157 – Where the Wild Sats Live with Kent Halliburton

157 – Where the Wild Sats Live with Kent Halliburton

From Plebchain Radio by Avi Burra and QW

March 27, 2026 · 1h 46m

About this episode

The episode discusses the split between Bitcoin buyers and builders, featuring Kent Halliburton's insights on mining and its accessibility.

Episode 157 opens with Avi’s sermon “The Forgotten Forge,” a meditation on what happens when a civilization outsources the making of the things that keep it alive. The frame is applied directly to Bitcoin: early on, acquiring BTC and producing it were effectively the same act, but convenience split buyers from builders, and the network has been living with that fracture ever since. Kent Halliburton, CEO of Saz Mining , joins to argue that this split is one of Bitcoin’s under-discussed fault lines. He traces his own path from a decade in the solar industry, through burnout and a Portugal walkabout, into Bitcoin and eventually mining, where he came to see mining as the “hashpunk” counterpart to the ledger’s cypherpunk side. His core mission with Saz Mining is to make sat-based acquisition through mining accessible to normal people rather than leaving production to specialists and institutions. A big chunk of the episode is devoted to Kent’s “ hidden history ” thesis: the 2013 combination of ASIC specialization and Coinbase convenience created a fork in how people acquire Bitcoin. One path led to buyers, the other to producers, and over time those became culturally separate worlds…

People in this episode

Host: Avi Burra

Guest: Kent Halliburton

Topics covered

  • Bitcoin
  • mining
  • technology
  • society
  • culture

Keywords

  • Bitcoin
  • mining
  • Saz Mining
  • ASIC specialization
  • Coinbase convenience
  • hashrate
  • cypherpunk
  • hidden history

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Saz Mining, Coinbase

Places: Portugal

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