How did this happen ??? 3 months ago, I went through a period of uncertainty and shared that on X. So many people stepped up and were supportive and helpful. And the whole community helped me. Today I'm sharing what happened next. TL;DR: I'm now living in Costa Rica. There's still uncertainty. And, I'm also more surprised than anyone to find that I'm now advising some of the world's top Bitcoin companies, Family Offices, and even a US presidential campaign team. You were a part of making this possible. Til now, I've not shared the story of how this happened. My ego would love to say "I planned it" and it was because of some great skills in me. But that would be untrue. Yes I am good at analysing data and communicating it back to a general audience. But there are people better at both of those things than me. So here's what really happened. It was lock-down 3.0, 2020. Unfettered by my usual social engagements, I went on an online meditation retreat. During that retreat I got an insight "reconnect with your friend Willy". I did. It turned out in the 5 years since we'd chatted, he'd become a globally respected Bitcoin analyst. We chatted like no time had passed. I asked how he'd made the shift from running tech companies to researching Bitcoin. He shared his story "I had 2 months spare and a burning question about Bitcoin. I kept researching it til I got the answer." Because of that, this happened. It was early 2022. Bitcoin was getting hammered in the press for its environmental impact. China reportedly banned it, and Telsa had ditched it. Both cited environmental concerns. I held a small amount, and was about to ditch it too. But before I did, I had a chance conversation with Vlatko, an environmentalist entrepreneur who'd started a climatetech company I'd invested in. He suggested I research it deeper first. As I sat down to meditate that evening, Willy's words punctured my tranquility "I had 2 months spare and a burning question about Bitcoin. I kept researching it til I got the answer." My next move was clear: I resolved to do the same. I cleared my diary and did something I'd never done: I researched for no other purpose than to get an answer. I worked long hours. I didn't eat much. I lost weight. I hunted down every piece of data I could about renewable energy, how grids worked, climate change, methane mitigation, Bitcoin mining, Bitcoin mining economics. I read the articles for and against Bitcoin. I spoke to renewable energy engineers, people actually doing Bitcoin mining, climate scientists, and grid experts. I extrapolated trendlines. I drew charts. I tested theories. I questioned sources. Everything led to the same conclusion: Bitcoin mining had been widely criticized based on the largely unfounded fears that accompany all disruptive technologies, not research and understanding: Bitcoin would likely follow the same trend as solar to become a net positive to the environment. In fact Bitcoin had the potential to become the most fast-acting form of climatetech the world had seen. All the other technologies we were investing in would have an impact after 2030. But this could have a pre-2030 impact on reducing methane emissions and building out the grid renewably (a conclusion that has since been endorsed in peer-reviewed studies. Then something unexpected happened: the week after I finished my research, GreenpeaceUSA kicked off an environmental campaign against Bitcoin. As a subscriber to Greenpeace, who'd participated in actions with them shoulder to shoulder I was surprised. So I read the logic behind their campaign to see what they had discovered that I might have missed. My heart sank. They quoted studies that had already been debunked. It was clear they had not done even 5% of the research I just had, but rather had relied for the most part on some questionable accounts written by mainstream journalists, and the work of a certain central bank employee whose models I had found lacked scientific integrity. I felt this strong intuitive voice inside me say “you should write a response”. Logically I saw no point. I had no active followers to speak of. And the last time I’d used Twitter was a decade ago where I would regularly get one “like” per ten tweets if I was lucky. So I wrote a response on Twitter. I pointed out the errors in GreenpeaceUSA’s messaging. That tweet changed everything. The post received over 600,000 views. I was asked to appear on two podcasts, and I was instantly connected to a global community of environmentalists, climate scientists, philosophers and renewable energy experts I didn’t know existed who, like me, had researched Bitcoin really thoroughly and realized it was likely to become an environmental net-positive. There was one thing that sat uncomfortably with me though. Bitcoin was, or seemed to be, using a disproportionately high amount of fossil fuel. This made me reluctant to advocate too strongly for Bitcoin mining. But then, another intuition came: a very precise intuition “The Cambridge model that everyone relies on is not factoring in offgrid mining. That’s causing it to overstate how much fossil fuel Bitcoin uses.” Yes, it wasn’t brilliant analysis, or research. It was a simple intuition I had that I followed “the Cambridge model does not factor in offgrid mining.” I shared this thought with @level39, who did something amazing and unexpected, for which I'm very grateful He trawled through the Cambridge website and found in the fineprint of their methodology section and said words to the effect “you’re right. Look at this, they not only exclude offgrid mining, but also “methane mitigation”. Buoyed by the fact my intuition had been accurate, I decided to do something I would never have done if I’d known how much work was involved. I started building a ground-up model of Bitcoin mining, which used Cambridge’s data as a starting point, but addressed their inaccuracies. This work required me to hunt down as many bitcoin mining companies as I could and validate their hashrate, power consumption and renewable energy mix. There was no shortcut, just a huge amount of phonecalls, surveys, emails and cross-validation. Along the way, I made other discoveries about Bitcoin mining, how it was helping stabilize grids, reducing electricity costs through monetizing wasted renewable energy and just how much methane it was mitigating. I spent the bulk of each day for two years building the model and publishing what I was finding on Twitter. The response was overwhelming. I was invited to speak at two conferences and Michael Saylor quoted my research. I was invited on 3x more podcasts than I had the capacity to accept. It was amazing, yet at the same time it meant that for two years I received very little income. This was afterall supposed to take two months, not two years. While I was flattered by the level of outreach, I couldn’t feed a family on podcast invites. And I hadn’t been looking for new coaching clients for two years and my number of clients had started to dwindle. My intellect was screaming "stop working for free". Yet my intuition was encouraging “keep going.” II kept on doing more unpaid work, either Bitcoin research, or running meditation courses for The Art of Living. Eventually I finished. To my surprise, the model is now used in preference to Cambridge’s model by most institutions now, including two AI engines. The shock is not that people find merits in the model: I know it is a superior model to Cambridge’s. My surprise is that so many other people would adopt it over such an established institution. Along the way, I’d also realized that my third climate tech fund had to involve Bitcoin mining on landfills: my research was showing me that doing Bitcoin mining with vented landfill gas reduced 45x more emission than investing in solar infrastructure, while yielding better returns. Problem was, New Zealand was the wrong country for international business. With my business partners in the States, and landfill projects in LATAM, it was time to move. My wife was supportive, and my daughters were up for the adventure, so we relocated to Costa Rica. Then the miraculous happened: my two worlds started to collide. A single tweet asking for some advice from the community on twitter led to the unintended, yet much appreciated, consequence of work offers within the bitcoin ecosystem. I was offered an advisory role at a large publicly listed mining company, a research role at another company, and a job helping create a Bitcoin mining video to be sent to regulators the world round. Then Lisa Hough said to me “you’ve got a gift coaching people. Have you thought of coaching Bitcoin companies?” Remarkably I hadn’t. Yet it was so obvious. One tweet later, a number of founders of Bitcoin companies enrolled to get coaching on gaining investment, growing their company, or navigating the challenges that come with running your own tech firm. I don’t know what will happen next. I had no plan when I started all this, and I still don’t - other than to keep listening to the intuitive pull, and to keep meditating so that the stray messages get filtered out so I can hear that voice clearly. But I have felt another intuition: “Bitcoin price is being suppressed because Sovereign Wealth Funds can’t adopt it. They can’t adopt it because their ESG investment committees are blocking it. You should talk to them and help them change their minds.” Again I did some research, and again this intuition was right. A youtube video of Kevin O’Leary on What Bitcoin Did randomly appeared on my Youtube list that same night. I watched in awe as Kevin O’Leary confirmed every word of this intuition, and then some. So apparently I’m going to start talking to Sovereign Funds and Pension Funds? I have no idea when and how. But that’s not my business to try and figure out. And any ideas I could figure out would be inferior to the divine plan. I’m simply listening to a wisdom higher than my own, and beyond what I could have done through my intellect or my experiences. When president Nayib Bukele who has performed a social and economic miracle in El Salvador was interviewed recently he was asked about his economic plan for his country. With a twinkle in his eye he smiled and said “First, seek God’s wisdom”. I found myself nodding my head. I knew what he meant. Whatever name we give to the power beyond us, we are not the doer, and knowing this opens us up to receive ideas beyond the conception of the rational mind. So, content not knowing the path ahead but trusting it’ll be great, that’s what I try to do each day.