Nashville Energy and Mining Summit 2024

Adam is the Account Manager - US for Upstream Data. Adam has a Bachelor's degree in economics and has worked in the oil & gas industry since 2017 doing production accounting and outside sales. Adam is passionate about the bitcoin mining industry and enjoys helping people new to the industry.

Alex Royce is a Senior Product Manager at Foundry Digital and leads product development for the Foundry USA Pool & new product development in Foundry’s proof of work business line. Prior to joining to Foundry, Alex spent over 7 years in capital markets and over 5 years in product development for capital markets. Alex is deeply passionate about proof of work and decentralized technologies.

Alex Thorn is Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy Digital. At Galaxy, Alex leads a team of researchers dedicated to understanding and unpacking developments in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, producing insights for internal and external audiences. Prior to joining Galaxy Digital, Alex spent 12 years at Fidelity Investments, most recently co-managing Avon Ventures, the early-stage crypto venture fund affiliated with FMR LLC, the parent company of Fidelity Investments. Before that, Alex was Director of Blockchain Research at Fidelity Center for Applied Technology where he directed technology experimentation and published research on the cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystem. Alex has a B.A. in Political Science from Vanderbilt University.

Guiding a team of energy market, data science, and software professionals at Satoshi Energy. Previously led the development of software and data science products as a consultant for Fortune 500 energy and financial services companies. Bitcoiner since 2014 with the idea that 24/7 power markets will benefit from 24/7 real time financial settlement.

Barn is the owner of Hashroots Inc. and a home mining optimist focused on small to mid-scale operations in the south. He has penned articles for Ungovernable Misfits, The Sovereign Bitcoiner, and Bitcoin Magazine. He is active in the Pleb Miner community with focus on teaching home owners and small businesses how to incorporate hashrate. Additionally, Barn spends time locally with Bitcoin Bay https://www.bitcoinbay.live/ with a focus on Bitcoin education & creating a local circular Bitcoin economy. Smokes killer Florida grass fed/grass finished beef jerky & donates a portion of the profits to the meetup.

https://twitter.com/btctwatterpants

Brandon focuses his time on mining research, strategic investments, and special projects. Previously, he was the Director of Multi-Family real estate acquisitions and investments at Kettler and an investment banking analyst at Wells Fargo Securities in the in Financial Institutions Group.

Brent Whitehead is the Co-Founder of Giga Energy. Giga reduces flaring by deploying onsite power generation and bitcoin data centers. Giga focuses on being a vertically integrated flare gas bitcoin mining company by building in-house generators and data centers for capturing flared and stranded gas. Brent comes from an oil background, which led him to a career in the energy space. Brent attended Texas A&M University, where he studied Industrial Distribution.

Lead Datacenter Technician, Upstream Data Inc.

Brian Morgenstern is the head of public policy for Riot Platforms, Inc., one of America’s largest publicly-traded Bitcoin mining enterprises. He leads the company’s advocacy efforts at the state and federal level regarding energy, environment, financial services, tax, and national security. He is on the executive committee of the Chamber of Digital Commerce and the board of directors of the Texas Blockchain Council. He previously served at the U.S. Treasury Department as senior advisor and deputy assistant secretary and as White House deputy press secretary and deputy communications director.

Colin has been a serial entrepreneur for over 20 years. He has a background in law and engineering, and in addition to devising the KYC-minimized aspects of Distributed Hash, he has built out the entire IT infrastructure for Distributed Hash, including building several custom tools to ease management and collect detailed mining data. He and his wife work together to collect and analyze ASIC data to generate actionable insights both for individual customers, and the community at large.

Founder of Foreman Mining Management

Executive Producer of What Bitcoin Did

Drew Armstrong is the President and COO of Cathedra Bitcoin, a company that believes sound money and abundant energy are the keys to human flourishing. Prior to joining Cathedra, he was a founding member of Galaxy Digital’s bitcoin mining team and helped build out Galaxy's mining equipment finance product. Drew also worked in the firm's investment banking and principal investments divisions. Prior to joining Galaxy, Drew began his career at Barclays' investment bank, where he focused on the origination of esoteric securitized products, such as data center securitizations and collateralized fund obligations. Drew holds BAs in Economics and Philosophy from the University of Chicago.

econoalchemist is a privacy advocate focused on Bitcoin censorship resistance & self-custody. He has contributed several articles to Bitcoin Magazine, the Braiins Mining Blog, & the Upstream Data News letter. Conference presentations range from Home Mining to Self-Custody to the coal industry to cattle ranching and how it all relates back to Bitcoin. Co-host of Pod256.

Eric McErlain is Director of External Affairs for GRIID Infrastructure, a purpose-built Bitcoin mining company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio with operations in Texas, Tennessee, and New York. McErlain is based in the Washington, DC area, where he works at the nexus of government affairs, public policy, and media relations. He’s also part of GRIID’s power pipeline team and is the company’s business development lead with the nuclear power industry. Prior to joining GRIID, McErlain spent most of the previous two decades with the Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington, DC-based trade association that represents the nuclear technologies industry.

Erik Hersman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gridless Compute.

I have been working in the ASIC design/verification industry for over 25 years on projects ranging from military to AI to implantable devices. I'm honored and excited to have joined Intel Blockscale ASIC team as System Architect in Jul 2022. I was introduced to Bitcoin in 2018 and started getting involved in off-grid mining projects in 2019 and have been mining personally at various scales every since.

Ghazaleh serves as Riot’s VP of Financial Planning & Analysis and is works closely with operations and leadership on strategy and analytics.

In 2021 Ghazaleh left her career with a global leader in Life Sciences and Fortune 100 company to pursue her passion for Bitcoin. In her previous role she managed $1billion logistics and distribution annually, working with operations across 10 countries.

In her previous experience, Ghazaleh worked for two low-cost airlines, and led the cost transformation at Frontier Airlines which allowed for acquisition by private equity. Subsequently she joined Brightline, a multi-billion-dollar startup in Miami, FL developing passenger trains and mixed-use train stations throughout South Florida.

Founder and CEO at @voltage_cloud | prev - @salesforce @nodesource @Ikigai_fund | Building the future of money on #Bitcoin | Nostr: graham@vlt.ge

Aspiring Industrialist. Chief Strategy Officer, @GRIID

First employee at GRIID Infrastructure, Harry has led the strategy function at the company since inception. This has taken the company to four industrial scale mining facilities across two states and they are now in the midst of a public market transaction to further support growth. At GRIID he leads power acquisition, ASIC acquisition, corporate development, and special situations.

Ilya Rekhter is the co-founder and CEO of Megawatt, a vertically-integrated Bitcoin mining company based in Indiana.
Prior to Megawatt, Ilya built DoubleMap, a transit-tech company that landed on four consecutive Inc. 5000 lists before being acquired by Ford in 2019.
Currently, Ilya is championing the Blockchain Basics bill, known as HB1388 in the Indiana House of Representatives. This bill, which protects Bitcoiner rights and sovereignty, is presently being voted on in the Indiana House before moving on to the Senate.

Jay is the VP of Research at Foundry where he focuses on increasing infrastructure decentralization, combating energy misinformation, and general bitcoin mayhem.

Jeff Lyash is president and chief executive officer of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Appointed by the Board of Directors in February 2019, Lyash leads the nation’s largest public utility in its mission of service to the people of the Tennessee Valley region.

He is also chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute executive committee, providing oversight to NEI on policy affairs on behalf of the U.S. nuclear industry.

Lyash is as comfortable talking with a crew in a plant as he is in the boardroom. His exceptional people skills and technical experience make him one of the top leaders in the energy industry.

Before taking the helm at TVA, Lyash served as president and CEO of Ontario Power Generation Inc., one of the largest electric generating companies in Canada with a diverse fleet of nuclear, hydroelectric, gas, biomass, and renewable generating stations.

Lyash was formerly the president of CB&I Power, where he was responsible for a full range of engineering, procurement, and construction of multi-billion-dollar electric generation projects in both domestic and international markets. He also provided operating plant services for nuclear, coal, gas, oil, and renewable generation.

Prior to joining CB&I, Lyash served as executive vice president of Energy Supply for Duke Energy, where he led engineering, maintenance, and operations of the company's 42,000-megawatt generation fleet, fuel procurement, power trading, major projects and construction, environmental programs, and health and safety programs.

Before the merger of Progress Energy and Duke Energy, Lyash was executive vice president of Energy Supply for Progress Energy. In this role, he oversaw Progress Energy's diverse 22,000-megawatt fleet of generating resources, including nuclear, coal, oil, natural gas, and hydroelectric stations. In addition, Lyash was responsible for generating fleet fuel procurement and power trading operations.

Lyash joined Progress Energy in 1993, serving as executive vice president of corporate development, president and chief executive officer of Progress Energy Florida, senior vice president of Energy Delivery Florida, and vice president of Transmission.

Lyash began his career in the utility industry in 1981 and worked for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in senior technical and management positions throughout the Northeast and in Washington, D.C. He received the NRC Meritorious Service Award in 1987.

Lyash earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Drexel University and was honored with the Drexel University Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2009. He has held a senior reactor operator license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and is a graduate of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management Executive Training Program and the Duke Fuqua School of Business Advanced Management Program.

Lyash is an avid golfer and fly fisherman. He and his wife, Tracy, enjoy cooking, skiing, reading, and charitable work – and spending time with their two married children and nine grandchildren. The Lyashes live in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Jeremy has spent 20 plus years in energy and the deregulated power markets. For a majority of that time, he was navigating commodity procurement on a national level in all of the deregulated markets. He has spent time with Berkshire Hathaway Energy, AEP, and start ups Source Power and Liberty. The past 5 years he managed National Accounts for CPower, optimizing Demand Response participation and leveraging Distributed Energy Resources. It was during that time he recognized the value that Bitcoin Miners could bring to the grid through curtailment and load flexibility. His time with Foreman has been spent helping to monetize a miner's energy load to provide grid stability and top line revenue.

Joe Dillon has worked in Energy and Infrastructure for over 20+ years. He spent a decade internationally in Asia and South America in Asset Management deploying large capital projects in the oil and gas and offshore wind markets. More recently Joe was the General Manager for Honeywell's energy efficiency and demand response business unit, Smart Grid Solutions, before joining US Bitcoin as the founding member of the energy team.

Currently Joe is CEO of Adakon Energy, a consulting and site development firm for power generators, utilities, developers, bitcoin miners, and other edge data center loads, with approximately 1 GW of projects in development.

Joe is also the Head of Mining and Energy at Lightning Ventures, a seed stage Venture Fund.

Founder and Chief Engineer at FutureBit

Ten31 co-founder. Focused investment platform building out the Bitcoin ecosystem.

CMO at Braiins

Bitcoin Core Developer and CTO Ocean Mining

Founder of http://TFTC.io, a media company focused on #Bitcoin, Beauty, and Freedom in the Digital Age (@TFTC21). Partner @ten31vc. Director @CathedraBitcoin

Head of Derivatives at Luxor Technology.

Skilled technology, innovation, and strategy professional with significant experience leading strategic initiatives in Capital Market Structure, Data Science, Corporate Strategy, and Corporate Venture Capital. Wide-ranging and extensive experience in launching and supporting derivative products, defining enterprise data strategies, full cycle product management, building cloud-based applications, strategic investing, and leveraging new technologies.

Specialties: Bitcoin & Bitcoin mining, capital markets, derivatives, market microstructure, commodities, financial regulation, corporate strategy, venture capital, advanced analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, and innovation.

CEO @ Lincoin | Bitcoin Mining - Energy - Flexible Computing

Chief Research Officer at GRIID

Bitcoin & Energy / Business Intelligence at Foreman

Neil is a home mining enthusiast that has turned it into a career, specializing in immersion applications, midscale deployment operations, equipment procurement and energy sourcing.

CoFounder of Bitcoin Park and OpenSats, Managing Partner at Ten31

Author - Gradually, Then Suddenly, available exclusively for sale at http://TheSaifHouse.com. Head of Business Development at Zaprite working on bitcoin payments.

Creator of What Bitcoin Did, Chairman of Real Bedford Football Club

Co-Founder and CTO at Gridless Compute

Co-founder of The Investor's Podcast

@PrestonPysh

Robert is an entrepreneur with expertise in growth and sales systems. With a technical background in Philosophy and Psychological research, combined with a masters in Education, he is uniquely positioned in the Bitcoin community to grow and share the technology and its cultural implications as hyperbitcoinization accelerates.

He is works with Riot Platforms as the manager of mining projects and operations analysis and is excited to help grow the organization to 100EH/s.

Rod [@bitkite] is a seasoned technology professional with ~20 years of experience in the industry, including management and senior management roles. He has spent the past ~6 years focusing on Bitcoin.

His focus is centered on Bitcoin mining where he invests in a variety of different mining operations through his firm Galactic Freedom Company and their subsequent funds. He co-hosts POD256 a weekly podcast focused on bitcoin, mining, and energy with Econoalchemist and Bitcoin Brainstorm, a monthly conversation with ARK Invest's Cathie Wood and Yassine Elmandjra and leaders in the Bitcoin space.

He is also dedicated to helping educate and grow local Bitcoin communities. In 2022, he co-founded Bitcoin Park, a community-supported campus in Nashville that is focused on grassroots Bitcoin adoption and serves as a hub for Bitcoin enthusiasts to work, learn, collaborate, and build.

In addition to his professional pursuits, Rod is also an early stage angel investor and has invested in companies such as Calm, Teachable, 15Five, and others.

Long Bitcoin. Long Tennessee.

Rory is the Market Intelligence Lead for GRIID where he focuses on research, strategy, and special projects. He started his career on the trading desk of Discovery Capital, a global macro fund, where he was a member of the investment team responsible for managing risk across US, European, Middle Eastern, and African markets. He has contributed writing to Forbes Crypto, and attained the CFA charter despite no longer paying his dues because it’s a grift.

Founder @nakamotoheating, CTO @amazeeio, Geek, #Bitcoin Home Miner, schnitzel@nostrplebs.com

United States Senator Bill Hagerty was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2020 and is currently serving his first term representing the state of Tennessee. His committee assignments include: U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs; U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations; and the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules & Administration. Prior to his election to the U.S. Senate, Hagerty served as the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, the world’s third largest economy and America’s closest ally in the region.

Hagerty is a life-long businessman. He started his business career with the Boston Consulting Group, where his work took him to five continents, including three years based in Tokyo, Japan. He later became a venture capital and private equity investor where he invested in and served as an executive and board member of a wide range of companies, including ones listed on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. From 2011 to 2014, Hagerty took leave from his business career to serve as a member of the Governor’s Cabinet and Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. During his tenure as commissioner, Hagerty reorganized the department, eliminating over 40 percent of the positions and saving millions of taxpayer dollars. At the same time, the new approach helped spur the strongest economic transformation seen — taking Tennessee from an unemployment rate higher than the national average when he arrived to become the number one state in the nation for jobs created through foreign investment and being named State of the Year for Economic Development an unprecedented two years in a row during his tenure.

Hagerty, an Eagle Scout, is originally from Sumner County, Tennessee. Today, he and his wife Chrissy are both active volunteers in several community and civic organizations, and live in Davidson County, Tennessee. They are the parents of four children.

Electrical engineer working on open source #bitcoin mining hardware and firmware.

Instigator of the Bitaxe Bitcoin ASIC miner.

Co-Founder and Former COO, of Great American Mining. Tom helped lead GAM’s execution of its high-growth strategy, amassing over 300 ph in the core of the Bakken mining Bitcoin off flare gas.

Tom’s people first-driven approach to building out lean over performing operations teams lead to consistently operating the best performing mining boxes in the Bakken basin.

Tom also helped developed GAM’s branding along with the industry defining podcast GAMCast to tackle the ESG framing that attacks O&G and Bitcoin. This work paved the way for Great American Mining’s position as Bitcoin Mining’s leader in dealing with stranded and non rival energy use cases.

Tom was also Head of Business Development for Cathedra Bitcoin. A publicly traded Bitcoin Mining Company that has a focus on off grid mining using natural gas.

Tom currently is the co founder of Standard Bitcoin. A vertically integrated Bitcoin Mining Company that has a focus on off grid mining using natural gas and developing on grid mining sites that help with grid stabilization in rural parts of Appalachia.

Trey Kelly is the Founder and CEO of GRIID Infrastructure, a vertically-integrated, US-based Bitcoin mining company. He has spent his career in building and scaling technology businesses. Trey began his career as an entrepreneur — in 2010 he founded Stampt, a mobile loyalty application, and saw it through to an acquisition by Mobivity in 2013.

Prior to GRIID, Trey worked in cybersecurity — most recently as an executive at Ziften. Trey joined as an early employee at OpenDNS and saw the business through its acquisition by Cisco Systems. He holds bachelor’s degrees in Systems Analysis as well as Mathematics and Statistics from Miami University.

Will Cole is a bitcoiner, former Chief Product Officer of Unchained Capital, and current advisor to Unchained and Trammel Venture Partners.