The Mining Pod | Bitcoin Mining News

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

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! 

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show.

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

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

And NiceHash (@NiceHashMining), the world's most powerful hashrate marketplace!

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

For this week's Bitcoin Mining Stock Show, Colin sits down with Taras Kulyk, the CEO and co-founder of Synteq Digital. The fellas open the show by talking about the differences between the AI/HPC and ASIC hardware markets, why its (much) easier for traditional data center operators to access capital markets than bitcoin miners, and whether or not Core Scientific can capitalize on its AI promises. For the second half of the show, Taras dives into what has changed in the ASIC market since the April 2024 Halving, plus the great migration of older models like the S19 and M30 series to lower cost areas in the global South. Finally, Taras shares his views on Bitmain's new U3S21EXPH hydro-cooled ASIC miner and his vision for the future of data center cooling.

Welcome back to The Mining Pod! For this week’s show, Colin interviews Rob Warren, the author of The Bitcoin Miner’s Almanac. Standing up a bitcoin mining operation is a herculean task. From managing ASICs, to standing up infrastructure, to navigating power contracts, bitcoin miners have to learn everything from IT management to hardware maintenance – and everything in between. That’s why Rob wrote The Bitcoin Miner’s Almanac, to help newcomer and veteran miners alike easily navigate the daunting, complicated minutiae of bitcoin mining. In our conversation, we touch on what inspired the book, Rob’s experience researching and writing it, and what he plans to include in the second edition. This isn’t your grandfather’s almanac…

You can purchase The Bitcoin Miner’s Almanac on Amazon or the Bitcoin Magazine store.

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

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

03:03 The Bitcoin Miner's Almanac

12:21 Forget about Bitcoin

20:14 Making sense of the energy industry

28:37 Energy monopolies

33:01 Pros & cons of energy production

40:33 Book version 2

52:26 Machine form factors

1:02:41 Interviewing miners

1:10:23 Stranded energy opportunities

1:15:49 Wrap up

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! 

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show.

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

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

And NiceHash (@NiceHashMining), the world's most powerful hashrate marketplace!

"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.

Welcome back to The Mining Pod! For this week’s news roundup, the crew dives into Hut 8’s partnership with Bitmain on the manufacturer’s new hydro-cooled ASIC model, the U3S21EXPH. Matt also gives everyone a geography lesson with his overview of Bhutan and its hoard of 13,011 BTC worth $780 million, the fourth largest BTC reserve of any nation, and Colin covers Rober F. Kennedy Jr.’s letter to the editor in the Economist in which he defends Bitcoin mining for its utility as a flexible load for renewable energy. Plus, a former President, a bitcoin mining CEO, and a pub owner walk into a bar, and everyone leaves with a burger paid in bitcoin (yes, every outlet has covered this story, but we are too). And finally in this week’s cry corner, the unfortunate story of a Norwegian town whose residents will pay more for power after a bitcoin mine ceased operations.

Enjoying the show? Check out our newsletter!

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

01:38 Difficulty update

03:36 Fractal fees

07:23 Hut 8 and Bitmain ASIC partnership

12:50 Bhutan got them bags!

19:19 RFK Economist letter to the editor

23:12 Trump's Bitcoin Burger

29:32 Cry Corner: Norwegian energy costs rise

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! 

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show.

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

Welcome back to The Mining Pod! Pow.re Co-founder and CTO Ian Descoteaux joins us today to talk about all things ASIC miners. In the conversation, we speak at length about the Antminer S21, including his experience deploying this model, its quirks / failure rates, and its performance. We also touch on ASIC prices and manufacturer competition, including why MicroBT’s Whatsminers are more expensive than other models, and whether or not Auradine and Canaan will be competitive in the near-future.Finally, we close on his takes regarding Bitmain’s newest hydro model, the U3S21EXPH.

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

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

01:29 Update

03:11 New ASIC frustrations

04:16 ASIC price competition

06:20 Why MicroBT expensive

06:57 Canaan & Auradine

07:52 S21 deployment experience

09:46 ASIC failure rate

10:51 Repairs

12:46 Paraguay ASIC repair cost

14:44 S21 deliveries

16:07 S21 quirks?

18:39 New Bitmain units

20:02 Current ASIC market

23:05 U3S21EXPH Rack System

27:08 New equipment pushing market split

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! 

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show.

Follow our host on Twitter: @wsfoxley

Welcome back to The Mining Pod! Will and Colin hop on for another duo pod this week for one of the most eclectic roundups yet. The numbers are in for August for the public bitcoin mining world, and these companies are slowly (but steadily) expanding their hashrate, while also collectively selling more than 1,200 BTC over the month. In a testament to bitcoin mining’s utility for utilities, Japan’s largest power company, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), is mining bitcoin with a portion of its renewable energy assets. Finally, the lads breakdown the juicy details of sidechain Fractal Bitcoin’s first week. And in this week’s cry corne – in which Darryl Cooper (Martyr Made) gets BSV-pilled – they touch on the irony of an alternative historian storing his podcasts on a blockchain launched by a man who tried rewriting the history of Bitcoin.

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

02:05 Difficulty update

05:03 August miner updates

11:29 Tokyo mining BTC!

17:49 Fractal Bitcoin update

25:12 Cry Corner: Darryl Cooper BSV pilled

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! 

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show.

👉 Watch our newest documentary, The Big Empty!

Follow our host on Twitter, @wsfoxley, @asilayhodling.

Welcome back to The Mining Pod! Sam Tabar, CEO of NASDAQ-listed Bit Digital, joins us today to talk about Bit Digital’s post-Halving mining strategy and (more importantly) what the company is doing to scale its AI business line. Bit Digital earned $12.5 million with its HPC services in Q2-2024, the most of any AI-focused public bitcoin miner. During the show, Tabar discusses how they executed to reach this milestone, their aspirations to book $700 million in AI revenue over the next five years, and more – including a few choice words regarding miners who plan to retrofit existing bitcoin miners for AI/HPC jobs. Note, this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not financial advice.

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

Timestamps:

00:00 Waiting room

02:02 Introduction

03:00 Biggest changes to bitcoin mining since Q1 2020

7:10 Why Bit Digital is committed to asset-light bitcoin mining

15:00 Four models for bootstrapping AI/HPC load

20:20 HPC compute pricing structures

23:00 Bit Digital sale-leaseback financing for HPC GPUs

25:20 $700m Boosteroid agreement details

29:20 Final thoughts

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! 

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show.

👉 Show links: https://hashrateindex.com/blog/tokenizing-hashrate-blockstream-mining-note-2-bmn2/

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

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

"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.

Welcome back to The Mining Pod! Today we are joined by Adam Back, cryptographer and CEO of Blockstream. Well known for its sidechain software Liquid, among other projects, Blockstream is actually a large private Bitcoin miner. In today’s show, we go through Blockstream mining with Back, including its profile as a miner (energy, locations, fleet). Then we dive into the BMN2, a new financial instrument to help people mine Bitcoin without ever touching a Bitcoin miner! Note, this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not financial advice.

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

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

02:11 Blockstream's mining background

08:46 Mining Note details

16:53 Secondary markets & Mining Notes

19:49 Typical investor profile

28:39 Why not self mine?

32:07 Where does Blockstream profit?

36:39 Production costs & cycle timing

42:05 Upgrading ASICs or not?

45:29 Lessons learned, changes made

50:31 Post Interview Discussion

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! 

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show.

👉 Show links:  https://hashrateindex.com/blog/tokenizing-hashrate-blockstream-mining-note-2-bmn2/

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. 

Welcome back to The Mining Pod! Rhodium is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and they’re going to need cash to get through the restructuring. So in comes Galaxy Digital, which is offering a $30m (or 500 BTC!) loan, in a move that could be a savvy attempt to acquire Rhodium assets. Turning to the ASIC market, bitcoin miner prices are down – a lot – and Bitmain could have a hand in the sluggish demand given how quickly it is releasing new versions of the S21. For a bit of lighthearted news, the guys get cosmic pontificating on interstellar bitcoin mining, while also taking a less lighthearted look at drooping crypto market sentiment. And to close the show, they roast – and we wish we were joking here – a tokenized vaping product(because who doesn’t want to get paid to contract popcorn lung?).

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

02:24 Difficulty update

05:32 Galaxy offers $30M to Rhodium

12:18 Too many ASICs!

22:04 Mining in spaceeee?!

28:10 Sentiment is bearishh :(

34:13 Cry Corner: Web3 Vaping…?

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! 

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show.

👉 Watch our newest documentary, The Big Empty!

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 LLC and distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Damien Somerset.

Before 2023, most folks probably associated AI with the far-off dystopias of The Terminator, The Matrix, or other depictions in pop culture. Now, AI is permeating every corner of our culture and economy as applications like Chat-GPT have taken a place alongside Google as the habitual tools of the internet’s citizenry. At the core of all of these applications – as with every facet of the Internet – is computing power, and bitcoin miners are betting big on becoming key producers of this compute. On this episode of the Bitcoin Stock Show, Tom Masiero of Cathedra Bitcoin shares his vision for how bitcoin miners factor into the most consequential technological revolution since the Internet.  

@FarmahTom Director @CathedraBitcoin $CBIT 

CathedraBitcoin.com

Timestamps:

00:00 Livestream waiting room

11:15 Show introduction 

12:30 Tom introduction and background

14:30 Breakdown of different HPC datacenter strategies

20:50 Difference between datacenter tiers

22:25 Types of HPC services bitcoin miners provide

27:30 Are clusters of compute the same as concentrated compute?

29:40 What is a mullet miner anyway?

33:45 Differences between small and large datacenters

37:40 Breakdown of different HPC strategies from bitcoin miners

44:45 The role of bitcoin miners in the AI race

52:40 Bitcoin miners and AI/HPC are PB&J

54:50 Why is Nvidia so dominant?

1:03:56 Is the H100 the S17 of AI?

1:09:50 Three categories of bitcoin miners 

Live streamed every Wednesday, The Bitcoin Stock Show is brought to you by The Mining Pod and features interviews and analysis related to the world of public Bitcoin companies. Subscribe to receive notifications when we stream and publish shows! 

👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show.

👉 Watch our newest documentary, The Big Empty!

Follow our hosts on Twitter, @wsfoxley and @AsILayHodling.

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Thank you to our sponsor, CleanSpark, America’s Bitcoin miner! And thank you to Foreman Mining, Master Your Mining!

The Mining Pod is produced by Sunnyside Honey LLC with Senior Producer, Damien Somerset. Distributed by CoinDesk.