The Mining Pod | Blockspace Media

Latest Episodes:

US Miners Grow Market Share, MARA’s $200m BTC Loan, and Cipher’s 1.5 GW Buy Oct 18, 2024

Show notes

Welcome back to the Mining Pod! For this week’s news roundup, Colin and Matt discuss how US public bitcoin miners are growing their share of Bitcoin's hashrate. Plus, Marathon is leveraging its trove of 26,000+ BTC and Cipher is going bigly with three pending mining site acquisitions for a total of 1.5 GW of capacity, some of which the miner may allocate toward AI/HPC compute. They also touch on some AI updates from Crusoe and Bit Digital, and in this week’s cry corner, why grown men are getting big mad about arbitrary data on everyone’s favorite block explorer.

👉 Get tickets to OP_NEXT by visiting the website! And use discount code OCTOBER to get 25% off at check out!

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

01:42 Difficulty update

04:19 29% PubCo Hashrate report JPMorgan

10:50 MARA Unlocks $200M BTC-Backed Credit Line

18:06 Cipher Mining Acquires 1.5 GW in Texas

24:37 Blue Owl Backs Crusoe in AI Move

29:35 Bit Digital Acquires HPC Data Center

32:38 Cry corner: "Runes, ordinals, etc don’t exist"

Published twice weekly, "The Mining Pod" interviews the best builders and operators in the Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining landscape. Subscribe to get notifications when we publish interviews on Tuesday and a news show on Friday!

👉Enjoying the show? Check out our newsletter at miningpod.blockspace.media!

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show!

Follow our hosts on Twitter: @wsfoxley, @cbspears, @AsILayHodling, @MatthewKimmell

Thank you to our sponsor, CleanSpark, America’s Bitcoin miner!

"The Mining Pod" is produced by Sunnyside Honey Inc. with Senior Producer Damien Somerset.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bitdeer’s SEALMINER ASIC and AI/HPC Business With Jeff LaBerge Oct 16, 2024

Show notes

Welcome back to the Mining Pod! For this week’s Bitcoin Stock Show, we sit down with Jeff LaBerge, the head of capital markets and strategic investments at Bitdeer. Bursting onto the scene last year with its IPO, Bitdeer quickly became one of the public bitcoin miners to watch, and now, the company is designing its own ASIC miner, the SEALMINER. How did Bitdeer secure TSMC chip allocation for the series, and will Bitdeer sell this ASIC on the open market or keep it for itself? We answer these questions and more, and we also touch on Bitdeer’s multi-continent AI/HPC aspirations.

👉 Get tickets to OP_NEXT by visiting the website! And use discount code OCTOBER to get 25% off at check out!

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

01:28 Jeff's background & Bitdeer

03:51 Bitdeer's ASIC business

06:41 Foot in the door with TSMC

11:55 Retail vs internal allocations

15:07 Different model timelines

17:16 Cooling design

18:48 Hydro & immersion cooling

20:59 Manufacturing capacity

22:05 AI & HPC

25:15 Different business lines

30:57 Norway deployment

35:03 Butan future

👉Enjoying the show? Check out our newsletter at miningpod.blockspace.media!

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show!

Follow our hosts on Twitter: @wsfoxley, @cbspears, @AsILayHodling, @MatthewKimmell

Thank you to our sponsor, CleanSpark, America’s Bitcoin miner!

"The Mining Pod" is produced by Sunnyside Honey Inc. with Senior Producer Damien Somerset.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Home Bitcoin Mining For The Masses With Bitaxe Oct 15, 2024

Show notes

Welcome back to the Mining Pod! Today we’re joined by Skot, the creator of the open source Bitcoin mining project Bitaxe! Launched a bit over a year ago, Bitaxe is a simple way to bring mining back to the household by taking a chip from state of the art Bitcoin miners like the Bitmain S21 and gluing it with a bunch of other parts into a mini-home miner! We talk with Skot about the origin of the idea, why he wanted to make something like the Bitaxe, the value of home mining and the future of mega miners like Riot, Marathon or others.

👉 Get tickets to OP_NEXT by visiting the website! And use discount code OCTOBER to get 25% off at check out!

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

02:10 What's a Bitaxe?

05:20 How is it open source?

06:15 Salvaging chips

10:45 Sourcing components

13:11 How are they sold?

15:05 Why make the Bitaxe?

19:19 Node + Bitaxe?

21:04 Increasing collaboration

26:42 Pleb mining

30:30 The future of mining

36:09 Bitaxe timeline

36:50 The experience making the Bitaxe

42:13 Wrap up

👉Enjoying the show? Check out our newsletter at miningpod.blockspace.media!

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show!

Follow our hosts on Twitter: @wsfoxley, @cbspears, @AsILayHodling, @MatthewKimmell

Thank you to our sponsor, CleanSpark, America’s Bitcoin miner!

"The Mining Pod" is produced by Sunnyside Honey Inc. with Senior Producer Damien Somerset.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Difficulty Update, IREN Lawsuit, Antminer S21, Tokenized Whiskey and Satoshi Nakamoto Oct 11, 2024

Show notes

Welcome back to the Mining Pod! We’re going through Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining news including a difficulty update after Florida hurricanes, IREN’s lawsuit about HPC, Bitmain releasing another version of the S21 with less efficiency (why?), Marathon’s Anduro platform getting in on tokenized whiskey, Marathon also getting sued for being too loud at its Granbury, Texas site and HBOs new Satoshi Nakamoto documentary uncovering the creator of Bitcoin was none other than Peter Todd, a guest and friend of the show! We dig in.

👉 Get tickets to OP_NEXT by visiting the website! And use discount code OCTOBER to get 25% off at check out!

Timestamps:

00:15 Start

01:16 Difficulty update

03:14 IREN HPC lawsuit

09:26 Bitmain announces new S21 variants

15:04 MARA’s whiskey on the blockchain

25:30 MARA’s continued dispute with Texas town

29:16 Cry corner: HBOs documentary

👉Enjoying the show? Check out our newsletter at miningpod.blockspace.media!

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show!

Follow our hosts on Twitter: @wsfoxley, @cbspears, @AsILayHodling, @MatthewKimmell

Thank you to our sponsor, CleanSpark, America’s Bitcoin miner!

"The Mining Pod" is produced by Sunnyside Honey Inc. with Senior Producer Damien Somerset.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hut 8’s GPU-as-a-Service and HPC Play With Sue Ennis Oct 09, 2024

Show notes

Welcome back to the Mining Pod! For this week’s Bitcoin Stock Show, we sit down with Sue Ennis, the head of investor relations at Hut 8, to discuss Hut 8’s AI/HPC business line. The conversation covers Hut 8’s original foray into HPC with its Terago acquisition in 2022, its new GPU-as-a-Service business line, what makes an ideal HPC data center, what has changed with Hut 8 since the merger with US Bitcoin Corporation, and everything in between – including a little teasing about a 1 GW acquisition that Hut 8 has in the pipeline.

👉 Get tickets to OP_NEXT by visiting the website! And use discount code OCTOBER to get 25% off at check out!

Timestamps:

00:00 Livestream waiting room

01:47 Intro

03:04 Sue’s background

04:10 Why Hut 8 purchased Terago data centers

08:52 Learning curves for Hut 8 operating HPC centers

11:20 Retrofitting a bitcoin mine vs deploying hashrate at an HPC center

13:40 Hut 8’s GPU-as-a-Service

15:35 Difference between Terago centers vs new business line

17:14 Does Hut 8 plan to greenfield or retrofit a datacenter for HPC?

23:00 Ideal conditions for an HPC data center

25:50 U3S21EXPH form factor as a cross-over from HPC operations

30:30 Hut 8 transition/change with US Bitcoin Corp merger

👉Enjoying the show? Check out our newsletter at miningpod.blockspace.media!

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show!

Follow our hosts on Twitter: @wsfoxley, @cbspears, @AsILayHodling, @MatthewKimmell

Thank you to our sponsor, CleanSpark, America’s Bitcoin miner!

"The Mining Pod" is produced by Sunnyside Honey Inc. with Senior Producer Damien Somerset.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bitmain’s Newest Liquid Cooled-Chip Bitcoin Miner With Hut 8’s Asher Genoot Oct 08, 2024

Show notes

Welcome back to the Mining Pod! This week we are joined by Asher Genoot, CEO of Hut 8, one of the larger and older Bitcoin miners! Hut 8 recently entered into a deal with leading Bitcoin mining manufacturer Bitmain to produce a new immersion unit ready for traditional data center builds! In this show we discuss the unit, how the deal got made, how it fits into a data center, parts and repair, the hosting deal with Bitmain and the opportunity cost of entering into investments like this one with Bitmain!

👉 Get tickets to OP_NEXT by visiting the website! And use discount code OCTOBER to get 25% off at check out!

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

01:34 New ASIC (U3S21EXPH)

05:03 Chip efficiency

07:55 New cooling solutions

14:12 Datacenter build out

19:00 AI facility conversion

20:58 Hosting for Bitmain deal

26:51 Facility location

29:05 Opportunity costs

32:08 New CEO role

35:11 Growing both AI & mining

👉Enjoying the show? Check out our newsletter at miningpod.blockspace.media!

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show!

Follow our hosts on Twitter: @wsfoxley, @cbspears, @AsILayHodling, @MatthewKimmell

Thank you to our sponsor, CleanSpark, America’s Bitcoin miner!

"The Mining Pod" is produced by Sunnyside Honey Inc. with Senior Producer Damien Somerset.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bullish Inflows, Ocean’s DATUM, CleanSpark & Helene and Swan’s Lawsuit Oct 04, 2024

Show notes

Welcome back to the Mining Pod! This week, we’re talking about about bullish inflows to the crypto (mostly Bitcoin) ecosystem that could support better asset prices, Ocean launching a new decentralized template program for miners, CleanSpark’s hurricane woes and updates from the recent catastrophe in the Southeast US and Swan’s dramatic lawsuit against its former employees!

👉 Get tickets to OP_NEXT by visiting the website! And use discount code OCTOBER to get 25% off at check out!

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

04:18 Difficulty update

05:26 Coinshares: Digital Asset Flows

10:40 Ocean Pool's Datum

18:46 Cleanspark & the hurricane

24:03 Swan mining update

31:32 Cry Corner: Satoshi Has Been Found! LOL

👉Enjoying the show? Check out our newsletter at miningpod.blockspace.media!

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show!

Follow our hosts on Twitter: @wsfoxley, @cbspears, @AsILayHodling, @MatthewKimmell

Show links:

https://blog.coinshares.com/volume-202-digital-asset-fund-flows-weekly-report-e00fa60eac86

https://ocean.xyz/docs/datum

https://www.theblock.co/post/318784/bitcoin-miner-cleanspark-restores-200mw-in-the-wake-of-hurricane-helene

https://blockspace.media/insight/new-filings-raise-questions-about-mining-ownership-in-swan-lawsuit/

https://x.com/disclosetv/status/1841896077865230409

Thank you to our sponsor, CleanSpark, America’s Bitcoin miner!

"The Mining Pod" is produced by Sunnyside Honey Inc. with Senior Producer Damien Somerset.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Auradine Bitcoin ASIC Performance With Brad Cuddy Oct 01, 2024

Show notes

There’s a ton of new units on the market, including new players like Auradine. But how do these units actually hold up when deployed to the field and under harsh environments? We brought on Brad Cuddy of Cholla Energy to walk us through his experience working with the units. We also discuss alternative units like Bitmain and MicroBT, dry cooling, hydro vs. immersion and various other topics relating to technical Bitcoin mining. Lastly, we finish with a conversation on the Texas Bitcoin mining landscape including

👉 Get tickets to OP_NEXT by visiting the website! And use discount code OCTOBER to get 25% off at check out!

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

02:01 Brad's background

05:53 Types of ASIC cooling

09:25 Bitmain vs MicroBT

12:20 Dry cooling

16:34 Hydro vs immersion

21:38 Immersion form factor challenges

22:26 MicroBT immersion deployment

24:21 Cost difference

25:42 Cooling fluid & thermodynamics

28:24 Fluid longevity

29:14 Auradine

32:32 Firmware & chip uptime

34:47 Auradine conclusion

35:35 What cooling is best?

37:14 Extreme temps

39:23 Curtailing with hydro units

42:21 New Bitmain unit

45:34 Bitmain changing PDUs

48:13 Curtailing (4CP)

49:15 Curtailing (PPA)

51:16 Ancillary grid services

52:43 4CP operations

55:10 Renewable & Texas grid

58:56 Future of solar

1:03:52 Miners, data centers & interconnections

1:06:22 Texas' isolated grid

Thank you to our sponsor, CleanSpark, America’s Bitcoin miner!

👉Enjoying the show? Check out our newsletter at miningpod.blockspace.media!

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show!

Follow our hosts on Twitter: @wsfoxley, @cbspears, @AsILayHodling, @MatthewKimmell

"The Mining Pod" is produced by Sunnyside Honey Inc. with Senior Producer Damien Somerset.

"The Mining Pod" is produced by Sunnyside Honey LLC and distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Damien Somerset.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Swan Bitcoin’s Lawsuit, Bitdeer’s New ASIC, Riot and Bitfarms’ Settlement Sep 27, 2024

Show notes

Welcome back to The Mining Pod! For this week’s roundup, Will, Colin, and Matt discuss the bombshell news that Swan Bitcoin is suing its former employees and contractors, alleging that the cabal stole proprietary aspects of Swan’s bitcoin mining business. Speaking of corporate sparring, the gang also covers the news that Riot and Bitfarms have settled (for now, at least) their dispute over Riot’s attempts to acquire its rival. They also discuss Bitdeer’s new SEAL02 ASIC chip, which Bitdeer claims is capable of 13.5 J/TH power efficiency, and why bitcoin mining ASICs are not securities despite some reporting to the contrary. Finally, in this week’s cry corner, they address the indefatigable, maddening myths that persist about Bitcoin’s global electricity use (no Bill Maher, Bitcoin does not use 8% of the world’s electricity, but thank you for playing!).

Enjoying the show? Check out our newsletter at miningpod.blockspace.media!

Timestamps:

CHAPTERS

00:00 Start

00:14 Swan mining lawsuit

11:01 Difficulty update

17:03 Riot vs Bitfarms

27:14 Bitdeer’s SEAL02 chip

35:25 Green Mining SEC suit not dismissed

38:59 Hut 8 GPU-as-a-Service Goes Live

42:47 Cry corner: Bill Maher is wrong

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show.