Guest
Jason Williams
#622: Jason Williams "Bitcoin: Hard Money You Can't F*** With"
- Jason Williams and his company PRTI convert waste tires into renewable energy through a patented thermal process, generating 6.15 megawatts of baseload power while recovering oil, carbon, and steel from end-of-life tires. - PRTI's power generation is used to mine Bitcoin, creating a vertically integrated, off-grid operation that combines waste remediation with crypto mining revenue. - Saudi Aramco represents a major opportunity to monetize flare gas from oil refining operations by connecting power generation to Bitcoin mining, solving environmental and economic problems simultaneously. - Jason built FastMed, a retail urgent care chain leveraging purchased or leased commercial real estate (former Blockbuster locations, community banks) and grew it to approximately 300 locations before a ~$500 million exit in 2015. - Personal finance strategy emphasizes debt-to-income ratios, multiple income streams, real estate leverage, and working beyond traditional employment to build passive income and financial independence. - NFTs represent significant technological innovation through asset fractionalization, comparable in disruption potential to Bitcoin and the internet.
LIVE Q&A: Pomp and Jason Williams talk Bitcoin, Crypto, and the Decentralized World
- Bitcoin's **provably scarce supply** (21 million cap) versus the unprovable scarcity of gold and unlimited supply design of Ethereum, creating a fundamental distinction in sound money characteristics. - Ethereum the network is valuable infrastructure for DeFi and innovation, but Ether the asset may not inherit that value; separation between network adoption and token appreciation is critical. - The US monetary system perpetuates wealth inequality through inflation, which disproportionately benefits asset holders while impoverishing savers and those holding cash. - Bitcoin as a potential global reserve currency could democratize wealth and resolve systemic inequities in a way that philanthropy or other interventions cannot. - Free market capitalism and allowing zombie companies (JCPenney, Sears) to fail enables productive reallocation of capital and real estate rather than central bank life support. - Macro positioning: 12–15% Bitcoin, gold, silver, residential real estate, stable tokens for yield; avoiding stock market and waiting for commercial real estate collapse.
#248: Jason Williams, Operational Challenges in Healthcare Around COVID-19
- Healthcare delivery breaks into two segments during crisis: essential services (hospitals, emergency departments) remain operational but face resource strain, while peripheral services (primary care, elective procedures, specialist offices) shut down due to social distancing and inability to protect staff. - Hospital economics collapse during pandemic as low-margin emergency care dominates while high-margin elective surgeries cease, creating a revenue crisis even as utilization spikes at critical bottlenecks. - Just-in-time supply chain inventory models left hospitals unprepared for PPE and ventilator shortages; most facilities now face critical shortages of masks, gowns, and equipment needed to safely treat patients and protect staff. - Federal regulatory relief accelerates telemedicine adoption by relaxing HIPAA restrictions and enabling cross-state medical licensing, removing bureaucratic barriers that previously made remote care ineffective. - Healthcare workforce faces dual stress: clinical risk from COVID-19 exposure and economic vulnerability as specialists and peripheral providers lose income and job security for the first time in their careers. - Post-crisis consolidation expected as distressed healthcare practices and community hospitals are acquired by larger systems and private equity, with innovation in telemedicine, at-home testing, and domestic PPE manufacturing emerging from crisis adaptation.
Jason Williams, Co-Founder & Partner at Morgan Creek Digital: From a 9 Figure Startup Exit To Mining Bitcoin With Car Tires
- Jason Williams built FastMed into a 500-million-dollar urgent care chain by applying lessons from his initial experience at Yale, focusing on customer service and lowering healthcare costs through efficient retail-based clinics rather than traditional hospital emergency departments. - The PRTI business uses thermal demanufacturing (pyrolysis in a vertical chamber) to process 1.5 million pounds of used car tires monthly, extracting oil, steel, carbon, and syngas while generating power; tires come free (municipalities pay for disposal) and the company was paid directly by tire manufacturers for blemished inventory. - Jason co-founded Full Tilt Capital with Anthony Pompliano as a micro-venture fund targeting $100,000 checks, operating from a Starbucks with no website for over a year; the pair invested in 62 companies in 18 months before eventually partnering with Mark Yusko and Morgan Creek Digital. - During a 2015–2016 road trip to Charlotte, Pompliano introduced Jason to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency; Jason realized PRTI's waste-to-energy power output could be used for mining instead of grid sales, creating one of the first waste-to-energy cryptocurrency mining operations at scale. - Jason encountered a serious plane emergency en route from Turks and Caicos when the right engine failed at 30,000 feet; the aircraft safely made a single-engine emergency landing in Nassau with fire and crash crews standing by. - Jason practices a strict ketogenic diet (eating six eggs, cheese, sausage, and bacon at Waffle House daily), exercises competitively in soccer at age 45, and credits diet, sleep, water, and Wim Hof breathing with maintaining cognitive clarity and physical resilience.