📖 Episode Transcript

Cody Ellingham (00:00.224)
Structural engineering, you basically have to think from first principles, I guess. And you know, you could say the same thing about Bitcoin for you to understand that you have to think from first principles. Hello, I am Cody Ellingham and this is the Transformation of Value, a place for thinkers and builders where together we explore freedom, energy and creativity through the lens of Bitcoin. In this episode, I am joined by Anes Katan. We talk about how his company, Structural Engineers NZ,

have embraced Bitcoin by accepting it for payment as well as holding Bitcoin on the balance sheet of the company. We talk about business, Ines' background and his Bitcoin story and the broader outlook for the construction market and housing sector as it relates to inflation and monetary policy. Now this show is supported by you. My vision is to make the transformation of value into something that we can take with us into the future.

If want to help me grow this show, please consider making a donation either through my website or by tipping directly to the show's bitcoin wallet, or just pass this episode on to a friend who you think may enjoy it. Finally, can always email me at hello at the transformation of value.com and I will get back to you. Thanks for joining me today. I thought we could start off with a bit about your engineering background and your company Structural Engineers New Zealand, please.

Thanks for having me, Cody. Well, I started studying when I was in 2007 and finished in 2010. It just happened to be both my brothers are also engineers, but we all kind of took different paths. My eldest brother, Sidir, he went straight into structural design his whole career. middle brother, Faris went into project management, sort of construction management and eventually sales.

And I did a bit of both. So I did structural design to start with and then went and worked in civil construction. After a few years, so Sudhir worked at Worley Parsons with a colleague, Ted. And after a few years of working together, Ted decided to leave and start his own thing. And he actually started a company, Structural Engineers New Zealand. Once he had a decent amount of work, asked Sudhir if he'd like to join and Sudhir did so.

Cody Ellingham (02:22.078)
in around 2014. was the two of them to start with. Ted eventually decided to move to Thailand to live there. So, yeah, to live on the cheap. And basically, Sadir was the face of the company after that. In 2015, I think it was, I joined them part-time and Sadir and I worked

from his garage, I remember the days. It was just the two of us from the garage while Ted was in Thailand. we, yeah, we started getting more more work. approached, we started looking for work, word of mouth as well. Our name got around and we eventually had basically full-time work for the three of us. And I remember one day we were sat in the garage and I said, Sadiya, what?

where do you see this going? where do see us in five years sitting in the garage or doing something more? And we both agreed that it was probably time we moved out of the garage and maybe grow the company a little bit. So in 2019, Opportunity came up with one of Siddhiya's friends. She had worked for an architect company out in East Tamaki. They had a small space in their office that they wanted.

to lease out essentially to a structural engineering company ideally so we can work together. So we moved in, just the two of us, and we hired our first employee in 2019 at the new office. Our other brother, Faris, was working in Abu Dhabi at the time, and he decided to move back to New Zealand with his wife to start a family. So we thought that was good opportunity for him to join us.

being in the construction industry, sales as well, has got some good skills to be a business manager. So we got them on. yeah, that's how the company sort of came together. And since the COVID days, basically, we've just been expanding ever since, adding more employees at different levels. And now we're eight people in our Oakland office with Ted working in Thailand.

Cody Ellingham (04:45.056)
It sounds like it's a bit of a dynasty with all the brothers working on the company. It's pretty cool, Yeah, it's funny actually when, because I'm not originally from New Zealand. We're from Iraq. really? Yeah. We moved here when I was 12 in 2002. My dad and his brothers all had their own businesses on the same street. And growing up, that was really cool. to, know, in the summer holidays going there.

and spending time with the cousins and stuff. And it just kind of feels like we're building something similar together. Where was that? In Baghdad. We moved here 20, 22 years ago. We haven't been back since, except for my dad went for a holiday once. When you were younger, when you were still living there, you're talking about your family with their shops on the same street. yes. Yeah. Yeah. So that would have been, I don't know.

mid to late nineties, I'd say. Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel like what's your connection? If I may ask, what is your connection like with Iraq in terms of cultural family over there, relatives and just kind of that upbringing over there? We do have some family there, but a lot of them have managed to get out of Iraq before the war started. Kind of displaced everywhere, to be honest. Some made it to Europe, some in America, a couple of families here in New Zealand. I,

We probably have, I'd say two families from each of my parents in Iraq. I personally don't have any, I don't feel like I want to ruin my memories going back now, if you know what I mean, because as a child and not have been anywhere else at the time, I remember a certain way. And now to go back and see, I think it might ruin a few memories that I have.

Yeah. Eventually I'd like to go back and see the place. Yeah. I appreciate it. It's maybe quite personal, but you said you moved 22 years ago. was that just on the war in Iraq? Yeah. It was, was a year before. Yeah. Was that sort of like your father thought, you know, you guys needed to get out or was it? Yeah. So my parents had been trying to get out for I'd say 10 years before that. But it was very difficult to.

Cody Ellingham (07:08.91)
You know, not many countries were accepting people from Iraq at the time. And we tried multiple times for New Zealand through the immigration system, 97 and I think it was 98 as well. At the time New Zealand was accepting, but my dad failed the English test a couple of times. My auntie's family were able to come.

And eventually my mom came for a visit, applied for a visa and then pulled this up through that. Well, it strikes me. again, as I said, I appreciate it's quite a personal thing because I mean, there was a lot of devastation brought to that region and you have fond memories of it. And I think this idea that you guys have now been able to

bring this, you and your brothers have been able to build this company which is doing amazing stuff and you're hiring people and I mean it's a success story. I mean think that's pretty awesome man, mean that you guys can do that and be working on something as important as structural engineering which I guess if we could maybe talk a bit about what that means, maybe people aren't aware of what's involved, mean how the industry works and the different players. Maybe you could just tell us a bit about that please. Yeah sure.

So structural engineering is, it's a branch of civil engineering and it focuses on analyzing and designing the structural components of a building or a structure to support the loads that are induced on it. And, you know, the loads come in a few different variety of ways and you have your vertical loads. So your gravity loads, the self weight of the building itself, as well as the live loads people.

using the building. And you've also got lateral loads, horizontal loads induced by wind or seismic loads, earthquakes. So we essentially have to resolve those forces through the structure and resolve them at the ground, at the foundation level. Yeah. So it's basically the spine of the building.

Cody Ellingham (09:25.198)
And you work quite closely with the architects. I mean, what's that structure look like in terms of the kind of the hierarchy and the relationships with the other players? Yeah. So let's take a house, for example. Typically the client would work together with the architect and come up with a design of how they want it to look. the architect may specify some load bearing systems that we would eventually

would come to us and we would design those and we'd specify the beam sizes, the bracing elements, the roof structure, floor structure and the foundation. And we work closely with the architect to collaborate with them throughout the project to deliver it. Yeah. I am keen, Anesta, just maybe touch a little bit about your Bitcoin story. And I hope we can loop this back into the building and engineering stuff. But

Tell me about how you got into Bitcoin, please. Like many do, I heard about it a few times and just really didn't pay attention. I'd say that was probably around 2017, 2018. It made mainstream news during that cycle and I did hear about it and it crashed after that. So I didn't really think about it at the time.

During the COVID crash, my friend actually mentioned to me, should get in now, it's a good time. And I remember saying to him, I think I'll wait for 1K. Oh no. That was a costly decision. Yeah. Not long after that, my partner and I were looking to buy a house, let's say towards late 2020. And we were just seeing the house market just go ballistic.

prices were going up 30, 40 % over CVs and whatnot. I was just thinking, what's going on? Like what's actually happening? So at the same time, my friend who had Rick, you know, told me to buy some earlier, me up again and said, you know, it's never too late. So I bought a little bit, started learning about it and it all came together for me, you know, after

Cody Ellingham (11:49.4)
couple of years of learning about how Bitcoin works and then also how the existing financial system works. And it just made sense. White house prices were going up when we were trying to buy and it finally clicked. It took a while. You probably didn't want to know me at the time because I couldn't stop talking about it. I'm sure we all go through that, but I'm kind of...

Kind of relaxed a little bit now. Not really actually, but. that's awesome, man. So you went through it. You studied it. I mean, was there anything influential that really helped you understand and make it all click? Yeah. I honestly, I clocked all the podcasts, But I'd say the Bitcoin standard was a big eye opener. then Jeff Booth's book was, you know, it was amazing.

Yeah. The Price of Tomorrow was, yeah, I read it a couple of times and watched his podcast with Robert Burry's Love, that whole series. And it's just opened my eyes a lot about what's going on. And the funny thing is, you know, since that time I started following people on Twitter and whatnot on YouTube. you just, for me, I've just been listening to people and you know, everyone has their opinions and whatnot, but you just look back and

think who's been right over the last couple of years, who got it right? And to me, Jeff Booth has been one of those people. He's been spot on. yeah, so just been following people who have gotten things right. And it seems to be a lot of Bitcoiners to be honest. Yeah, follow the signal. Yeah, exactly. know, Lin Alden, obviously, Preston Posh, Peter McCormick's show is great as well.

Yeah. Well, it's a lively discussion and I do hope we can sort of loop this back in because I know you mentioned with your company as well, you're exploring Bitcoin. So maybe could you elaborate a bit more on that please? Yeah. So actually at the start of this year, we started accepting it. We haven't advertised it as such, but we've just have it in our invoices that you can pay with Bitcoin if you like to.

Cody Ellingham (14:15.66)
I've been meaning to do this earlier, but we've started holding Bitcoin as a treasurer asset as part of our savings that we keep in case of a rainy day. Small percentage, but it's a decent amount and we'll probably be increasing that over time. Yeah. Yeah. It's been good so far. It's only been a couple of months since we started that for the business.

you know, the guys are excited and yeah, it's going well. Can you tell me a bit more about that in terms of how you were able to structure that with your company? mean, did you get help from your accountant or like, what is there any more detail you can give around how you set up the treasury? Yeah. So, I mean, uh, I spoke with accountant just around the tax laws in New Zealand, things like that. But, um, yeah. And, we basically just hold as an asset on the balance sheet, essentially. We, you know, the three of us control it. Um, yeah.

Pretty easy, Yeah, pretty standard really. And I just wanted to mention it's not paper Bitcoin. It's real Bitcoin. It's real Bitcoin. that's awesome. I want to link this back to the engineering thing because it seems like the work you do, this is really important stuff. The building needs to be safe and obviously New Zealand is an earthquake prone country. So there's a lot of need.

for buildings to withstand seismic pressures, environmental pressures, and how this relates to Bitcoin, Bitcoin is, I mean, it's sound money. I mean, have you just on a conceptual layer, have you been able to sort of connect and connect those two ideas? Well, structural engineering, you basically have to think from first principles, I guess. And you could say the same thing about Bitcoin for you to understand that you have to think from first principles. We do have a lot of

regulations and standards to follow in engineering that determine what, what, what you, the way you design things to, to withstand seismic and wind pressures. Yeah, sorry. I can't really think of any other way to tie that in. No, it's okay. Well, I guess, cause what I'm getting at though is that there is a reality, right? Like the building needs to stand up and you can't fake that. and, and when you do try and fake it, there's real consequences to life. And so I just.

Cody Ellingham (16:42.114)
For me, I guess from the outside, I see it and think, well, clearly those things work. And there's a reason why engineers and all people who understand things, mean, Michael Saylor is a classic example. He had a background with aerospace engineering and many people have a connection somehow to that. There's sort of a reality that Bitcoin speaks to that you can't really fake. Yeah. I mean, that could be just the engine.

For me, it was maybe just being curious and engineers are curious people. They want to understand how things work from first principles. So I think that's what got me so into it. Just really wanted to understand why does this thing have value? How does the system work? How does the network work? How does it keep its decentralization? Those are the things that I really wanted to figure out. And I guess being a structural engineer also.

You know, you've got to find your loads. You've got to work them through the building and take them down to ground. And it's just, you know, you're trying to complete the puzzle essentially. So, yeah. Well, I think there's also something quite, how would you say, you know, a building it's, it's not necessarily scientific in the sense that many things can be technically scientific, whereas engineering, it's like, it's more logical this than that. If you know what I mean, it's sort of like an engineering.

in an engineering principle, something like using triangles and like, you know, just basic trigonometry that then scales up. It's a bit more real and you can use a lot more rules of thumb and things like this, as opposed to things that are maybe intellectual. Not to say that it's not intellectual, but it's kind of like, again, you can't fake it. It either stands up on its own or it doesn't sort of thing, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I agree. Yeah. So on that note though,

Bringing this back to the broader space though, obviously New Zealand is an interesting place where there's this kind of housing market boom, which you talked about, you were looking at and thinking what's going on, why are these things keep going up in value? And we've seen some real challenges because houses are quite regulated, there's zoning laws and all sorts of things, which mean they are kind of this Ponzi, People, they can't build them.

Cody Ellingham (19:02.562)
fast enough to keep up demand and the ones that are being built are maybe not of the same quality. I mean, just broadly with this Bitcoin first principles lens, mean, what is your take on the housing market? So my first take is that the demand is almost fake. is no, you know, the demand for houses, sure there's obviously people need to live somewhere, but the amount of houses that we're building,

that are being solved in best is just crazy. And to me, the demand driven through lowering interest rates or QE or whatever you want to call it, that is just fake demand to me. let's say central banks lower rates, people go out to buy houses because they don't want to lose their savings, which essentially causes demand for houses.

people go out and build more houses, are, you know, those houses are often pushed through to try and get them as cheap as possible. it, to me, the demand is a bit fake, to be honest. That's how I see it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's hard to explain. Yeah. No, no. I think I understand. And I mean, pulling on that, I've seen some new builds that were in lower hut in Wellington. certainly, I mean, these are not classic.

Kiwi houses, know, that's not quite leaky homes. but you know, there's a certain investment property style kind of townhouse and you see a lot of these in Christchurch as well. And I mean, I guess that comfy and cozy, but they're not solid old Kiwi houses like the old days, you know? Yeah, no, I agree with that. And I think that just shows that this just speaks to what people can afford these days essentially. So, you know, you, you inflate.

everyone's money away, they're going to afford smaller houses or ones that are built on top of each other. So that's how I see it is that the market is providing what people can afford. If people could afford big houses with big backyards, that's what the market will build. people can only afford a three bedroom townhouse that's built.

Cody Ellingham (21:24.014)
you know, next to 10 other houses on the same plot of land that had one of two houses on it before. So yeah, well, it's kind of inflation visualized. I mean, the whole subdivision thing. I mean, it's Auckland is a shocker for us. You know, you've got these, these old nice house, you know, classic Kiwi houses. And then, you know, you got five places now on that same, same pace. And if it weren't for some of the laws, I'd imagine you'd have even smaller houses. You know, I think some of the councils restrict, you know, sort of tiny home type things, but

I think if it was possible, people would be doing this. We're not too far away from container houses. We call them pods. You'll be happy. I guess I wanted to also talk a bit about the nature of the construction industry broadly because I know for our New Zealand listeners, people will be aware of Fletcher Construction and some of these companies that have had some real major financial issues. Obviously with inflation,

it makes it really hard to plan longer term projects. And so I'm thinking maybe a little bit more broadly in civil construction. Maybe do you have any comments on just how inflation has impacted planning for bigger infrastructure stuff? Yeah, I mean, it's quite clear to see in the industry, to be honest, because projects that had started, let's say, before the COVID era, you had allowed a certain price for something and all of a sudden,

material is six months delay plus 50 % additional cost. It makes it really hard to plan. can imagine a five-year project, your prices are suddenly 50 % more towards the end of it. How are you supposed to plan or make money on a project? So you can see that in the industry, there's a lot of buildings and other projects that have just taken twice as long as they should have or costed.

The tunnel was a good example. think the, was it something like double what they had allowed for from 3 billion to 6 billion? think it was. In Auckland? Yeah. Yeah. That's the tunnel project they're doing through the CBD there. And you know, that's just one project. just, you look around and a lot of them are delayed, you know, got major delays on them. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's almost this whiplash, right? As the project starts accumulating.

Cody Ellingham (23:47.918)
I don't work in this industry, but I imagine as you get closer to the finish, it's like that last 10 % ends up stretching out. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And as I said, mean, there's certainly challenges from where I'm living here in Japan. Looking back at New Zealand, you've got just a few players when it comes to major infrastructure, major construction projects with Fletcher Construction being one of them. that has...

it's tendrils down into a couple of sub companies, including like Higgins and all of these infrastructure companies. And yet there's major labor shortages, major inflation costs as well. And basically it's like, how do you even get stuff built? And this is the classic orange cones everywhere on the road, blown out budgets, projects taking forever, every Kiwi is aware of. I don't know. mean, was it always like that? I can't remember, but.

I'm not sure if we're just more aware of it now or it's just getting worse and worse, but yeah, it seems like it, doesn't it? I read something somewhere about, you know those orange traffic cones. It's like $7 a day to lease those out for construction projects or infrastructure. And that's like how many millions of dollars have been spent just on cones. It's a bit of a meme at this point, but... Yeah. I'm pretty sure traffic management is like...

is a huge burden on the cost of our roading. But as I said, there is bigger challenges, right? Labour and then just capital as well, you kind of, how do you invest in these things? Yeah. So another thing I wanted to touch on. So when you have a demand caused by money printing or inflation in general, and people try to save themselves by buying houses,

you're basically telling the market that you want more houses. So it takes those people away from doing what, you know, the other job that they could be doing. And that could be, you know, working on other infrastructure projects or whatnot and become builders or, know, the market is so distorted and, you know, it's almost like people are jumping around from one sector to another to work.

Cody Ellingham (26:06.424)
to where the money's being spent at the time. And I just feel like it's a bit of, know, the capital's not really allocated properly. That's interesting. It's quite frothy then in a sense that, I mean, you know, we're talking about civil infrastructure projects just now, but I mean, there's a reason there's a lot of delays. It's maybe not enough of a workforce, but then you've got the whole residential construction sector and then everything surrounding that. And

Yeah, you're right. mean, with limited resources, sort of where do they go? Do you build a house or do build a road? Do you build a power station? I mean, sort of the market is allocating towards residential construction potentially. Yeah. mean, you've got so many real estate agents around. You've got so many mortgage brokers. And really, we need that many? I'll tell you what, 20 or 30 % of our

economy is basically built on housing, us buying and selling houses to each other. Yeah. And it's not productive. mean, there's no, it's not a capital good, you know, a factory or a commercial building actually helps build the economy. Whereas house, a house is a house. yeah, mean, obviously people need to live somewhere and houses need to be built, but you know, buying a house and, know, fix it up a little bit and sell it on. Yeah. Did you really achieve much?

I don't know. And the more I've gotten to Bitcoin, I personally am invested, an investment property from a while ago that me and my siblings went in on 10 years ago. and at this time I'm just like, can't wait to get rid of that thing. It's just a headache. yeah, it's been like a bit of a rent seeker to be honest as well.

Yeah. Interesting. It's changed my way of thinking a lot, to be honest. And financially you'd be much better off not having it if you did something else with it. And we both know what that thing is. No. That's interesting. So, I mean, broadly then, I mean, what is your outlook? So it sounds like you guys do quite a few different things, but in terms of specifically the residential side, I mean, are you seeing an uptick? mean, you say the company's growing. I mean, are you benefiting maybe from part of that growth of the housing industry you've got yourselves or? Yeah.

Cody Ellingham (28:30.878)
Yeah, yeah. mean, we do, it comes in cycles and we try to ride the waves. And at the beginning of a cycle, could be housing to start with, but then commercial projects take longer. So that's where our temporary works comes in. And then by the time those kind of slow down again, housing comes back. we are, I do sound like I'm complaining, but we do benefit from it as a business.

We allocate our resources as necessary, but what we've also done is we've diversified our business. There's some companies that do structural design for residential only, and they've been hit quite badly, I'd say, in the last year. Housing has slowed down. Rich people build houses when they want to, so those projects carry on, but your normal renovation and...

12 or a single house, single dwelling, those have died down a lot, say. Yeah. So just to give you some numbers, I'd say in 2022, 50 % of our work was residential and now it's probably about 15 to 20%. I understood. Just to answer your other question, it feels like it's coming back now. There's a bit of optimism in the market, but you know, for

Me personally, I think it's going to take maybe six months to nine months to turn around. Yeah, it's interesting because I mean, I've got a feet in both camps where on one hand, I'm a hardcore Bitcoiner and I think, as you could imagine, think a certain way about things, but then you still interface with the normal world. I mean, you talk to friends and family about housing and the state of the economy and...

I don't know, that's sort of the key word that comes out is it's a lot of performance. I think, you know, there's a lot of masquerading out of numbers around inflation and interest rates and all of these things. When you come back to the first principles about the engineering, think, well, it's different. What is different about it this time? You know, it just feels like we're going for another ride. And it's crazy to be honest. I've got some mates that are sorry to interrupt you. I've got a friend, you know, who's a mortgage broker.

Cody Ellingham (30:52.254)
and he goes to auctions often and interest rates dropped 50 basis points. And the week after the auction room was buzzing. So people are falling for the same thing again and they'll do the same thing and buy investment properties because rates are coming down and it just feels like we're going through a loop. Well, it's interesting, Hannes, looking at the history of property bubbles.

This isn't a new thing. And there was a major one I've read about in terms of the Asian financial crisis, which was pretty much driven by property. And you had countries like Thailand, you know, it's a middle country, incredibly hocked up with investment properties and apartment buildings and, you know, tower mansions. And I think this was like 1997 kind of thing. Oh, yeah. And basically that all fell over because you plow money into these investment properties, which are not capital goods. don't make...

value, they value sync. And that's at the expense of actually building a productive economy. And this goes all the way back. mean, it's happened in many places around the world. And it's this kind of frothy speculative consumer driven investment into property, which is... I mean, the speculation happens in Bitcoin as well, to be honest. It's not immune from that, but you do see it in the property market all the time.

New Zealand is in a bit of a different place from Thailand, I'd say. Families and people actually want to come and live here for the long term. property, dare I say it, seems to be a safe bet. I actually had look at the numbers not long ago and house prices on average grow six to 7 % a year. And guess what the monetary inflation rate is? Well, just on that note, mean,

Coming back to the point around Bitcoin as speculation though, I think there is a market difference though because you can always build more houses. I've personally seen these Southeast Asia, Asian financial crisis, there's these tower mansions which are uninhabited and there's a couple in Bangkok that are like unfinished from 97. Yeah, like there's quite a famous one that's...

Cody Ellingham (33:14.206)
I don't know if that was directly on the financial crisis, it might have been a bit later, but it's like a half finished building. And you can always build new ones, whereas Bitcoin, think as money, it's more the way I think of it is this capital savings. It's putting money away that can then be deployed. And it's very liquid because the housing market is the most illiquid thing you could imagine. You can't sell a fraction of a house. And so you've got this very different mechanism.

which I think is less speculative than housing, which in many cases, people buying off the plans, they've got paper houses, man. Yeah, yeah, no, I do get what you're saying. I do think there's, you know, at times, I would say the mean of the Bitcoin price is probably not speculative, but you know, there is bubbles in it, as we see every four years or so. I...

do agree that we do need something we can just store our money for when we need it rather than speculate on houses or stocks or whatever. And that's just how I've changed the way I think now. I just save my money rather than buy unnecessary stuff that I don't need. Well, that's sort of my journey for the last few weeks has been understanding capitalism a bit better and reading a lot about it because that's quite, I mean, that's a bit of a rabbit hole to go down, but the idea of being able to put your money away.

and use it and deploy it for something in the future is quite incredible. I mean, it sounds kind of silly, but there isn't really a mechanism to do that because if you put your money in the bank today, you know, it's going to lose value. And if you put into the share market, you're basically, you know, riding the wave of monetary inflation in these index funds, which are kind of propped up by this current status quo. But there's this new place you can park your value. And it seems like coming back to that enables people to build.

Value and actually create businesses and deploy capital in a way that went maybe it's almost like we've forgotten how to do that You know, yeah, I agree. I agree with that hundred percent Yeah, so mean it's certainly interesting as it relates to infrastructure as well as we were talking about like what what would it take to build a power station or a You know transmission lines or roads or any of these things that actually you factories the things that help create value Which New Zealand's a little bit slow with I mean we do do we get stuff done and people are trying their best

Cody Ellingham (35:39.342)
But that's like the nature of the capital kind of changes where the money gets allocated. Yeah, I think New Zealand as well. It's you know, when you travel, you see, let's say in the UAE or in the Middle East and the better countries there, Singapore, Hong Kong or whatever, you see their projects take, you know, they're super quick. know, a bridge gets built in a week or

you know, six months in New Zealand, you know, take us probably four years to plan the thing. Yeah. And I think that's more to do with the amount of capital we actually have in New Zealand. there's I mean, there's only so many cranes, man, and excavators. Honestly, people laugh. I mean, we're sharing basically all of the cranes in Wellington and Auckland.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure we had to get that tunneling machine over from what was it either Netherlands or France? The one machine. Yeah, and it's got to go back as soon as the project is done. Yeah. Well, anyway, I mean, that's a topic for another day, just sort of New Zealand scale. But I mean, it is interesting. But overall, though, what is your outlook? I mean, we're coming to the end of 2024. I mean, what is your outlook for, say, the next 12 months generally? For the economy in general? I mean, let's just say, let's call it Bitcoin plus...

your sector in terms of construction engineering? So Bitcoin I'm very bullish on right now. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. But I try not to too ahead of myself. Stay humble. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is my second bull market now and I honestly like the bear market better. It's just so noisy right now. Yeah. Everyone's got a price prediction. I am bullish on Bitcoin. think countries are

figure it out. Big companies, big institutions are figuring it out. It will take time for them to come around. think it might be a little bit too small in size. They might dip their toes a little bit, but maybe not in size at the moment. there will be a few big players that come in this cycle, I think. Maybe a couple of nations that might solve in wealth funds or whatever.

Cody Ellingham (38:00.236)
Yeah. I think that that's very likely. In regards to the strategic Bitcoin reserve, I don't really have comments about that. Yeah. it's early days. We'll see what happens. But I mean, there's game theories playing out, right? Yeah. think it was always going to happen. Someone had to make the move eventually. And I think you're seeing it happen in real time, which is quite crazy actually. If you told me three years ago, when I was first

three, four years ago when I was first Orange Build that this would happen this quickly. I'd be like, no way. In terms of the business, quite positive actually. A lot of companies were laying off stuff over the last year. We've been busy throughout the year. Had a few slow periods, but nothing major. We're actually looking to hire at the moment.

hopefully we'll have a new draftsman soon and maybe some new engineer in the near. So in terms of the economy in New Zealand, I do see it coming back a little bit. Yeah. A little bit of optimism. Yeah. It's good. Yeah. Yeah. At the rate of devaluation, basically. A bit of a caveat there. That's awesome. And well, just, yeah, I think what you got, what you guys are doing, your team and your brothers, what you guys are doing is awesome. And,

That's cool to see a New Zealand business come out and talk about having a Bitcoin treasury. Cause I don't know if there's many others out there, man, or maybe they are, but they're just keeping it. Yeah. I'd imagine there'd be a few. Yeah. I think there'll be a few. Yeah. So, you know, we haven't really advertised as that much. There was one person that almost made a Bitcoin, but decided not to. Good on him. He's done well with that. But you know, we'll continue to accept Bitcoin because

you know, it saves us from buying it. So, you know, if anyone's interested in structural engineering and wants to play Bitcoin, welcome you with open arms. yeah, know, reach out. Yeah. Awesome. So, and if people want to find you guys, I guess, yeah, where do you want to send them? Yeah. Website is structural-engs.co.nz and you can find our details there. can email us or get in touch. Yeah. So,

Cody Ellingham (40:24.61)
I mean, hopefully in the future there'll be some big Bitcoin mines built in New Zealand somewhere and we can be involved in designing the warehouses. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it would be perfect to have you guys come in and build some structurally sound Bitcoin mining facilities. Certainly you're going to need some more of those in the near future. Yeah. I think it's exciting, man. The Bitcoin economy in New Zealand starting to emerge.

Yeah. I mean, I can see it with the guys at Lightning Pay, you know, they're moving, you know, they're doing bits and there's a few things happening. I'm yet to go to a meetup, to be honest. Just been so busy with the new baby and the business as well. But I would love to go to a meetup in Auckland and meet some of the Bitcoiners here. Yeah. Yeah. No, that sounds awesome. Hey, Anis, I appreciate your time and joining me today and sharing what you guys are working on. I think it's brilliant. And yeah, hope we can keep in touch.

Thanks Cody, I appreciate it.

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