Okay, guys, thank you for being here. I'm Greg Beard, Stronghold CEO. We have had an exciting day so far, but the point of the gathering is to talk about the new business initiative that we are undertaking at Stronghold. That is, it's really been sort of 30 years in the making. We've met, you know, and through this whole process, we've done, you know, years of work and testing and now months of actual lab testing that have gotten us to this point. But I'm happy to say that it will have an eventful day, where I'll speak for, you know, what may seem like hours, but it'll only be 30 minutes or so. And then we'll take a short break, and then have a panel of our experts in the carbon space. That will hopefully help give you confidence that, what we're doing is not only commercial and environmental, but, you know, really good for the, the company as well, and achievable. So I think with that, you know, I'll thank you, and then, there will be time for questions at the end. But it's a small enough group that if someone just has to know something, ask, and we'll probably just be fine. So I think, you know, part of what we're doing is, we are in our excitement to get to the, you know, to get the news about what we are capable of doing. And we're recording this, so there will be an opportunity for those that aren't here to watch later. So just as a warning to those that might ask a question, you might end up on a, you know, YouTube page or something. So actually, as a joke, I was going to have Rob go and read this word for word, but it's not that funny. All right, so the evolution of Stronghold. These assets, you know, and we're going to go into, you know, why we are reclaiming waste that is strewn across Pennsylvania. But as a result of that, we are running literally almost 30-year-old Circulating Fluidized Bed, that's what CFB stands for. And those are used to reclaim waste that is, you know, all over Pennsylvania or anywhere really where mining coal happened. Over the decades, the plants ran as designed, and they were on PPAs, or power purchase agreements, that made them able to run in an economic way. And I'd say in the, in a more recent decade, those PPAs ran out, and the plants ended up being just more merchant plants, just running when it was economic to run and, you know, idled when they, when it wasn't. Which I think the, the impact of that was the millions and millions of tons of, of waste that was cleaned up, that, that process of remediating the land was slowed down materially. And so part of what we've done at Stronghold is add a Bitcoin mining data center to these plants, that makes it economic to run them all the time. Which, hey, we're in the reclamation and environmental beneficiating business, and so running the plants, we view as a very favorable thing for the environment and is why the plants were built in the first place. So today, we're talking about carbon capture and about really the magic that the ash that comes out of the plant has in terms of its ability to capture carbon. And so we'll be announcing and going through the economics of what that means to the business. So I think, and on this slide, we have these mining waste piles. So here's what happened. Before 1975, if you're mining for coal, it was legal to put the by-product of that activity, the mining waste, on the surface. And it comprised about 40% of what came out of the ground. So we literally now are in the process of cleaning up what has amounted to billions of tons of this. And so I'll go into the damage that does, but as a part of our, our process, it starts with the reclamation of these, these piles. We take this waste and haul it, you know, use excavators and bulldozers and manhandle it, get it into trucks, to haul it to one of our two, you know, mining waste-to-energy sites, Scrubgrass and Panther Creek. There, we use a technology that's called CFB, which I'll go into detail on how that works as well in a few minutes. And as a part of remediating that waste or removing it, we make power. That power is used both to power the grid, and we're part of the PJM grid, that network, or sometimes it's beneficial to use that power to make Bitcoin. And we'll go into what the economic cut-off is to mine versus sell power. But it's important to note that that's an option for us, and we choose the most economic of those options. The business that we are adding to Stronghold is carbon capture, and so the... that part of the process comes in the use of the ash. So the plants make power and beneficial use ash. To date, that ash has gone back to the sites where we got the waste in the first place, and that has helped remediate those sites. What we'll be doing as a part of carbon capture is taking the ash, putting it through an additional process to, we'll use the word, you know, carbonate, like as a verb, to capture the... Using that ash to capture carbon. And we have what's pictured here is a Karbolith, which is a, you know, trademark name, you know, by our partner here at Karbonetiq. Which is a machine that increases airflow in and around the ash, that allows it to carbonate much more quickly than it would otherwise with the original process that we have had talked about. And that becomes a business when we sell those credits in the voluntary market, and we'll get into what the value of that market could be. We can also get the benefit of tax credits under Section 45Q of the IRA. So this, with apologies to those that have heard this, you know, yeah, in the IPO, for example, but, from our vantage point, to review what we do on the reclamation side is very important. 'Cause I think it's a, you know, particularly given that, hey, I think Bitcoin miners, you know, have a reputation as being, you know, power hungry and, you know, carbon intensive the wrong way. And I will tell you, I think we're the only one that is doing environmentally beneficial work, creating power, and using that power to mine Bitcoin. And you'll hear that, hey, there's, the studies are showing it's actually a carbon negative activity, so we'll go into that as well. This site is called Russellton. We get most of our waste right now, I think we pull from about five different sites, and we're cleaning those up. We just finished one called Tassa about a month ago, and that'll be highlighted, like, you know, even by the state of Pennsylvania, we hope, you know, by the Governor's office next year. This is what a site looks like. So this site has about 14 million tons of mining waste left to clean up. As you can see, it is adjacent to homes, which, you know, makes it actually much, much less appealing to live there, given to what's contained in the piles. On the other side of this of the homes is a former site that's already been cleaned up and remediated, and it's now football fields, a rec center, you know, soccer fields. It's a beautiful location. And we have, you know, we have another probably 10 years left to clean up this site, but obviously that's the... The goal is to take a really negatively impacted community and remove that toxic waste, and restore it to what it should be. So there are 840 of these sites that look like Russellton across Pennsylvania. And you'll go, and I'm gonna argue about, you know, the land, sea, and air campaign here. It's not just the land that's polluted. The air is also impacted because they emit greenhouse gases just sitting there. They also spontaneously combust. It's estimated by the DEP that there are 40 piles that are continuously burning, like right now as I'm speaking. And they are the biggest, or one of the biggest sources of water pollution in the state. I would go, like there's a list of, I would describe as unpronounceable chemicals. I think what you should just read there is, it's cancer, to leave these things as they are. So this is not a gift of Photoshop. This was never a sparkling clear river or stream. This is what an impaired waterway looks like in Pennsylvania when... Which is an effect of leaving the piles as they are. And this water makes its way to protected ecosystems like the Chesapeake Bay. It gets into the water table. It is... So, like, you know, from the Stronghold point of view, leaving piles that do this kind of damage to the water, I don't care if you're in New York or California, it's just not okay to do, to leave this type of impairment. The only way to stop this from happening is to remove the pile in the ways that we do it. I guess part of the, you know, the, the air, the air toxicity. When the piles burn, you get the equivalent to about 7 million tons of this mining waste burns uncontrolled in a year. That means that it doesn't get the benefit of EPA-approved emissions controls that make it safe. That means that all of those cancer-causing elements end up in the air, like, you know, sulfur dioxide, the cause of acid rain, mercury and mercury poisoning, carbon monoxide, and of course, CO2. So some of these piles have been burning for decades, and we're trying to overcome what is literally more than a hundred-year problem in the state. So this is really what Stronghold was formed to do. We are in the business of reclaiming these lands and restoring these communities. And in doing so, we obviously have like... We'll have the before and after shots of what the land looks like when it's been cleaned up. And in the history of the company, it's well over 1,000 acres that have been remediated. And in this type of remediation, we're removing 90% of the NOx emissions, 98% of the SOx, 99.9% of the particulates, and you know, 99.9% of the mercury. So, like once again, leaving them as is, is much, much worse than the remediation. And we're not doing this. I think one thing that just makes sure we clarify, we don't own the sites that we clean up, and never did. We partner with the state. They have a list of sites that are the most damaging, the most dangerous, and they will call us, and we'll go study it and look at it, and do, you know, drill core holes in it to figure out what it would cost us to pick up that waste. They will sometimes give us grants to help us clean it up. And then we also get the benefits of, when we make power, we get renewable energy credits, which is a you know part of the you know bipartisan legislature's plan to make this activity, which is expensive and difficult to do, economic for us to do, just to keep us doing it. So what does the CFB power generation process look like? So I think if like for those of you who have children, there's an engineer named Mark Rober, who's on YouTube. He actually does a small version of a CFB, which is a Circulating Fluidized Bed. So it's a... That idea is almost 100 years old, but has been in practice now for 30 years, so taking the idea to practice. So what's happening is you're taking what would be a solid, like in this case, we would take a solid waste, like a, you know, waste coal appears to be a solid. If you pump enough air through it, it will liquefy. And if it liquefies, it will then be suspended in what we have in these cyclones, and that's what allows it to combust. But the reason why this waste is sitting on a surface now and hasn't already been used is that it has a very low BTU. So thermal coal has 12,000 BTU. The reason why this wasn't burned is because it averages below 6,000 BTU, and it has a lot of rock, might have sulfur in it. So you just can't put it in a thermal coal plant. It won't burn. Maybe it'll smolder, but it's not gonna, it's not gonna let the plant run as those plants were designed. So the CFB, which is where you liquefy this waste, that allows it to combust. And, you know, our plants are, we have one plant, Panther Creek, that's 80 MW, and one Scrubgrass that's 85 MW, but the designs are the same. And, the idea is you're allowing for this combustion, which allows the remediation. The byproduct that we get out of it is steam and power, and then this beneficial use ash that we can take back to the sites. Because the part of our process includes limestone, we put crushed limestone in with the waste, and that limestone allows for the capture of sulfur, which is what removes the potential for acid rain causing emissions. That limestone is also what creates the reaction and the ability to capture carbon dioxide. So we'll get more into that in the coming slides. So we've had a few, let's say, rock throwers. I think to some, you know, they have not appreciated how important it is to clean up the land, and the waterways, and the air in the environment. And there have been some recent studies that show that leaving the piles as they are, is because of the greenhouse gases that they emit in situ, in place, that it is a much better, activity for the environment. It's actually. It's a carbon negative activity to remediate as we do. So I think if you looked at our activities, the carbon negative impact would be the same as removing more than 12,000-20,000 cars from the road. And that's, that to us is a, an important attribute of the business, 'cause I think it was... You know, I don't want to ever have to apologize for saying, "Hey, guys, we're cleaning up all the land, water, and air, but, hey, we're putting, we're putting carbon into the air." That would be. That, that's tougher to say. What we can say with confidence now, with the help of third-party studies, is that doing this is also better for the environment and the reduction of overall greenhouse gas emissions, which I think is that's, that's an important, you know, two-party, fully studied, where the process is fully studied, and that's been the conclusion. So a future slide, we'll talk about, you know, valuations and how we compare to other Bitcoin miners in terms of value per exahash. But we're really one of the only ones that owns our own power assets. And from our vantage point, owning our own power assets can give us a lot of optionality. And what do I mean by that? It turns out that if on any given day, if power prices are spiking for some reason, we can quickly curtail our Bitcoin mining data center and direct all that power to the grid and take advantage of those spiking prices. And I can tell you, in the past few years since we've put the data center in, that is happening more and more. So hey, why is that? And the reason why we believe that prices are spiking more and more is that in our grid, in PJM, it's been announced, and it's known, and it's happening. We're seeing a shutdown of many, many gigawatts, tens of gigawatts, a shutdown of base load capacity. That capacity is being replaced mostly with solar and wind, which, while it's green, it's intermittent in its availability. And so, where are you gonna get your power or if the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing? The answer is, if your base load plants are gone, which is every projection has them being... the retirement's happening in the coming years, it's not the coming 20 years, like in this decade, we're gonna see, you know, 20% of the base load capacity dismantled. If you replace it all with solar and wind, when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, you then go to a very high cost of power to replace those megawatts. And that's going to give us I think that greatly increases what I would describe as the option value of owning your own base load plants, that can quickly toggle on and off. So if we're toggling, we can optimize the revenue. And so, right now, and I don't, I don't have my phone out, but, my bet is that power pricing is probably spot price is maybe around $30-$40 a megawatt. And if you looked at where our REC prices trade, it's, you know, round up to $40 a megawatt. And so our all-in price per megawatt for running the plant is probably between $70 and $80 a megawatt. If you looked at what we're making while we're mining Bitcoin, that'll depend on which miner we're running. So the most efficient miners in the market today will make more than $150 a megawatt. And I would say the least efficient miners that we run at, and with today's Bitcoin mining economics, make probably $60-$70 a megawatt. So like, we have you know, a portion of our fleet, we have you know, will be curtailed during high pricing, but not all of it. So our most efficient machines, it would take, you know, in excess of $150 in order to want to toggle them off. Another thing that makes us different is that if power is an option for us, that's really- that's the inverse of our peers. So if you looked at what others have had to do to get access to power, they've entered into long-term power purchase agreements that obligate them, in most cases, to buy power, even if the economics of mining Bitcoin don't support it. So I think from our vantage point, we have really right-way risk. If power prices run, fantastic, we're better off. If you looked at our peers, if power prices run, they're stuck. They can toggle to zero. They have only an on/off switch where they can decide not to mine Bitcoin, but they can't really emulate what we do in terms of selling power back to the grid as quickly as we can. So, if you think about the benefits that carbon capture brings, this next line of business for us, it's just another way to. If you want to be in the Bitcoin mining market, we would view that as another way to drive the cost of power even lower. So I think. And we'll show you where, how we stack up versus the others in the event of the carbon capture projects being fully exploited. So, why is this important? And I think, you know, I'm looking at many of our you know, Bitcoin mining analyst friends in the audience today, and the Halving is on the market's mind. And what does that mean, right? You know, right now, all of us miners will share the spoils of mining Bitcoin, because one is awarded to one of us every 10 minutes, or we share it on a pro rata basis. But sometime in the next few months, the reward for mining is gonna be cut in half, which is the design of the algorithm. It's. This is not a regulatory advancement, this is a system design tool. So, what will happen in a Halving? And so if you look at the top set of charts, I think let's focus maybe on the top set of charts just for a moment. Our efficiency versus our net cost of power is much more attractive than what others have, that only have efficiency gains. So everyone's struggling to get to more efficient miners, because their cost of power won't let them have much of a gross margin if they don't. Meaning, if I was saying if the example was, if our cost of power, if our benefit of power is $70-$80 a megawatt, and we're deciding to sell power at $70-$80 a megawatt instead of mining Bitcoin, you know, that's, that's attractive to us. But in just a few months, the benefit of mining Bitcoin will be cut in half. So that break-even point to where you decide to sell power versus mine is not. That is a dynamic number, right? So if, if all else stays the same, in my example, the economics mining Bitcoin are gonna be halved. The power business and that power price optionality becomes much, much more important. So I think we're on the verge of having a very positive recognition of being differentiated versus our peers, in that we can sell power as an option to mining Bitcoin. Whereas right now, if you're selling power, it's because power spiked. And I think if you cut the Bitcoin mining revenue in half, we think the threshold that's gonna happen will be lower, obviously, and will happen much more often. So if you looked at what happens to, you know, the gross mining margin, you know, for our peers versus us, you can see now, if you look at the middle chart on the right, if your cost of power is, you know, $60, and your average machine efficiency is, you know, let's call it 29 joules per terahash, you're losing money. So that machine's gonna come offline. So I would say there's a strong argument to post-halving. If right now the world is running, you know, 400 exahash worth of machines, a large portion of those machines are not as efficient as 29 joules per terahash, and they're gonna become unplugged. So we would expect the global hash rate to decline post-halving. For us, and I'd say the benefit of, of our, our model and the benefit of driving our power price lower, again, just saying it in a, in a post-halving middle of the chart, if we can drive our power costs down to $25 a megawatt, which carbon capture should allow us to do, we still will have, even with a relatively less efficient set of, of miners, we're still gonna have gross margins that are better than, than a competitor's that has a, a higher cost of, a slightly higher cost of power and more efficient machines. I guess, if you, if I were to say it in a simple way, we think that, that power price is more important than efficiency once you get down to the super low power pricing. So where we want to spend our resources and our money in the near term, yeah, maybe we improve efficiency of our miners a little bit, but to the extent where we can be successful in driving our costs down through creating a new revenue line in carbon capture, that is going to, that is going to give us the highest margins in the business, even without having to upgrade the fleet. So I think. But, you know, I'm sympathetic to those that are out, you know, raising money and constantly buying new machines, because they don't have this power toggle or option. So that's their only, that's their only avenue to survive the halving. So, what does this mean to us? So, if you look at this chart, this is essentially the, you know, the public market ecosystem of Bitcoin miners. And if you looked at our average power cost today, without carbon capture, we're in the middle of the pack. So I think owning our own plants, I would describe it as beneficial 'cause it still gives us the optionality that others that don't own their own assets, you know, don't have. But we have the potential with carbon capture to materially decrease our net cost of power, which is a, you know, a very important statistic in terms of what it costs to mine Bitcoin. So I think we can drive this cost per coin down below $10,000, again, with the additional revenue from carbon capture. So I think, if you looked at us, we manage or own four Exahash Bitcoin mining equipment. And if you looked at the potential for revenue, it will vary depending on what the hash price is. But, you know, today, the hash price is, what? $0.12 All right, so we'll look at the $0.08 hash price, which is the dark green bar. That's at this price, the 3 exahash is, you know, per megawatt, it's a $98 per megawatt level of efficiency. And our partnership, and I see our partners are here as well, we have, you know, we're not giving up all that much, you know, because our power price is gonna have this advantage, not having to buy that equipment. Yeah, it takes us down from $98 a megawatt down to $72, but we're saving on the all of the CapEx from having to buy the equipment in the first place. So from our vantage point, it is a high ROE business to partner in JV, somewhat with the data center plugs that we have. So with 3/4 of what we run, we own, and 1/4 we partner.... All right, so that was a lot to get to carbon capture, I think, but- Here's why we came. So this is actually, For those of you that were on the- Quarterly calls a few weeks ago, this is a redo of that slide with one important word changed. I think we said at that time, before we had results from field tests, we said, "Stronghold's Beneficial Use Ash can capture carbon." And we're now. The word has changed to it's now proven to capture carbon. And we're gonna. We'll go into the results of the test, but here's why we're here and excited. Our. Through our existing process, we have the potential to capture. We say up to, and you know, we'll stick with those words, but if there's potentially we could find efficiencies to increase that. But we'll say up to 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually through DAC, through Direct Air Capture. If we succeed in this endeavor, it will be transformative to the company and drive up to an additional $30 million of EBITDA into the business, and will reduce our net cost of power to as low as $16 a megawatt. So it's even lower than what we talked about in the prior pages. And I think what we're gonna hear today, and the reason why we asked our technology partners to fly across the country to be here, is that we know that this has a very low technology risk, particularly versus the other direct air capture projects that are being built and developed out in the world. So, like why is this happening? The reason it's happening is we have now, you know, six months of lab test results, and now the beginnings of actual field test results that show that by weight, our ash can capture up to 12% of the starting ash weight. And, you know, we're gonna actually put the actual results from the field up in a second, but it's. I think the field results just confirm what happened in the lab. We're not. We're no longer also talking hypothetically. We have already constructed what we call a Karbolith, and it is sitting an hour and a half north of Pittsburgh, capturing carbon as I'm speaking. And we're using what's called the stack effect to drive air through that beneficial use ash, which is what allows it to capture carbon more fully and quickly than would happen if we stuck with the original, you know, process of just returning the ash to the original sites where they came from. So here, here's how it works. So if you looked at our ash and studied our ash, 17% of it by weight is calcium oxide, and that's the key to the process. Calcium oxide can't help it, its chemical design compels it to capture carbon dioxide, meaning if you were to put calcium oxide in the presence of carbon dioxide, it will pull it out of the air like a sponge, and the result is calcium carbonate. So our process is to maximize the airflow through and around the ash without generating a lot of... Without using a lot of electricity, so we're trying to do this in a natural way, as we care about, like, the net benefit, and that's what the Karbolith does. So if you look at everything that we aspire to do around carbon capture, it's... We know that chemically, our ash can hold, you know, by weight, 12% of carbon dioxide. The question really is: How fast can you make it hold it? You know, 'cause if it takes 10 years to do it, then it's not that interesting. But if you can make it happen quickly and inexpensively and in a carbon neutral way, you know, meaning you're not generating a lot more carbon to do that, then, that, that's what gets you qualified for voluntary carbon credits and for 45Q under the IRA. And so I think everything that we're doing with our pilot tests and we'll do from here until we have a, you know, sort of a firm design that will be built out, you know, x 50 or 100, will be to maximize airflow through and around the ash, because it is, just by its chemical composition, compelled to capture carbon when it comes into contact with it. So, hey, what's the process? Today, and this is, I think for... As we get into explaining, well, how to get to qualify for 45Q or for voluntary credits, you have to have an improvement to a process. So today what we do is, as ash is dispensed from the facilities, it's promptly loaded up into trucks that probably had just dropped off a, you know, a few tons or 20 tons of waste. That same truck is then loaded up with ash, and the ash is then hauled back same day to the site where the waste was picked up, and it's packed into the ground to both reduce the acidity of the site where that waste came from, and also to contour the land to how it was supposed to be in the first place. So it's when it's dumped, it's leveled out, compacted down, and it's. I guess the point of that is, in describing it, it's not getting much exposure to air. It's loaded up quickly, hauled off quickly, dumped, pounded down, and once you get it, you know, once it's rained on, you know, the top few inches will harden like a concrete tortoise shell, and it's not getting any air. So as is, and what we're currently doing, doesn't do much more for carbon capture. Which is, that's the point of modifying our process and adding this Karbolith and studying the process to get to do it. So here's the difference. Well, the ash will be dispensed, and instead of loading it in the truck, we will move it to give it additional airflow from the Karbolith, which is using the Stack Effect to move air. That ash then will be... You know, it's tested when it comes out of the plant. That's the base load test. It'll be tested when it's, you know, at certain points along the way, over a period, just to verify that it's being carbonated as expected. And, you know, once that has happened, we can then gather the ash, that ash back up, then load it back into the truck and haul it back to the site, or potentially sell it as a carbonated ash to someone that needs to make a, you know, a green product. But the difference is, we're sequestering, you know, we think, once we're fully built out, 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year by modifying the process in this way. So here's what. So I think, I think just in our, you know, like, full disclosure, we have had that, this, this Karbolith has been in place for 30 days. It was just, you know, I can tell you, and, you know, Mike and Mark will tell you, the stress that we put on them to, you know, give up on another night's sleep to get the this thing designed and installed, like, A, we've been in a hurry to do it. The, the results that we have are coming in every day. So we've essentially gotten, you know, two separate batches of results from having this Karbolith in place for 30 days. So, by saying that these are sort of hot off the press, like, you know, we are debating the results, like, as recently as yesterday, you know? I think what we're happy to say is that the ash that with a 30-day test, or like even a two-week test, where we've tested the ash only for seven to 10 days, we're getting results of carbonation that range from 6%, just under 6%, to almost 11%. And that gives us a lot of confidence that if you add even another week, the process might get to 12% without modifying much of anything at all. But we are going to be iterating around the spacing of the tubes that feed the Karbolith. We'll iterate around the number of Karboliths. We can iterate around the process in which the ash is processed before it gets to the Karbolith. So I think we can say with a lot of confidence that we're very happy with the initial results of the ash that we, and the Karbolith performance. And we're confident that we're going to get to the 100,000 tons plus of carbon capture without, like, an overhaul to the process. Like, if the results came back, "Hey, well, we sort of spread the ash around the Karbolith, and, you know, yeah, we can confirm that when the ash comes out of the plant, that it has, you know, essentially no carbon dioxide being held in it," that's, that part is affirmed and won't change. The question would be, hey, if we came back after two weeks of running tests and we saw, you know, 1%-2% carbon, carbon dioxide capture, then, hey, we'd have a different story. But we're after seven to 10 days, call it almost all the way there, with our first attempt at the process, and we will iterate until we find the best, fastest, most economic way to do it. And, you know, that's, like, I think the... You know, Matt used, "When will the next Karbolith be built?" In the next few weeks. I think we already have all the parts, you know, on site to put it together. But I think when we have the panel in the next session, I will ask the, you know, chemical engineers to go through exactly what this means as well. So, hey, what does it mean to us, and, hey, why are we excited about it? It turns out that this, you know, 30-year-old plant with this, you know, 100-year-old technology process that's been running now for 30 years, is going to end up being a top 10 carbon direct air capture project in the United States and will be up and running, you know, essentially making credits in 2024, when most of the other mega projects are years and years away and have technology concerns even when they get running. Like, a lot of plants have a nameplate capacity for carbon capture, and many don't hit it. But like I said, I think our technology risk is actually already behind us. You know, the magic that the plant makes is calcium oxide, and that chemically, you know, it can't be avoided. That's going to capture carbon when we set it up in this type of process. So hey, what does it mean to us economically? We make 800,000-900,000 tons of ash a year, and if you say that we can capture up to 12% of that by weight in carbon dioxide, that implies 100,000 tons of carbon captured on an annual basis. And how do you get paid for that? There are two ways to get paid. One is through the IRA, which is under Section 45Q of the IRA. You get $180 per ton. So that implies $18 million of additional proceeds for under the IRA. The other way that you can get paid is in the voluntary market, and we'll ask the panelists, "Hey, what is a ton worth in the voluntary market?" And we're estimating, I think you're gonna hear conservatively, $130-$190 per ton. And in the aggregate, that is a very meaningful uplift for us. So on the chart on the top right, the... If you presume that we get the 45Q credits at $180 per ton, and get $160 in this voluntary market, and we capture 100,000 tons, that will give us an additional $27 million. And if it doesn't happen as fast, for some reason we can't get all the way there, and it's only 80,000 tons of carbon captured, it's $21 million of additional cash flow for the company. And I think on the chart on the left, this is a- if you want to presume that we can't capture 12%, and it's closer to 10%, and we can't get quite as much ash, you know, we can iterate around where we can end up. But, like, our belief from what we know now, we think we're gonna end up with a business that captures 100,000 tons, or potentially more. We'll just have to iterate to get there. And we think it's probable that we figure it out in the short term here. As I alluded to earlier, having this additional business line, if you're interested in Bitcoin mining, and you're feared- and you're worried about the halving, you have two routes. One is to upgrade the machines, and the other route is to lower your cost of power, if you can. And we're gonna argue that it's an attractive proposition to lower our cost of power. If you took the credits at the values that we talked about of $160 voluntary, $180 for the government credits, and run that through, like, the number of megawatts that we make in a year, that will take our cost of power down almost $20 a megawatt. You know, $0.02 a kilowatt, and could get us down to, you know, to a pro forma net cost of power below $25 a megawatt. And then obviously, on the right here, there's the data table on how that can vary. But you know, all but the worst cases, it's a power price in the $20s per megawatt or less. So what does this all mean? One is, hey, we think that we are grossly undervalued by the public markets. If you looked at our enterprise value versus the hash rate capacity versus compared to the other miners, we trade at an exponential discount. And the irony from our vantage point is that we have, which might be the problem, we have the most fixed assets and the most optionality. So I think in a way, like, owning our own power plants, they're tough to run. You know, and they're tough to run because, hey, by design, they have to be to do the reclamation work that they were designed to do. That is not easy work. And I think it may be that many investors in this space just wanna have guys that just go long Bitcoin mining machines only, and may not own their own power. Obviously, they'll try to drive costs down as much as they can. But I think we're a little bit more risk averse, we're gonna have that optionality around power, which gives us more fixed assets. And, hey, I'm proud to say that we're doing the environmentally good work of reclamation, and now making an attempt into the business of carbon capture as well. So none of the additional lines of business, you know, meaning power pricing optionality and carbon capture, is included in this analysis. This is just a flat, what's your enterprise value versus your hash rate capacity, and doesn't reflect the additional upside that we have from those other lines of business. So I guess that's a long way to say, we think that we're even undervalued in a more critical way than even what we're showing here. So, hey, what do we do? So I think if we have a project, in this case, direct air capture, that can meaningfully drive down our cost of power—absolutely helps our environmental, like ESG credentials, and will make us the most efficient on a gross margin basis in a mining ecosystem, we should do that, right? So, you know, center of the slide, hey, what are we doing? We're gonna be executing on this carbon capture opportunity. You know, as I said, hey, we're doing it now. I would invite you to come see the process, you know, north of Pittsburgh happening. It's a, you know, you would see a 700-acre industrial site that has, you know, some now very sophisticated equipment on it, that's designed to measure and capture carbon dioxide. Things that we're already doing as well that are low CapEx, hey, we're improving our uptime and efficiency. We outsource the management of our data centers to Frontier and, you know, a small uplift in uptime can give us, you know, about $1 million of additional cash flow. We have, you know, we think we're gonna be moving pretty swiftly in that direction of higher utilization in the coming quarters. You can also see us. We will have and we have the opportunity to always upgrade our fleet. I think we'll do a little bit of that in the near term. And we're looking at other sites as well. So I think with these announcements, and hopefully we'll be viewed as a leader in the reclamation space with the, you know, half a dozen other plants like ours that could be doing this as well. And so, hey, we'll see what happens on that front. But, you know, we are looking for additional sites. And then, hey, expect us to keep an eye on costs. We've, you know, in the roughly two years we've been a public company, we have taken costs down dramatically, you know, from our most expensive quarters. And so, and we expect that to continue in the right direction. So with that, I'm happy to take questions. And if there are no questions, we'll have a 15-minute break, and then we'll set up for the panel with the experts on the carbon markets, chemistry and process. Yeah. Greg, maybe this is something for later on, but, you know, as you scale this technology up, how do you think about the opportunities outside the scope of your assets? Maybe operating these Karboliths or other things? How would you decide to make that change? Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So, hey, we have friends and competitors in the business, and like, hey, from the environmental standpoint, whether or not we end up with a licensing fee or some type of royalty on a carbon lift being deployed by another one of our plants, we want them to do it, right? So to us, hey, to be a like a forerunner in this space and sort out how do you apply for the right registry? How do you get access to voluntary credits, how do you apply for the 45Q credits? I think for us, it's important that others follow because, hey, we ought to capture as much carbon as we can. We have an arrangement, an economic arrangement with Karbonetiq that would allow us to earn a royalty if Karboliths are used in our jurisdiction. But like today, hey, we're so focused on executing on our own and proving that it works. And, hey, at some point, hey, we'll, you know, spike the football and declare victory and say, "Hey, we're capturing all this carbon," you know, past tense. And, you know, then begin to help others do it as well. But today it is not, it's not part of our day-to-day activities. Good question. We heard from the line that any questions asked- Oh! Oh, sure. Sure. So the question that was asked was, will it be part of our business model to essentially have to earn royalties from others that look like us, that are doing the same type of carbon capture? You heard my answer. Go ahead, Kevin. So Greg, there was talk on a couple of the past quarter calls about additional site reference of additional sites over time. So on one hand, you talked about like a plain Bitcoin mining site, which I think is what you referred to. And then two years ago, you were talking about additional Scrubgrass type of conditions. And I guess, can you kind of sum it all up with where you see those valuations trending in light of this technology you're introducing to them? You know, I... The value of these plants is twofold. One is in the optionality of the power markets, and I think we're gonna prove that they also have optionality and value for carbon capture. And so, hey, they're not going down. That's the thought. When we bought our initial plants, hey, they were cheap in part because they were in bad power markets, and they were high cost. So a high cost asset in a bad power market, you can buy them for not that much. And it gave us access to transmission, to buy power at that cheap price when that was a cheaper option than making it ourselves. So I think what you can expect us to do is stay green-... and look for assets in bad power markets with assets that have option value. So that could be a, you know, wind farm in West Texas. We've looked at a few of those opportunities that sometimes come up for sale. If you looked at the, there are a couple of CFB plants that we would covet in our jurisdiction. But I think I would tell you, hey, we're more focused on execution of what we have, rather than spending resources on acquiring something of that scale new. Like, if we had, as we've all seen, getting the plants refurbished, getting the data centers put in, that's such a time and capital-intensive activity that, hey, I think we'd be happy to partner with someone to help them do it and participate in some way. But sort of starting from scratch on a new plant, like what we already own, I think that's probably not, you know, that's not on the near-term goal of ours. I think the properties that we've looked at where we can get access to a third site are more modest in that it's access to cheap power through existing infrastructure in jurisdictions that we know. In jurisdictions that we know. That's more probable. That's more probable. Do you mind offering an update on the entire permit? I know that's been kicked around the legislature and- Yeah, so I think actually we have a hearing this week at Panther Creek. So just for those that are on the line who can hear, we were asked if we had an update on the permit for the use of TDF fuel at Panther Creek. And I would say just, you know, just for those that might be, you know, listening out in the world, like, why, why would we want to burn TDF in the first place? We'd rather not. The reason that we are compelled to do it is that the waste that we're cleaning up, it has such a low BTU that we need to have a fuel additive in order to get it to cause any combustion to happen, to be able to reclaim these lands. And so we've used TDF as a fuel with permission of the EPA and the, you know, local authorities for nine years, and so this is not a new activity. And it's necessitated by the conditions that we are remediating. So I think, hey, I fully expect that given that we have... Hey, Hey, we're in compliance, and we have—it's the best outcome for that fuel is to be put into a plant like ours. That's what removes the... You know, if you don't, if these things end up burning uncontrolled, that's an environmental disaster. That's chemically dangerous. And so really, according to the EPA, the best thing to do is to turn it into TDF and use it as we're using it with emissions controls. So I think because of that fact, hey, we're expecting that it's going to be approved. And we'll let the authorities make that determination, but we're happy to explain it. Have you- Okay ... rethought your Karbolith deployment schedule, given the results that you've seen? Hey, we're—I think the results are encouraging us to push forward as rapidly as we can. So, to tell you the truth, we knew that the ash had the chemical composition that it has that captures carbon. So I think we're not surprised of the good test results in the field, as they support what happened in the lab. So I think we were expecting to go pretty quickly, but I think we still probably have another, I would say, 60-90 days to go slow to, I would say, you know, perfect the Karbolith design. That's going to then, once we get that design perfected and airflow through the ash maximized, hopefully, that's going to result in not having to build as many. So if we don't get the efficiency right, then we need more of them. And at, you know, $50,000-$75,000 each, we can take the few extra months just to save the associated CapEx from having a less efficient design. Okay, so probably you have a better feel on that question, the timeline for year-end? Yeah, I think we're gonna have every week we get another batch of tests back. And so to the extent that we have news that's bad, we'll come out with it, and good news, we'll probably wait until year-end or. We'll probably wait until year-end or you know, shortly thereafter. But I think we're. The plan, I think you should expect us, I think we've said that we will be like in the implementation phase fully during the first quarter of 2024, and that's, I think that's true. That's still true. Okay, so during that whole implementation phase, do you suspect that both your Karbolith programs have the answer? So when it, we'll start with Scrubgrass, and then at Panther, that's probably a last half of the year activity. So I think we'll, we will. We're obviously in a rush, and this can happen quickly, but we don't want to be efficient with capital use either. You mentioned at the beginning, Greg, that- ... field, where you showed us a picture. You said you had, what? Another 10 years to work on that? And that, that's exclusively to fill Scrubgrass, right? Yes, yes, Scrubgrass has the exclusive right to that waste pile. Okay. And then you mentioned another one that was over the other side of the hill that was already done. That's the same, the same site- But it was just twice as big. So we're—It's now sort of halfway done, and the side that's already done has been, you know, flattened and is now being properly used again. Prior- That's already done, has been, you know, flattened and is now being properly used again. -Yeah. Yeah, and that was done over the past 25 years. I think when- You really don't appreciate the scale of these waste piles until you go see them in person. Like, it's... We call them piles, they're mountains. It's just millions and millions of tons of waste. What did they put in the hole that they came out of? The holes collapsed. So they were propped up, you know, with, you know, supports, and then when they're done mining an area, they would collapse that area and then continue on. So you can't, you cannot put the waste back underground, if that's the question? It's not there down there? Yeah, there's nothing, there's nothing there. It, it's been collapsed. Well, if there are more questions, hold, and we'll, we can continue after the break. But thank you for listening to this, this segment. All right, welcome back. And so we're now gonna spend this next panel with our experts. We've got two from the founders of Karbonetiq here. They are our partners that designed the Karbolith. And I would just say... And you guys can introduce yourselves, but just say, you know, I flew out to Santa Barbara to meet with these two, and when you go to their office, I knew that I was in the right place because their office and lab doubles as a warehouse, where they have literally shelves and shelves and shelves, rooms full of ash from a variety of commercial processes around the world. It's like, hmm, you know? We've been studying this ourselves for years, and like, why did we spend all this time when we had these, you know, these resources available just and of all places, Santa Barbara? Welcome, thanks for coming. Seth, also thanks for being here. Seth is the CEO of Carbonomics. If you ever want—if you think that you have a carbon capture project and wanting to get credit for it on a registry, which is... That is the expertise of Seth and Carbonomics. We'll get to what even registry means as a part of this panel. Of course, Matt Matt Usdin, who's our General Counsel, who has been leading a lot of our efforts around understanding the regulatory environment, the... How do you get to qualify? You know, what makes you disqualified? And so this process is, you know, it's quasi-governmental in a certain aspect of it. And so, you know, that's been the learnings of our process so far, and I just wanted to share, you know, with our experts, not just the, you know, the regulatory aspect, but also the chemical aspect of what we're doing and why we think, you know, why these experts have partnered with us, and why they think that we're going to succeed. So I think with that, the, you know, the race to net zero is on, so it's still happening even in a tougher market year. Companies that have carbon reduction goals, if they don't have them today, you know, tomorrow they're likely to run out. So there isn't a big public company that has any sort of outward-facing, or market-facing, appeal, that hasn't made a declaration for their intent to reduce their carbon emissions. And many of these ways to reduce carbon, they are. It takes a lot of expertise, a lot of time to develop, it's expensive, and the actual reduction can be opaque. So we think by, you know, a little bit of luck and ingenuity, we've dodged a lot of the issues related to that, and can have a very positive impact in the near term. So I think, you know, with that, why don't we just get right into the process and, what's happening? And I'll give you my. You know, this will tell you how I spend my time on the internet. Well, at least some of it. If you go back and ask Google, "Hey, what's the history of the amount of carbon that has been, you know, in the atmosphere, and why are we afraid now?" And the answer is right now, hey, we've had a dramatic increase in carbon dioxide in the past 50 or 100 years, and it is bothersome. Like, we've-- It's-- We're up to, I think it's 400 parts per million, or 0.04%, and that's doubled since the Industrial Revolution. And just on the trajectory that we're on, hey, there's a reason why everyone's going for net zero, 'cause we're, you know, we're dramatically changing the amount of the composition of the air. But if you dig deeper, hey, there was a time in the Earth's, so I would say geologic history, where we had as much as 4,000 parts per million of carbon in the air. And I guess my question is: What happened to it? Like, where did it go? And so, I think part of what, you know, the answer to, hey, why what Stronghold is doing works, is related to weathering in that process. So I guess that's the leading question maybe, is: What happened to the 4,000 parts per million, and how does that relate to what we're doing? Can I ask, Mike? Sure. Sure. Where did it go? It went to two places, probably: plants, which became coal and oil and all the rest of it, and stone. That's where it's, that's where all of it went. But how did Stronghold- How did it go? How did it end up in stone? So there's a natural process for taking CO2 out of the atmosphere, through rain, mostly. And then when it rains on top of other types of stone, it then precipitates and eventually finds its way to limestone somewhere at the bottom of an ocean. Usually, that's how it goes. Carbon dioxide plus- Water ... water- Plus stone plus stone, you get calcium- ... what's the- Calcium carbonate- At the end of the day. Yeah. Which sounds familiar. Wasn't I just talking about calcium carbonate a few minutes ago? That's, that's what we're using. That's right. Okay. So why is a Karbolith, like, what's happening, like, chemically? So what we did at Karbonetiq is really identify three main problems with direct air capture, and one of them is moving air. That's one of the big ones. And what we're trying to do is move air without any plugged-in power. So no electricity, no fossil power, no solar cells, nothing, none of that. Just sun itself heating the air inside the Karbolith and wind, we catch wind at the top down as well, to move air from the ash pile or whatever solid we're working with at the time, to go through the ash pile and then out the top. And by doing that without any input power, we dramatically lower the cost of moving air. Obviously, it's basically free at that point, which is a challenge that a lot of DAC companies have today. So that's the first thing we do. And the second thing we do, we're using the excess calcium oxide, the calcium that you guys generate in the ash, as the sorbent for the CO2 in the air. And as you said in your discussion earlier, that's a natural sorbent that can directly capture and sequester permanently for, on geologic timescales, the CO2 that's in the atmosphere. And then the third thing we do is, because it's a once-through process, we don't have to spend any power or electricity or processing to recycle that material back into the process. That's it can be used for other things, as you mentioned earlier. So by permanent, you mean... What do you mean by permanently stored? Forever. So, we're literally turning it back into limestone which, like the Cliffs of Dover, have been there for millions of years. So, for all intents and purposes, it's forever. Sounds like it might qualify for Section 45Q IRS. Forever's a long time. So, Matt, How is this a window into how it applies to Scrubgrass, like what you've been doing, how the project is started, and then, you know, what's special about the technology of the CFB that makes this work in aggregate? Sure. So, you know, as you mentioned, we've been studying our ash for, you know, before my time at Stronghold. And we knew there was something interesting about it, mainly given the limestone composition, which is, which is, you know, one of the two key components of our, our ingredients as it goes into the CFB. It's super high in calcium. And just to give you all an idea of how much limestone we are inputting, you know, we spend $2 million-$2.5 million a year on limestone to insert into our CFB, and that's kind of the, the, the magic ingredient that gets us to where we go. So I think it was June 20, actually. It was absolutely June 20th, 'cause that was my birthday. Greg called me and said, "I just got back from Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara is very different from Kennerdell, Pennsylvania, a little bit better weather. But, we have something with our ash, and it is a natural sponge, given the high calcium content. You know, we think we have found the right team in California to help us kind of figure this out and make something work. So we spent really the next, you know, two months probably drilling down on what the processes would look like. You know, Karbonetiq guys ran a ton of tests in their lab with various batches of our ash, and the results kept coming back that, you know, the ash does in fact capture CO2 up to 12% of its weight. So that was fantastic, and that was kind of the highlight of our earnings announcement on November 14th. You know, to the day, we installed the first Karbolith one month ago. So it went up right before earnings, and then the next big question was: Hey, how is this gonna work in the field, right? And, you know, kind of as, as Mike was saying, we knew we had the magic ingredient, and we needed to figure out how to circulate as much air through it as quickly and as efficiently as possible, to take advantage of what we already had. And that's been the Karbolith design the last, you know, month or so. Or that was the design for the month leading up to earnings, and then the last month has been kind of reading the results and starting to think about optimizing the Karboliths. You know, I think it's important to note that not only did we work with the Karbonetiq guys, who's done the Karbolith on the airflow front, but also a third-party EPC firm in Rochester called Optimation. And then, you know, one thing that's important to us, kind of fitting into our local and environmental story, we hired a local contracting firm to build this for us. It had a team of eight to 10 people out there, so kind of another boon to the economy in an area, you know, that doesn't have a ton of high-paying jobs. And that's another aspect we're very excited about as we get this to scale: a lot more employment, a lot more wages. And, you know, I'll get into it a little bit later, but those are all requirements under the IRA as well. All right, so let's get down to brass tacks. Like, what did the test results show in the lab, and what are they showing in the field? Like, in your... Is it as expected? What's different? Like, I'm expecting, hey, we can get to the maximum 12%. Am I too optimistic? What has to happen for this, for this to work as described? So I would say that the results are tracking with exactly what I would think would happen in the field, and I don't see any reason why we can't get to the 12%. There's just fundamentally no reason why engineering, technology, chemistry, or any of those that would stop us from getting from there. It's just a matter of optimizing the system so that we can get there in the amount of time we want to get there. And that's what we're focusing on right now, is figuring out the best way to lay the material out, to, you know, pipe the Karbolith and so on, and figuring the best way to handle that situation to maximize or minimize the time it takes to generate that 12%. But the preliminary results all show that trend going that direction, and we're in some of the cases, I think we're already almost there. So I think from a commercial demo pilot, it's some of the best results I've ever seen. And I'm, you know, I've been a part of many projects over the years. And to be this far along that quickly, it's pretty exciting. That's great, and I appreciate that. All right, so Seth, what do we... Let's just say that Mike is right, as we hope and believe that, that he is, that this is going to end up capturing the carbon that we aspire to capture. What do we do with these—like, how do you think about the market? How do you capture it? How do you sell it? Just describe what you do if you're us with this, what we have. Well- If you do, if Mike's right, well, then you have a pretty valuable asset. And that asset is a, we call it carbon offset. But there are a few steps to go through to monetize that greenhouse gas reduction, and that is what the carbon market exists for. So there's the voluntary carbon market, there's the compliance carbon market. I can break those down. But in essence, we want to be able to bring this credit to market, and there are a few things you need to do. One is you have to have really clear a really clear method around quantifying that reduction. How are you measuring it? How are you making sure there's, you know, the accuracy of the claim that you're making? Most carbon offsets are placed on what we call registries. So these registries are... They're kind of a mixture of, like, a regulator and exchange. They kind of referee this voluntary carbon market, and they set standards for saying what is and what is not a legitimate claim around greenhouse gas reductions. Those registries are really important because the buyers of these carbon offsets, ultimately, what Stronghold is going to do is we're going to sell these carbon credits. Who's going to buy those carbon credits? There are a range of buyers out there, we can get into that. But those buyers are going to want some certainty. You can't see CO2 being sucked out of the air. So there's testing, there's measurements, there's auditing, there's third-party verification of claims, and then you can post those credits on a registry, on a platform, and then transact them. So those are the steps that we are all going to go through in order to give those buyers of those carbon credits the assurance that they need that these claims are, in fact, valid. How do you think about the registries? Like, how many are there, and how do you choose which ones we should try to get onto? There are five main registries, these platforms that sell credits in the voluntary carbon market. The registry we're focusing on now is a relatively newcomer, but they've had a big impact on the market. It's called Puro, puro.earth is their website. Yes. Yes, that's a good point. Yes, exactly. And they are unique in that they focus only on carbon removals. That is, they focus only on projects that take CO2 out of the air, whether it's direct air capture or whatever, as opposed to avoidance credits, which is, you know, the much larger range of carbon offset projects that are out there that involve, you know, avoiding emissions before they reach the atmosphere. And what's interesting about Puro is because it's focused on removals and because removals, as opposed to avoidances, is a very unique and distinct part of the market, these credits trade at pretty high, robust prices. You saw the $130, $190. There are credits that trade higher than that. I do think that what they're talking about is pretty reasonable. That's been a constant in this market, and this distinction between giving higher value, giving premium value to taking CO2 out of the air versus avoiding its emission in the first place. Puro is the registry we're going to shoot for. The market around removals is very robust. Partly, that's because of the intense interest around this new set of technologies, and partly because the volumes are not there. Direct air capture, biochar, you know, a lot of these very new up-and-coming carbon removal technologies, enhanced rock weathering are generating very few credits at the moment, so there's more demand than supply. We are answering that by providing more supply, at these, we hope these very continued robust prices. But, there are, a number of other registries we could have looked at. Puro is definitely the best option for what Stronghold is trying to do. What do you think timing could look like to get Puro approved or to get listed on that registry? I think we can get the project registered on Puro. Our goal is, at the latest, end of first quarter, 2024. Keep in mind that if you are generating reductions, you can still get credits retroactively. So it doesn't necessarily mean that you only start generating credits. You can start generating credits the moment you start reducing emissions. But the Puro process is a bit more rational, a little more user-friendly, I would say, than some of the other more incumbent, you know, older registries. And, you know, at that point, it's really a matter of when you want to do the verification, because the credits are actually issued, we call ex post. So you can, you can forward sell the credits, you can sell them ahead of time, but to actually have credits in your account that you can transact to and give them to a buyer happens upon verification when an auditor confirms that your claims are accurate and valid. And it's up to you how often you want to verify. Most people do it every year. You can do it after every three months, after six months, but when you do that verification, that is when you've got credits in hand, and you should be able to do that within 2024. Mark, do you have a view of what the future of the carbon market and values might look like? Yeah. So, just a quick mention, I was fortunate enough to get into fiber optics at the early stages, and, that was, a pretty exciting time because the growth was phenomenal, and of course, it revolutionized how we communicate. But for me, this is like even more exciting. It's a bigger challenge, it's more complex. I wish I was 30 years younger, so I could see how it's all gonna work out and be part of that. But basically, McKinsey just published a really in-depth report, which is public, so anyone of you would like—if you'd like to go and see it, check it out. It's out there on the web. They're forecasting that by 2050, which I realize is a long time away, we're gonna need to remove between six and 10 gigatons of carbon dioxide to maintain some sort of reasonable control of the climate. That's in addition to the offsets and reductions in the energy transition, so six to 10 gigatons. So, that's forecasted to be in the trillion-dollar range, so probably around $1.2 trillion business opportunity. So this is a really big number forecasting 20-30 years in advance. If we go to the intermediate period, so let's say 2030, which used to seem like a long way away, it's not so long away now. McKinsey's talking about 0.8-2.9 gigatons need to be removed. That's a $40 million-$80 million opportunity. So even, even in five years, that means, you know, doubling every year for the next few years. And then, Boston Consulting Group, along with Shell, also published a report maybe two to three months ago, also very in-depth. Their numbers are a little bit more modest, but in the same basic range, $1 trillion in 2050, ten to forty billion in the next, five years. So, you know, this is really a, a great business opportunity. It's great to be mission-focused, but in the end, this is a business opportunity. Are we right in how we've potentially about the potential value of our credits? I think we've said, you know, between $130 and $190, looked at $160. Are we in the ballpark? Are we low or high? What's your view of what we should be able to sell our credits for? Yeah. So, if we're looking at the voluntary credit market, the largest buyer is Frontier Climate, and that's a consortium of tech companies in the West Coast, and actually some banks now. Actually, JP Morgan just joined that. And they've done three—they just recently, just yes, a couple of days ago, announced the third one, but they've basically done three big offtake agreements, and those prices are higher, Greg. So, they did one with Heirloom Carbon for $1,000 a ton. They did one with Charm, which is a biochar play, which is at $475. And they just announced the enhanced weathering, rock weathering deal with Lithos for, I think, $375. So those are all very high-priced deals. I don't think that's where it's gonna end up. You know, I think it has to come down from there. It's a little bit opaque to me personally, how they're pricing those. I'm kind of interested to talk to Climate about that, if they'll tell me. But I think your range is really realistic. I think maybe a little on the modest side, but, you know... But the way that we keep the highest price possible is going on a really good registry, which is Seth's working on, and making sure we have really good MRV, measurement, reporting, and verification. Those are how we keep our prices high. Yeah. Thanks, Seth. So Seth, in the past year or so, we've seen some projects and some criticisms around you know, I guess, mostly in the press, around, you know, carbon offset projects that maybe aren't having the net result that what was aspired to. Is there a risk to Stronghold to being painted with the wrong brush, or how do you think about putting ourselves in the best light? Yeah, I know. It's been a tough year for carbon offsets. There's been a lot of bad press, and it's generally been around one asset class, which we broadly term REDD, which includes reforestation, avoided deforestation, and improved forest management. There are some good projects in this sector, but some have had a lot of integrity issues. And I think that when you look at quality, there are a couple of really, really key things that buyers look for. One is additionality, that is to say, what is the impact of carbon finance and the sale of carbon offsets on the ability of the project to be implemented? And two is, how robust is your MRV? How unimpeachable, if you will, is your quantification approach? If you take something like avoiding deforestation, it's really tricky to figure out, well, what would have happened in the absence of the project, and, you know, it's just, it's a lot of uncertainty in terms of how much carbon is not being emitted to the atmosphere. Here, I think you've actually, you're on really solid ground because the additionality for this project, I mean, carbon finance is, is the central part of making this project be able to happen, and that's, if you're a, an offset buyer, that's, that's really important 'cause you know that if you're purchasing a credit, that's, that's essentially a, an investment in the project, and that investment is directly leading to the result that you're claiming is happening, which is the removal of CO2. And then on the monitoring side or the quantification side, you know, you're sampling the ash before and after. You're able to measure the increase in carbon content of that material through very well-established, known means. There's existing methodological precedents that we can rely upon. So I think that the risk of you facing the reputational risk that some of these other projects have faced is extremely low, which is good, and I think it's good for... Not all CDR projects are like that, but many are, and I think that also contributes to the high price and the premium that people are willing to pay for these projects. Very helpful. All right, so Matt Usdin, what is the IRS going to say when we apply for our tax credit related to sequestering or capturing this carbon? That's a good question. I wish I could read the IRS's mind, but I can tell you what we think they'll ultimately say. And I think, you know, there's a ton of noise around 45Q. It was signed into law in August of 2022, so it's still relatively new, but it can actually trace its origins back to 2008 in the Energy Improvement and Extension Act. It was the first time, you know, CO2 credits started to be floated around for sequestering carbon, and, you know, we're actually in a revolution right now, but, you know, there have been incentives to do activities like this for 15 years, and we've only seen one trend since then, and that is a trend towards encouraging this type of project. Obviously, when the IRS puts the amount of money they put into the IRA and 45Q on the table, it encourages projects just like ours, and including projects that have CapEx requirements exponentially higher than ours. So we feel fortunate to kind of be where we are. And, you know, I just think it's so encouraging that the big things to come out of the August 2022 amendment, when it was signed into law, are all things that are user friendly. You know, they increased the amount of credits you can get paid for. They decreased the amount of carbon that each qualifying facility needs to output, which opened the door for, you know, hundreds of other projects around the country. They added a direct pay option for the first time, so you can, you're not just getting a write-off on your taxes, you're actually getting cash. So all of these things are strictly encouraging this sort of activity. And, you know, the big, the big kind of hurdle that everyone's facing, including us, is under 45Q right now with the DAC credits, which are $180 per ton, you have to permanently and securely store the CO2. The principal way that's done right now is injecting it, you know, underground into, into wells, basically. It's, that are inescapable. You know, we think we have a very strong argument that, you know, Mike has touched on already, that even in the absence of wells, this stuff is chemically and securely stored forever. You know, absent being exposed to, like, 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit heat, it's not going to escape. So I think that's one thing we would highlight in our you know ultimate application to the IRS. But we're also, you know, I expect this trend of kind of user-friendliness to continue to increase, and I expect 45Q to be expanded. You know, no, no promises, but I don't think the requirement that this stuff is securely stored underground is ultimately gonna be the you know threshold for disposal three years from now. And if it is, you know, hey, that's something we'll explore. We've started to explore is how we can potentially dispose of our ash post-Karbolith process underground. So I think, you know, our project is flexible in that respect. Very helpful. So I want to open up to questions, or if there are topics that we didn't touch on with the questions I've asked. I just want to- Yeah, please ...pipe in a little bit on what Matt was saying. I was just with the Department of Energy, and there are other agencies actively lobbying internally to get CDR's mineralization credits approved in 45Q as well. So it's not just on one side of it, there's active participation within the government to push this forward, too. Yeah, from my read, the intent to permanently and securely store, certainly, certainly our process would qualify, but it's, it's a mystery until we apply and get the check in the mailbox. Okay, any, any questions? Go ahead. Sure. Yeah. Thank you. So, the 45Q credits, I mean, in terms of the qualification process, does it allow you to kind of- ... the agencies in order to kind of, you know, at least be assured you can be ahead of time, that you're gonna have a qualified product, you know, by the time that you're eligible? And kind of as a follow-up to that, do you have any concerns that the application for the credits could become politicized, just given that maybe, as you mentioned, Greg, you know, you guys kinda got targeted for carbon coal, but obviously the realities are not that. But you know, it got a little bit politicized. So is there any concern around that as well? I can take the first one, take both of them. There is a fair amount of informal dialogue that would go on with the IRS, you know, on the front end of a formal application. You know, lucky for us, we think we have very helpful law firms, including, you know, Vinson & Elkins, who's here, who has been very involved in the energy transition and, you know, has people who literally helped write 45Q that can help provide input. And, you know, you get a little bit of a understanding of where you stand and how you can enhance your ultimate application. So the answer to the first one is absolutely. And then, you know, for a couple of the applications we've heard about from larger projects, it's an, it's in a back and forth. You know, you might not get in the first time, but it's also not a firm rejection. They might say, "Hey, go back, and, you know, here are some audit-type questions we have on the permanence of the project or otherwise." So, you know, I wouldn't expect any project to be rubber-stamped the first time, but it is a dialogue. And the huge thing about 45Q, as it stands right now, is there's a three-year look-back period, and any credits that you generate for that, you know, prior three years are ultimately subject to the direct pay option. So, you know, I think we're gonna do everything we absolutely can to you know, submit our application probably in 2025 for whatever we can. I think more realistically, though, 2026 is when we would hope to start monetizing the credits, you know, starting from today, really. Just on the politics of it, the fact that Oxy just bought a DAC company for $1.1 billion says that there's a lot of other new soon-to-be incumbents in that space that kind of span the divide politically, and therefore gives me a lot more hope that this will be around, regardless of who's in charge. I have a mic working now. Great, thanks. Yeah, this is Nick Giles from B. Riley. Matt, maybe, maybe this one's for you. I think you noted on the last earnings call that with the Puro Registry... Anyway, sorry. You know, there's been some back and forth and... Anyway, sorry. You know, there's been some back and forth and- [inaudible] So, Matt, I think you noted how there's some back and forth as far as the project design document. I'm just wondering, kind of, what are the biggest pieces there for that approval? Is it related to MRV? Obviously, we're looking at a pretty short timeline regardless of how quickly you move. Yep. I mean, Seth, do you want to take that first? Yeah. So the PDD part of it, the project documentation focuses on several key areas. One is ensuring that the project is eligible, and the requirements under the methodology are very specific around that. There's no issue there. How you assess the baseline, or how you determine what would happen in the absence of the project, assessing additionality, which I referred to earlier, and the actual quantification of the emission reductions. There are other sections, but let's start with those key ones. So the nice thing about the Puro methodology is it's not super specific about how you do the measurements. Basically, it's up to the project developer to come up with a method of testing. So you're testing the carbon content of the material before the material after. You take into account if there are what we call project emissions. So if the project itself, you know, requires electricity usage, which their unit does not, but if it did, that would be deducted. So there's this, you know, the actual carbon accounting part of it. And all of that information is submitted to the registry and to an auditor to confirm that it meets all the guidelines of the methodology and the registry in general. So I mean, there are some other sections, but those are really the key ones. I think, again, we have a very good handle on how those will be addressed, in part because the methodology is not overly prescriptive and in part because, you know, how we're doing this, like, additionality, I mentioned earlier, is, you know, very straightforward here. Baselining and post-project monitoring, essentially the same activity. So we, we're not overly concerned. I've worked on projects where, like, kelp restoration in the oceans. There's a lot of MRV issues with that one. And those PDDs would be very, very complicated. Here, not as much. And just to add one quick thing is, the key thing that we have found is that we can, you know, work off an existing methodology. We don't have to write our whole new, you know, PDD from scratch, which will save us, you know, time, effort, and money at the end of the day. So we have a big head start. And then, you know, kind of on the baseline, and that's exactly what the test results showed. We have our baseline and additionality, you know, processes in place now, and it is measuring the carbon content of the ash before the Karbolith process. You know, if we had no Karbolith, what would it be? And that is coming- ...coming in with very low calcium carbonate, so the, you know, the end result is not there, and very high calcium oxide, which is the reactive agent. So the, you know, what we need to have run the process is there. Then we put it through the Karbolith, those things flip. So it goes very high in calcium carbonate, so the carbonation has occurred, and it's very low in calcium oxide, so the reactive agent has run its process. And that will be kind of the backbone of, of both the baseline piece and the additionality, which is ultimately how you, you monetize it, really. It's the spread and what your, you know, processes is adding. To that end, what about, like, unit economics? I think the presentation talks about $100,000 per Karbolith or something like that, right? I mean, what's like the payback on that? What does that look like? Like, how many of these units do you envision, like, spread around the site or sites? So that's what all this testing is designed to determine. So think about if we think we can generate around 100,000 tons of carbon credits, and the number of Karboliths that we need will depend on how fast the carbonization happens per Karbolith. 'Cause, you know, we make about 1,000,000 tons of ash, and so how much do we need to spread that around? How many Karboliths? If it happens overnight, like in a few hours, you don't need that many. Because, you know, a very few Karboliths could handle all that, all of that processing. But at this point, from what we know today, if we get no better than where we are now after one month and a couple weeks of trying, we might need more than 100 of these things. That's in that 6%-11% range, maybe? Stays in that 6%-11% range, maybe like- Yes, yeah, call it 6%-12%. Yep. Or maybe call it 60 per plant, or 120 is around where we are right now. And keep in mind that these things will cost us between $6,000 and $75,000, probably at the high end. But, hey, we're—the reason why we're not just ordering 120 is we think we can do better. So I think we're going to try to work that number down to see if we can carbonate this ash more quickly, more completely, to lower the CapEx need. What would the payback be? Assuming the prices stay around where they are- Yeah, I mean, the pay, the payback is fast, right? So we... You know, I think the back of the envelope, let's say we need, you know, call it $5 million-$10 million of CapEx. And if the prices hold, and we get the 45Q in the voluntary market, that's an, you know, extra $25 million of cash flow. This is a, a payback measured in months, not years. I mean, I say that, the way I think about our project is it would cost $250 million to rebuild Scrubgrass or Panther, and that is key, key to this, right? So, hey, why, why aren't we going to see, you know, Karbolith sprinkling the countryside? And the answer is, well, you could. You could, you could do this, but you, the inconvenient fact is you'd need about another $500 million to create the plants, which, which is what gives us the ash. So I think the, I would describe it as incremental CapEx on top of what we've already done. I can add a little bit to that. On our side of it, our calculations, you know, we typically... Each modular unit is kind of its own little plant. So the one you saw, it's a self-contained unit. And based on our numbers and the calculations design, we're looking at between 1,000 and 2,000 tons of CO2 running through that per year. And so from an invested capital standpoint, that's right now world-leading. Even if you price them at $190 a ton. Right now, world... Even price at $100. Occidental's Stratos industry standard project in the Permian is $1,000 a ton in terms of capacity, capacity-related CapEx on a, on an apples-to-apples basis. What we're talking about is $700 a ton. And, so when you say, you know, industry leading or galaxy leading, we can't find another capital-efficient project like this. And so if you think about this versus receiving T21, the big T21 miners in May or S21 miners in May, there's a faster payback putting a Karbolith in the field right now than buying miners to be delivered in May after the holiday. That's a fact. It's about precise on cash. So it's a great question, and that's exactly how to put it. Maybe just to follow up on your comments, Michael, can you just touch on where the areas are for optimization? It seems like airflow at high level is one of the most important things, and just kind of give the background over there. Sure. There are a couple areas of design that we can flesh out a little bit in terms of how we set them up next to each other. There's some complicated aerodynamics we can take advantage of related to that that help push more pressure into the system. And with having only one unit, you don't get that. We can't do that right now, so we're going to have to put a couple together to do that. So that's one area. The other area is, we can adjust the stack height. That's another thing we can do. The taller they are, the more airflow we can potentially generate, but it comes at a cost, so we have to balance that. And then the third main area that we're exploring right now is really how we lay things out on the ash itself, and the form factor it's in, and how deep it is, and so on. So there's some, you know, layout questions that we're answering right now in this pilot control. So those are the kind of major areas. ... viewers online, can you repeat the question being asked as- And also for the news? So the question was, what other areas or what are the areas of optimization that we go after? Yeah. Seth, you mentioned that no electricity is obviously used in running a Karbolith, but clearly there's diesel fuel, so do you need to offset that use? Yeah, so the question is: would you count fossil fuel usage as a project emission? And yes, you would. So that would, you calculate the emissions associated with that and deduct it from your gross removals to get your net. So you also mentioned that on one hand, MRV seems critically important, but it doesn't seem that important to Puro. So, so I was kind of hoping you could reconcile that a little bit. And then, as you do that, maybe you can help me understand that verification process. I think there are two types of tests. One's QXRD, and the other is a TSA- TGA. TGA, I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm not running TGA. Yeah, no, I'll let the, these guys talk about the the actual testing. I'd just like to understand- Sure, sure. The implementation of that, and perhaps the cost. Well, let me answer this just your first question, which is that- Yeah ... Puro, as all the registries do, care very much about MRV. They are not prescriptive about how you do it. What you need to do is to come up with a set of testing procedures that will convince an auditor that you have tested this material to the point where the potential for error, or miscalculation, or overstating, or understating is extremely low. Now, some of the registries have methodologies that tell you, step one, step two, step three, step four, step five, and tell you exactly how to do it, and that can sometimes cause problems because not every project can measure the same thing in exactly the same way. Puro's approach, which I think has been a benefit to the market, is to say, "We don't know exactly how you're gonna measure. We don't know which test..." You know, there's like, a dozen different tests you can do on solid materials to determine carbon content. We're not gonna tell you which ones you have to use, and how many tests you have to do, and exactly your level of precision, because all projects are somewhat different, and reporting requirements are somewhat different and have to be tailored. We are gonna let the project developers do that, but certainly, again, still be guided by, or checked by the auditors. So, I don't want to characterize it as Puro is more lenient or less concerned about MRV, they just approach it in a slightly different way. So I guess you can talk more about the cost of the test and stuff. The- So the methodology around the tests that you mentioned, TGA, QXRD, and there's some other ones that we're actually layering into this as the project grows, that'll give us more real-time feedback as well. But those are the critical, solid state measurement of, you know, methodologies, where the science is completely locked in. There's no ambiguity there. We can know exactly what's there and how much of it is there. So it's a really secure way of measuring the carbon in the material. So it's a, it's a well-known material processing analysis. Those tests have to be implemented with every batch? So there's- Prior and post. So the question: do we need to do that on every batch? Yes, for quite a while, because you wanna make sure that you're doing this, doing this right initially. And there's a statistical method to do that, and it's well known in the mining industry. We apply those same methodologies to this because it behaves similarly. And once we start building that database and understanding how it's reacting, there are some other, more lower touch methods to make sure that we're carbonating at the rate we want to do. So there's kind of a layered approach as we go forward. What sort of cost is associated with that process? Well, on our- Yeah, at scale. Yeah, so at scale, it's a relatively low cost because if you have the machines on site, you can measure them with your own labor. So if you had a technician on site, you could sample them on a weekly or even daily basis and get those measurements in a pretty high throughput manner. So that's not a big cost. As it scales bigger, we'd have... I don't want to get too far in the weeds, but there's a way of measuring the whole field at once, to see how it's breathing in and out CO2. And so we can use that as well to create a baseline and track the absorption of CO2 across the ash as time goes on. It's a little bit more complicated, but, you know, we would back that up with physical measurements as well. For right now, the tests we're doing are all sent to a third-party lab. You know, we actually have we call it poor man's TGA on-site, that we can use a little bit, but obviously at this stage it's so important to have third-party verification. And we are sending to a lab about an hour away, and we're expediting it for the highest fee possible to get the results as quickly as we can, to learn as much, and it's $750 a batch. So we're not talking, like, anything exorbitant. But certainly the goal would ultimately be to, once we have kind of the verification in place from third parties, and have our own little lab on-site with TGA, XRD capabilities. So that would be more of a one-time expense as we scale. Michael, I don't know if you saw it, but Greg showed us a slide that had a list of the top 10 DAC projects. I was wondering if you could talk to that a little bit- ... some insight on how much different technologies are in some of those projects versus the very simplistic type of air movement implementation that you folks are putting together? Sure. So the question is, how do we rank in the, those top 10 DAC projects out there? So it's a little bit misleading, 'cause we're actually in a list of 1, because all of those are true DAC, meaning they're just making CO2 from the air, and then they have to pipe that underground. So we're actually direct air mineralization, which is, you know, we're, we're not just capturing CO2, but we're also sequestering at the same time. And so from that perspective, we're one of one right now in terms of the scale and the project going forward, that we're aware of at that, at this scale. So the, the incumbents that you saw on that list are all traditional DAC, which is pushing air across some kind of CO2 resin, binding resin, that they then... or, or mineral that they have to recycle. And there's an enormous number of touch points and engineering that has to go into that, and the CapEx is quite extensive. The OpEx on top of that is also very large, and so it's a very different landscape. We're really in the mineralization space. So we're kind of in a one of one right now in regards to that. Well, thanks. I appreciate it. Maybe a question for Mark or Seth. Mark, Mark, you were framing up the size of the market in the long term and the intermediate. More in the near term, where is this demand going to come from? Who are the buyers of these credits going to be? Yeah. Yeah. So, there's a really useful website that's also available, it's called cdr.fyi. And that goes through all the purchases of CDR credits, so removal credits. And there's something really strikes you when you look at that, and that is the really minuscule percentage of credits that have been delivered to the market. So these are all, pre-purchase agreements and, you know, with future deliveries, planned. So, there's around 2.8% of, purchases that have been, satisfied delivered. In terms of the buyers, as I mentioned, Frontier Climate is, a very progressive and forward-looking buyer. They're interesting in that they've got their own due diligence team in terms of verifying, the credits. So they have a technical team, and it's basically a consortium of all these, West Coast, mainly West Coast, tech companies, so Alphabet, Meta. Companies within that group have also starting to do their own purchases. So Microsoft announced a deal with a DAC company for, I think, 300-odd thousand tons, I think it was. Again, that's a pre-purchase, so, you know, they have to deliver it over a period of years. So these are the companies who are active on the voluntary market. And so that market's still pretty small. So I think the total credits that have been purchased, the 5 million and something like that, and the delivery is 2.8% of that. So you know, there are buyers out there. You know, we've Mike has talked to buyers. Mike and I have talked to buyers who, you know, want to look at, you know, high-quality credits. They're going to be very shy because some companies have got, you know, accused of greenwashing, and perhaps sometimes that's a legitimate claim, actually. So, they are looking for high quality, but there's buyers out there, and it's going to just increase because they've all got, you know, statements in their ESG sustainability. In fact, I was speaking with a gentleman this morning who was telling me that, there's going to be pressure for them to put those commitments in their ESG statement on their balance sheet. And so that's really gonna push... If that happens, that's really gonna push, the demand for credits, you know, 'cause they're gonna wanna get that off the balance sheet. So yeah, that's an interest-- I had... The first I heard of that, but- I can give you a little color, too. You know, just anecdotally, Karbonetiq has reached out to a number of private buyers and public companies that have... They've tried all their initial attempts at scope one, scope two emission reduction, and they're all now hitting the wall on that. And for them to go below what those scope one, scope two emissions are, they know-- they now know that they have to go out and buy credits to do that, because they're just not in an industry, for whatever reason, to be able to get those down lower. And for example, some in the biopharma space, so they're very keen on figuring out how to get those emissions down. And there's-- they're not on these registries, they're not in cdr.fyi, but there's a lot of interest already coming from folks like that. And one last thing on that is... And, you know, some people might have some mixed opinions about this, but the government actually is starting to make inroads into purchasing carbon credits as well. So the DOE has just announced a sort of a competition that leads into a buying process for carbon credits. So, you know, we'll see how far that goes, and that may be very administrative dependent. But, you know, there is more and more pressure now for governments to purchase carbon credits. You know, so use of the taxpayers' money in this case, but, you know, yeah, they may become a big buyer... they may become a big buyer, though. Just to be clear, so you were saying that Frontier recently purchased credits for like $300-$1,000 a ton. Are we to take it that those credits have not been generated? Correct. So credits that are- Yeah, you know, that's in negotiation. Yeah, I mean, probably small numbers of those credits have been generated. I mean, we're talking really small numbers compared with the offset size. I think, you know, they've, you know, they put in capacity, you know, so there's a CapEx capacity in there to start to deliver those, as far as I know, in all three cases. So, you know, they have the capability to deliver on those purchases, so I think that's kind of the status, as best as I can tell you. You know, I'm going off public statements, right? So, you know... Yeah, I think that when a company goes and pre-purchases a bunch of credits at $300-$500 per ton, the reason why they do that is because the company, the technology companies say, "Look, this is what we need to build our first few units, and then the next generation, you know, it'll be cheaper and then, you know, come down the cost curve." So some of these tech companies, the Frontiers of the world, are willing to pay very high prices if they believe that their intervention will accelerate what will hopefully be a very important solution, right, to the, or part of the solution to the climate crisis. So it's, it's, it's... The pricing in this market is so weird right now, and it just really depends on the story that some of these companies can tell buyers who are like, "Hey, I'll pay you a lot now with the hope that it comes down later. Would you like to make an offer? Would you like to make an offer? All right, looks like we're out of questions. But wanna be, you know, thankful to you for the hours that you spent today with us, and thanks for the great questions and interaction. And, you know, we'll keep you updated, keep the market updated on our progress on carbon capture and our other businesses, in the coming weeks and quarters. But thanks for your presence today. And thank you to the panelists. Thanks for coming out from California. Thank you.