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Vickaash Agarwal Of Blue Wheel — Leveraging Ordinals And Renewable Energy To Form The Globe's Largest And Most Profitable Decentralized Mining Operation

Vickaash Agarwal Of Blue Wheel — Leveraging Ordinals And Renewable Energy To Form The Globe's Largest And Most Profitable Decentralized Mining Operation

NFT Bluewheel | Bitcoin Mining

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Get ready for this electrifying episode of the Edge of NFT podcast featuring Vickaash Agarwal from Bluewheel Mining. Discover how Bluewheel is revolutionizing Bitcoin mining by harnessing renewable energy and creating easier access to this lucrative industry. Vickaash takes us on a journey into the world of decentralized mining, where community involvement and the power of NFTs combine to bring everyday people into the fold. With daily Bitcoin rewards and a vision for a more sustainable and inclusive future, Bluewheel is paving the way for a new era of mining that you won’t want to miss. Follow this conversation and be inspired by the innovative intersection of technology, renewable energy, and blockchain. Plus, learn how Netflix is the perfect Edge of NFT green room show for guests no matter where they are in the world, and hear more about the Secret Service’s not-so-secret NFT collection that is unfortunately not for sale. Tune in for all of these and more!

Listen to the podcast here

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Vickaash Agarwal Of Blue Wheel — Leveraging Ordinals And Renewable Energy To Form The Globe’s Largest And Most Profitable Decentralized Mining Operation

This is Vickaash Agarwal from Bluewheel Mining featuring Bitcoin mining with renewal energy to Ordinals community involvement. I’m here on Edge of NFT, my favorite show. Stay tuned.

NFT-curious audiences, stay tuned for this episode to learn how Bluewheel Mining is creating easier access to Bitcoin mining, delivering daily Bitcoin rewards via Ordinals.

Plus, how Netflix is the perfect Edge of NFT green room show for guests no matter where they are in the world.

Finally, hear more about the Secret Service’s not-so-secret NFT collection that is unfortunately not for sale.

Before we move on, we are launching a new show, Edge of AI. Snap into your safety belt. Prepare to explore the depths of the rapidly expanding AI universe. Episodes are important dispatches featuring hyper-relevant reports from pilots, pioneers, and passengers aboard the AI rocket ship. We’re exploring the latest use cases and developments in AI. Hear from experts building the tech and learn how the disruptive force is transforming industries in society. We’re launching on August 2nd, 2023 with an incredible launch party in LA. Look out for ways to get your ticket. Make sure to subscribe in advance by heading over to EdgeOfAI.xyz. Follow us on LinkedIn as Edge of AI and Twitter as @EdgeOf_AI. We will see you over there.

This sponsored episode features Vickaash Agarwal of Bluewheel, an initiative leveraging Ordinals and renewable energy to form the globe’s largest and most profitable decentralized mining operation controlled by the people. Vickaash Agarwal is a business leader, philanthropist, and advisor. His career highlights include a time as a partner at Illuminati Digital Capital, a $50 million fund based out of the Mideast. At the helm of Bluewheel Mining as CEO, Vickaash continues to innovate in the field. Bluewheel Mining isn’t your standard operation.

This project concentrates on creating a Bitcoin or BTC mining setup underpinned by renewable energy, ensuring a cost-efficient and eco-friendly power source. Their community operates over 3,000 existing BTC ASIC miners and has acquired and installed 400 ASIC pods to extend their renewable energy mining reach to support the Ordinals community. By investing in renewable energy infrastructure, they’re paving the way for greater mining capacity expansion. As they harness the power of renewables, they are contributing positively to the environment, reducing mining costs, and planning to further broaden their operations with additional miners and a private data center. Vickaash, welcome.

Thank you.

We know it’s a little bit late on your end. We appreciate your flexibility to have this conversation about exciting stuff that you’re working on. We’re glad to have you on the show.

It has been a pleasure to be here. We met at NFT.NYC. I’ve been looking ahead to being on the show. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you for bringing me to the show.

It was great to meet you at NFT New York. We shared how we’re always trying to push the edge of what’s possible in innovation and tell those stories. Naturally, what you’re doing jumped out at us. We’re excited to learn more about you and Bluewheel Mining and how you’re revolutionizing BTC mining. Can you start from the beginning of who you are and then what Bluewheel is all about?

I would start with my past. I’ve been a steel industrialist in the past, which was an energy-consuming industry. After COVID, Bitcoin was something that started making me more attracted to it, and I started exploring it. I completed my course education for cryptocurrency from The London School of Economics. Since I was a commercial guy, I went ahead to complete my FinTech course at Harvard. This gave me the whole scenario of Bitcoin as a seventh property rather than picking it up as a speculating asset. That’s what made me interested in Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin stuff. I started with Ethereum mining and then switched over to Bitcoin mining.

In the last few years, we have expanded to ten megawatts of mining operation with 3,000 ASIC miners. When we do Bitcoin mining, we see there are certain challenges in Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin mining is the Web2 part of the Web3 world. It is an old traditional industrial business where you put on your server, which works with electricity. The people who take care of repair and maintenance and the servers are connected to the Bitcoin network, which solves the algorithm or participates in blogs. You get Bitcoin mining as a reward. Bitcoin mining is the most important part of the entire blockchain ecosystem. It’s still in the Web2 world. We are trying to bring Bitcoin mining to DeFi, Ordinals, and the blockchain.

Bitcoin mining is the most important part of the entire blockchain ecosystem. Click To Tweet

How does it happen? We fractionalize the hash rate. When we talk about cloud mining, cloud mining may have certain double spending problems. You cannot track how much hash rate is being sold in cloud mining. Is there double spending on the miners or live links? NFTs and Ordinals make it possible for auditing the number of hash rates being issued. It makes it easy to give an explanation of the business or what we’re doing when we come to the community. We’re coming up with Bitcoin mining Ordinals. Initially, we were planning on Polygon, but that includes a lot of talent because you get BTC, convert to wBTC, build it to Polygon, and then send it.

It’s interesting because you’re talking about a lot of things that normally people don’t talk about in one sentence. BTC mining, merging over to Polygon, Ordinals, and all these things didn’t fit together as far as I can tell. You’re building some bridges here across Web3 that are uncharted waters. That’s cool.

The activity on BRC-20 made us come on the Bitcoin chain and work on Ordinals where Bitcoin gets airdropped directly to the Ordinals wallet. That makes the process very simple and cost-saving. As Bitcoin miners, we want to be loyal to Bitcoin mining networks. We’re coming in with 2,300 Ordinals NFTs backed by 400 ASIC miners. The miners have already been set. We are not looking to raise funds to set up the miners. Anyone buying NFTs will start getting the Bitcoin ROI within 24 hours of buying NFTs. We will be launching NFTs.

Let me add a few things there. Josh was alluding to it, but you’re going away from the traditional Bitcoin mining piece. You talked about it through the cloud and making sure there’s no double spend, but one of the ways that you describe it differently is called the Bluewheel Mining as a term. You were going into it, and you dove into how you’re now going into the Ordinals’ side of it.

There are two kinds of people reading this. There are people who understand the Bitcoin mining world, and there are those who don’t. For those who don’t necessarily understand, can you break it down a little bit more? How is your approach unique from a mining aspect? What is this extra DeFi awesomeness that you’re bringing with the world of Ordinals?

The mining aspect is we take care of mining operations. The mining operations are made live on the website where you can see how many machines are working through a third-party watcher link or a third-party pool link like Binance Pool or Antpool. When we make this live, you can track the number of miners working and what numbers of ASIC pods are online, live, or active. You may get one inactive when something gets faulty. You can track the production of Bitcoin, which is shared from a third-party pool from our side. That makes it more transparent.

We’re not doing anything rocket science. We’re not making any false promises for ROI. We’re bringing the Bitcoin ecosystem to the community to be part of it. Bitcoin mining has challenges. You need to have minimum investment, look up the legality of the countries, pay taxes, import machines legally, and find out an authenticated center to set up the miners or have your legal Bitcoin mining center and repair and maintenance. It’s a full-time job. It’s not a part-time job. You buy Ordinals. We take care of your miners. You get your Bitcoin rewards every day.

You are on board with the decentralized themes here that come with Web3. That’s the future that you envision as well through a novel mining model. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

We fractionalize the hash rate of the mining operations. When we talk about the fractionalizing of hash rates, we don’t say that you get a certain hash rate. We assigned 400 for the Ordinals. We may have 400 ASIC miners. It’s an S19J Pro 120-terahash machine, the model that we talked about. You may have 400 machines working. You may get five machines faulty. The 395 get divided equally among the Ordinals NFTs of batch one. It becomes more decentralized because whatever the production counts is live. Bitcoin comes from the mining pool. It goes directly to the NFT holders.

The mining operation is being controlled on the back end. We will be giving audit reports and everything on a quarterly basis to the miners and all this stuff, but community involvement brings it to DeFi. Our NFT is $550. You invested $550 in NFTs, and you get a certain share of the hash rate of Bitcoin. In DeFi, you stake your NFT and lend $400 against it. You have invested $150. This is only possible when the community is working toward it. We’re trying to bring Bitcoin mining to the community. Bitcoin mining has been part of large investors, which internally we call wheels. We’re trying to make community wheels now.

Bluewheel Mining aims to bring Bitcoin mining to the community. Click To Tweet

In a lot of ways, you’re decentralizing something that has been relatively reserved to a smaller population of folks that have participated in this aspect of the blockchain economy. Buying miners is not only expensive, but it’s complicated. Which one do you buy? When do you buy it? Is it going to work? Does it have a warranty? These are all concerns that people have when they have looked into miners. It can be overwhelming. What you are doing in terms of daily Bitcoin rewards is pretty novel. Could you talk a little bit more about how that mechanism works?

We have miners set up. The miners are connected to a mining pool, usually Binance Pool or Antpool. You have Luxor and Foundry. Miners are connected to a certain mining pool. The mining pool sends Bitcoin rewards to the wallets. We’re creating a smart contract on Ordinals with a formalization where Bitcoin goes to the Ordinals wallet or Ordinals smart contract. There will be a deduction of electricity charges automatically based on the terahash or petahash used by the miners and our management charge. We would be charging a management fee of 10%. The rest of the BTC saved would be immediately distributed to NFT holders. It will automatically be pushed to NFT holders’ wallets.

It’s pretty special. Back when we were meeting and talking at NFT.NYC, what was cool about the way that you were going about this was that given your everyday-person access to Bitcoin mining, most people that have heard of Bitcoin mining don’t necessarily have the expertise or the funds to go and buy a whole miner, set it up, and even know what to do if somehow your miner goes offline and everything else that deals with this. You have a good team to be able to set this up. You now have ways that people can find Ordinals and get access to this. To set all this up, you need a great team. Can you give us a little bit of information on the team you’ve been able to create to help put all this together?

For Bitcoin mining, we already had our team. We have hardware engineers working on it. We have a set of 7 to 8 hardware engineers who keep on watching links. We have a set of people who take over cases for repair and maintenance of the devices, especially for Ordinals holders. We were early on NFTs. It will take time for me to catch up with the Ordinals world. We have been working on Ordinals. Technically, I have been an investor in projects. I’m not a blockchain technical guy.

I started with this plan of coming up with Bitcoin mining NFTs. We have been working for one year, finding the right team for marketing, the right team for designing, and the right technical team because we need to be very safe with the technical part. We’re attending a lot of conferences, meeting people, and selecting people. Finally, we have Defination Studios from Singapore, which is working on the blockchain with us. They have already been part of two gaming projects. They have a good marketing team. Most of us are part of one of the NFT projects for marketing.

For security, we have Amalia Grochal. Amalia advised the security part of the smart contract. We are talking to an interesting company. They implement the smart contract. They have a platform on Ordinals where you can implement a smart contract, but then you don’t have to take care of security. They take care of it. They’re also working with decentralized and DeFi Ordinals lending projects.

We’re trying to integrate all these things together for a common solution for the people. Initially, we were coming up with Ordinals. We will be coming up with Bitcoin DeFi tied up with a third party. We will be coming up with Ordinals lending. There are a lot of products coming up. People who have Bitcoin in their wallets will have multiple options to do so. We’re making their lives easy. We’re working for them and giving them all the solutions for whatever they want to do.

NFT Bluewheel | Bitcoin Mining

Bitcoin Mining: People who have Bitcoin in their wallets will have multiple options. We’re making their lives easy.

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It has been great learning about what you are up to here. We would love to know a little bit about what the roadmap looks like going forward and interesting plans in the works, partnerships, and other things that are worth mentioning.

We have the roadmaps on the website. The first roadmap is setting up 400 miners. It has been achieved. We will be launching with Ordinals. We will be performing for 2 to 3 months. We are very happy with the ROIs. We are coming in to taste that. We will be coming up with NFT lending solutions and NFT-seeking solutions as well. NFT lending is very much available on Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana, but on Ordinals, we are looking for it. Someone will be coming up with it, but that’s an interesting solution as well.

You have Ordinals. You’re not happy with the returns. You can lend your Ordinals to someone for a year. The Bitcoin revenue goes to them. After a year, you get your Ordinals back and start getting your revenue. That’s a use case for what you’re looking at. We will be setting up 1,200 miners in the next lot. We then we will be setting up 1,800 miners in the third phase. Apart from that, we will also be tying up a lot of traditional HNIs and funds to set up the miners. The clear focus is on Bitcoin mining.

Taking a step back, you’ve been in this space for a long time, and you’ve seen a lot of innovation intersect with your world. Are there any other projects that you’re particularly excited about happening in this space that you have your eyes on?

I have my eyes on the BRC-20 network. Not a lot of activities are happening there. You don’t have a BTC or Bitcoin directly lending solution. Normally, when we mine, we don’t sell our Bitcoin in case we want to create liquidity. We take Bitcoin and some funds against it and pay our receipt invoices or use it for expenses. What do we do? We don’t believe in selling Bitcoin. In the procedure, we convert BTC to wBTC, change it to Ethereum or Polygon, go to Aave, Compound, or any DeFi, and then stake it there, but technically, wBTC is an alternative to BTC on the chain. BTC is the only decentralized part.

NFT Bluewheel | Bitcoin Mining

Bitcoin Mining: We don’t believe in selling Bitcoin. In the procedure, we convert BTC to wBTC, change it to Ethereum or Polygon, go to Aave, Compound, or any DeFi, and then stake it there.

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I hope that there are a few projects like Liquidium. 1 or 2 Bitcoin projects have been heading them and helping them. I’m talking about Bitcoin networks. Those would be community-driven. It’s a real community-driven Bitcoin DeFi. You have a Bitcoin bank coming on BRC-20. You have an Ordinals landing protocol coming on BRC-20. BRC-20 and Ordinals are getting very attractive.

It’s DeFi for the world of Bitcoin. It’s exciting times. It’s always interesting to talk to some Bitcoin maxis and hear some of the things they’re excited about. I’m like, “You realize you’re talking about DeFi now.” It’s cool to see the conversation expanding and getting livelier. That’s cool stuff.

Thanks for all that. It’s time for Quick Hitters, which is always fun. I love Quick Hitters with folks that come from different backgrounds and parts of the world because we always learn unique cultural things as well. Edge Quick Hitters is a fun and quick way to get to know you a bit better. There are ten questions. We’re looking for a short, single-word, or few-word response, but feel free to expand if you get the urge. Let’s do it. Number one, what is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?

I remember purchasing the GPUs for setting up my mining career in early 2020 before COVID started. That was my very first purchase. I was excited. It’s entirely set up by my hand. I bought a motherboard. I set up eight GPUs with the motherboard and started mining for the first time. Initially, I planned to learn and set up 20 to 30 GPUs. In a month’s time, it was so exciting. ROI was so good. I ended up with 500 GPUs. It was a small office. I had to turn down the entire operation for three months because I didn’t know anything about airflow management. I had to get some guy to come in and do airflow management.

#LifetimeMiner, Eathan.

I’m also guessing he thinks we were asking what the first crypto purchase was. This is throughout your whole life. Feel free to reach back all the way. What’s the first thing you remember ever selling in your life? It could be crypto or non-crypto.

I would talk about crypto because I mined Ethereum and sold my Ethereum at $800 to buy Bitcoin miners in 2021. I’m not going to forget that anytime. I sold an Ethereum for close to $4,000. I could have waited for a month.

Josh, do you want to hit question number three?

What is the most recent thing you purchased?

I bought 100 miners.

Those are the new top-of-the-line ones.

We are setting up the S19J 120-terahash, the latest one.

It’s a nice, new, and shiny car for you. That’s your version of a car. What is the most recent thing you sold?

I sold Bitcoin to pay for invoices. I did not sell anything. I’ll be selling Ordinals.

You sold some Ordinals.

I was watching Netflix.

Was this an Indian show or a US show?

I’m watching the series Suits.

It’s awesome.

My wife has been binge-watching Suits.

Me and my daughter were watching together.

Let’s hit a few.

Eathan, do we have time for one more?

Shall we move on to the next segment?

Let’s do it.

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