I got there. Finance is [inaudible 00:23:07]. I’m more interested in what I’m going to do in the future than what’s happened in the past. I started off in finance. Eventually moved into a corporate role. They transitioned me more into a product owner position, because I know the … I was very tech savvy, as well as understood the system. I managed a group of developers for quite some time, QA testing, all that jazz. My product was a little bit under 4.8 billion in revenue a year, so it was big.
Ethan Zurka: Wow.
Fernando Rivero: Eventually, I transitioned out of that and into connecting people. I think … I’ve always been behind the scenes in what I’ve done as a financial analyst, crunching numbers. Even on the tech side, my product, at the time, was not client facing. It was an internal product that was used to bill clients and generate those funds, or that revenue. This has been very interesting for me to be a little bit more client facing and engaging individuals. I like interacting with folks. I think meeting Scott last year was really interesting, even [inaudible 00:24:19]
Scott Offord: Interesting is a good word.
Ethan Zurka: Tell us your Scott story. I want to hear how you guys met.
Scott Offord: No, no. I tell it better.
Ethan Zurka: Okay. Scott, you tell it then.
Scott Offord: When I haven’t eaten in a long time and my blood sugar gets low, I get a little cranky.
Ethan Zurka: This, I know. He always has a box of raisins with him. He is always snacking [inaudible 00:24:45]
Scott Offord: Fernando’s maybe first face-to-face experience with me, I was like, “Food. I need food. Where’s the damn food?”
Fernando Rivero: We got him fries, we got him a burger. It was the best fries and burger he’d had in Miami. We got a burger and fries with your name on it, and I’ll make sure to have a box of raisins too.
Ethan Zurka: I’m going to start carrying around maybe some mandarin oranges or something like that, in case we get in an emergency and I’m stuck with Scott. I’m like, “Here, man. Just take it.”
Scott Offord: You don’t want to see me when I’m getting hungry.
Fernando Rivero: It’s kind of like the Hulk.
Scott Offord: Yeah. Fernando, tell us a little bit more of the details about the Mining Disrupt Conference coming up in July. What can we look forward to? What’s going to be different from last year? Things like that.
Fernando Rivero: You can definitely look forward to seeing a lot of the same faces, same folks. We want to have all the major distributors like we did last year. We want to have most of the major purchasers, as well as manufacturers. We are changing some things this year. Last year we had mining containers in the front, a little bit of a walk to get to them, so we’re going to try and make that access a little bit easier so that folks can interact with the containers. We’re going to change the format around on the stage, and we’re also going to change it from a one day event to a two day event.
Scott Offord: Awesome.
Fernando Rivero: Instead of Area 31 being the after party, we’re going to use that as the first night’s mix and mingle, where we’ll wrap it up early, folks can connect after the first day of speaking, and then day two, we will do the all out party. We go to a lot of conferences. We don’t want to give people too much on the first day, because we know day two, they’re going to be out of it, especially in Miami because there’s stuff to do all the time. That’s kind of the goal. Change it to a two day event instead of a one day. Try and increase awareness to a lot of the folks that had been supporting us throughout this year and next year as well.
Fernando Rivero: There’s been a lot of projects that have come up, Scott included, where we definitely want to try and bring more people to understanding what that is. What I’ve noticed is, from going to different events, a lot of the same folks tend to go, because they’re trying to add more people to their network. What we want to do is, we want those folks to come. We want those folks to start bringing their friends and expanding their network and bringing more people to our events. If Scott met Ethan for the first time last year at the conference, in 2020, we’re hoping now that you’ve gained that relationship where now you can start opening your networks and maybe connecting with each other, doing some deal flow between each other. I think that’s going to be really interesting.
Fernando Rivero: We’d like to try and do some collaboration areas, where folks can set some time to connect with each other at a specific area. My long-term goal … I can’t do it for 2020, but eventually I want to do [inaudible 00:28:10] crypt throughout the entire event, soup to nuts-
Ethan Zurka: That would be cool.
Fernando Rivero: Soda. Yeah. The biggest pain point I’m having right now is the venue itself, because they don’t really deal with crypto. I’m hoping eventually we can do 100% crypto event. You cannot do anything unless you have a blockchain crypto wallet, and [inaudible 00:28:33]
Ethan Zurka: I’m going to start stashing coin right now.
Fernando Rivero: Yep. I think that’ll be really cool, especially if we can incorporate vending machines where people can swipe their QR code and purchase drinks. What I’ve noticed from the novice users is they might know how to send coin via entering the wallet and sending it, but I’m actually shocked to see that most of those users have no idea that the QR code is there where they can just scan it and send it, so that they’re not that nervous about, “Did I get the right value in there?” I think using that more often in vending machines and other types of things, even charging stations, whatever it is that might come up, I think that’d be cool. I think it’ll bring people to that comfort level that needs to exist for them to adopt cryptocurrency.
Scott Offord: Maybe Mining Disrupt 2021 we’ll see.
Fernando Rivero: Yeah, definitely trying to do that.
Ethan Zurka: Another thing too is, ladies, or … This is a suggestion. Maybe you could get the ladies free tickets.
Fernando Rivero: Oh.
Scott Offord: There you go.
Ethan Zurka: Ladies, you get in free. Dudes, you got to pay. You got to use your crypto or whatever, but hey, ladies … I would love to bring my fiance with me. She would love to come in, but it’s just … I can’t justify the expense, because it’s not her business. You know what I’m saying?
Fernando Rivero: Gotcha.
Ethan Zurka: It’s not how she’s making a living, but she would love to tag along with me.
Scott Offord: There’s a lot of dudes in this industry.
Ethan Zurka: Yeah.
Fernando Rivero: Yeah. That’s fair. I think that there are a lot of groups now that are coming up that we’ve started working with, so women in blockchain is actually one of the more popular ones. There is a strong presence … The few women that are in crypto definitely have a strong presence. I do think that number needs to increase. It’s like a 20 to one ratio right now. We did have some women at last year’s event. The parties definitely had some women, but we are looking to market a little bit more women to see if they come into our events and learn a little bit more. That’s a fair point and we’ll see what we can do with it.
Scott Offord: As we just wrap up here, why don’t you tell our listeners a little bit about how they can get ahold of you, and the Mining Disrupt event?
Fernando Rivero: Feel free to go to miningdisrupt.com to purchase some tickets for the event. Scott’s go his offer code where you can receive discounts, and then as far as our monthly events, feel free to go to blocktech.network where you can see all the events that we’ve got coming up. Feel free to reach out to me on Telegram, or in our Telegram chat, Mining Disrupt, or my Telegram name, Fernando Blocktech, which you see at the bottom of the screen. Thank you guys. I’m looking forward to hearing from your listeners.
Scott Offord: Excellent.
Ethan Zurka: Thank you a lot, Fernando. That’s awesome. Thank you again to NovaBlock for being our sponsor.
It was great connecting and talking crypto!