Henry Robinson Podcast Transcript
Henry Robinson joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Henry Robinson. Henry Robinson is a co-founder of the Decimal Digital Currency, a Bitcoin mining company launched in 2016, and is an esteemed expert and thought leader in the field of cryptocurrency alongside leading decimal full time.
Henry oversees blockchain focused venture investments and a hash rate derivatives hedge fund through his own firm, Magnetar blockchain. Henry is a venture partner at the good science fund, a healthcare and healthy environment focused venture capital firm with a laser focused on companies driving positive impact.
Before entering blockchain, Henry was a serial entrepreneur and contributed to various tech focused startups and ventures. Henry also serves on the plane oversight committee for the compute North bankruptcy trust.
Brian Thomas: Well, good afternoon, Henry. Welcome to the show!
Henry Robinson: Thanks, Brian. Happy to be here.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I appreciate you making the time hailing out of New Jersey, right outside of New York. I Love doing these podcasts – east coast to Kansas city. It’s just an hour difference, but love doing this stuff.
Henry, I’m going to jump into your first question here, recently taken on a leadership role at the Good Science Fund. Can you explain the fund’s mission and what drew you to focus on healthcare and climate tech investments?
Henry Robinson: Thanks, Sure. So, the funds mission is it’s a healthcare fund, right? First and foremost, but we’re focused on things like community health, things that improve the health of everybody. And, you know, as well as, you know, the regular kind of drug or biotech company investments, but what drew me into the good science fund, it was actually kind of a roundabout way.
I was introduced to my general partner at the good science fund and at first it was as a possible investor and I was reviewing their portfolio companies and one of them just stood out to me with a bright outline around it as, as an amazing firm with, with wild world changing potential the company called phase change solutions.
And I was so excited about it that I said, you know, not just invest. I want to be a part of the story. And, you know, then, then kind of from there evolved into first becoming the leader of the LPAC at the good science fund. And now I’m, I’m switching over to a venture partner, given my increasing involvement every day.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I love the story. You know, we typically start out with a story here on the podcast and I love to hear each and every one of them. Of course, my audience does too. And I appreciate that you jumped into something that you felt really passionate about. Knowing that you’re going to better the world by contributing to it.
So I appreciate that. And Henry, one of the projects you’re supporting is a blanket that pulls heat, which has applications in both Bitcoin mining and medical fields. Can you share more details about how this technology works and its potential impact, especially in developing countries?
Henry Robinson: Yes, this is the technology that got me hooked. So, in energy management, right, there’s, there’s something called a change of phase. And the easiest way to explain that is melting an ice cube. If you have an ice cube, that’s at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, right? The freezing point of water, and then you melt it, that water is still at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, despite putting a tremendous amount of energy into it.
And that energy went into changing the water or changing it from ice to water, right? That phase change. The amount of energy that takes to do that to go from 32-degree ice to 32-degree water is the same amount of energy that it takes to go from 32-degree water all the way up to 80 degree water, right?
To give you a sense of how big the energy is. So, what phase change has done there, they’re amazing innovation over 10 years. They’ve come up with a compound, a novel molecule where they can engineer the freezing point and the melting point. And what this means is that this compound in, in mass quantities can be used as a thermal battery, a battery for heat.
So, in my applications, right, the reason I was hooked, my background is Bitcoin mining, heat management is our number one priority. If we can manage our heat, our costs go down, our second order costs like maintenance go down and our revenue goes up because our chips can perform better at a cooler temperature.
So, immediately, you know, this for the data center side, the technology jumped out at me, but in terms of medicine, you know, they, they already have made a tremendous impact for transporting vaccines, transporting organs. You know, these are compounds that need stable temperature sub-freezing in order to, to keep their value as they’re transported.
And, you know, you asked about the developing world. In the developing world where refrigeration infrastructure is not as ubiquitous, right? And the ability to quickly fix a broken pump or a broken compressor doesn’t exist, right? If a truck breaks down, that food is spoiled or that medicine is lost. With these materials, biodegradable, you can almost eat them.
They’re so clean, right? They’re made from palm oil and corn and soybeans and the like. It means that those medicines or that food being transported in developing worlds with this material. Has a far lower chance of spoilage, a far, far lower impact of loss to these people who, you know, like, probably don’t have access to the same kind of insurance products that, you know, you would, you would have in a mature economy, even.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. I just love when there’s new innovations or discoveries or inventions that come out. That truly not only just solve a problem, but has a bigger global impact on the community in the world. And I really do appreciate that. And I love this stuff. Of course, I’ve been in tech and emerging tech for a long time as well, Henry.
So, Henry, next question I have for you. You’ve been a key player in cryptocurrency through decimal. And now with technology solutions like heat playing blanket, how do you see cryptocurrency and sustainability intersecting in the future?
Henry Robinson: You know, to start with what I know, Bitcoin mining, Bitcoin mining, what we do is we democratize the value of energy because we don’t care where we are, wherever we are, we can go and we can buy the energy and we can put it to a good economic purpose.
Unlike another manufacturer, we manufacture Bitcoin. But if we were manufacturing anything else or any physical good, we would have to worry about distance to market and, you know, all sorts of regional issues that Bitcoin miners don’t have. So, what this means is that say that there’s a wind farm that has no customers to sell energy to.
A Bitcoin mine can go there and can make that wind farm viable again. And more importantly, Bitcoin mining paired with new renewable energy investment makes those renewable energy investments suddenly a cash flowing positive business for their entire lifetime. One of the biggest barriers to building renewable energy is that they’ve been incentivized by tax credits and government subsidies and, you know, things that make it so that they’re a worthy economic pursuit from an ROI basis.
Bitcoin is. A non-financial engineering answer. It’s a true answer to making renewable energy is a great investment.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Again, we talked about innovation, how we can continue to protect the world environment and bring innovative solutions to improve the processes that we’re working on now. Bitcoin mining is one of them.
And I just had another guest on the show that talked a lot about that. He actually runs. Very efficient data centers that do Bitcoin mining, which, which is awesome. So, thank you. And Henry last question of the day, as someone leading both decimal and contributing to the good science fund, what role do you believe emerging technologies like blockchain can play in solving technology and healthcare challenges?
Henry Robinson: So, Bitcoin that we’ve started with, with money, right? Blockchain technology has really hit it off trying to solve the problem of money. And the reason for that is because it offers certainty, right? You know, living in, in a political world, we don’t have any idea what economic policy will be four years from now, eight years from now, 20 years from now, and it makes it very difficult on a long term basis to plan our, our financial future Bitcoin, that one of its biggest value props is that it solves that We know Bitcoin’s economic policy forever, and that certainty has great value.
So, in other industries like healthcare, where a certainty, right. And, uh, an auditable record that we know is achieved by consensus across many, many computers, right? We know that it’s a not alterable without the keys. You know, there’s some very cool applications being built in the healthcare data space.
There’s a huge opportunity to disrupt. Management of health care data because the security of it from a legal perspective, the requirements are so high that the compliance costs are tremendous. If a blockchain in health care could replace that compliance cost with a new paradigm of security, you know, the value there is in the billions or tens of billions.
And that’s just an errant thought. I mean, the applications are very, very broad across many sectors for this kind of new approach to data security, data control and data management.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. And we’ve here on this platform. We’re not only web 2 platform, but we’re a web 3 platform and we embrace blockchain technology.
We’ve had dozens and dozens of guests on here that are in this space. And we know that blockchain is going to bring some amazing solutions in your case here. As you mentioned, health care and security are going to be huge. So, I appreciate you sharing that with our audience today, Henry and Henry. It was such a pleasure having you on today.
And I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Henry Robinson: Thanks, Brian. It was, was a great chat.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Henry Robinson Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.