The Mining Pod | Blockspace Media

Welcome back to The Mining Pod! In this week’s news roundup, we touch on Bitcoin network metrics, Bitcoin miners increasingly moving to AI, IREN’s short report and what it meant for the stock, Tether’s bid to take over Bitcoin mining (or, diversify revenue and asset holdings) and Charlie’s Ordinals report!

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

02:58 Difficulty report

06:08 Miners pivot to AI

14:07 Iris Energy Short Report

18:40 Tether & Northern Data

23:30 Ordinals report

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.

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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 and distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Damien Somerset.

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

Welcome back to The Mining Pod! Today we’re joined by Matt Lousteau of Giga to discuss what you need in the field for mining Bitcoin! From immersion to containers to transformers, we go through your potential needs to mine Bitcoin. 

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

02:24 What's new w/ Matt?

04:03 10MW deployment

04:35 Plans for Giga

07:01 Giga products

09:09 Sourcing transformers

11:17 Miner transformer needs

13:04 ASIC hardware changes

16:15 Hydro & immersion

20:08 Hydro solution form factor

22:47 Dry coolers

27:06 What are miners buying?

30:22 Transformer competition

30:50 Geopolitical sourcing risks

33:21 AI growth

35:16 Wrap

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.

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 and distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Damien Somerset.

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

Welcome back to The Mining Pod! Today we are joined by Patrick Fleury, the CFO of publicly traded mining company TerraWulf to discuss public mining markets, TerraWulf itself and how mining shareholders should think about Bitcoin mining companies!

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

02:24 Patrick's background

05:08 Terawulf partnerships

09:17 Financials

16:38 Nondisclosure is bull$#!T

20:15 Shareholder dilution

27:01 Issuing equity at a terahash value

35:27 Current lab projects

40:58 Terawulf lines of business

46:48 Cloud & GPU contracts

52:44 Energy contracts as assets

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.

-

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 and distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Damien Somerset.

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

Welcome back to The Mining Pod! On today’s show, we’re sitting down with Leo Zhang of Alkimiya Protocol to discuss their novel trading solution for Bitcoin blockspace. Yes, you read that right! Alkimiya enables parties like wallets, miners or professional traders to take a position on Bitcoin blockspace. Widespread usage of this trading platform could enable wallets or others to issue on-chain transactions even when fees are high, balancing out the long term volatility of Bitcoin transaction fees. For miners, it might open up doors for trading a new commodity: Blockspace. 

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

03:04 What's Alkyamya?

17:41 How can miners use?

22:54 How does it work?

24:31 Tech design of Alkyamya

26:05 Alkyamya & L2s

26:42 Building on Bitcoin

33:53 New Bitcoin proposals

39:11 Degen spillover

41:20 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.

👉 Watch our newest documentary, The Big Empty!

Follow our host on Twitter, @wsfoxley.

-

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 and distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Damien Somerset.

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

Will, Charlie and Matt jump back behind the mic to chomp on this week’s Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining news–and what a week it was! We cover Cleanspark’s plans to purchase Bitcoin miner Griid, Northern Data and Genesis Digital Assets (GDA)eyeing public markets for the first time and we wrap up with a short local story on ASIC theft. 

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

05:18 Cleanspark Acquisition

14:07 Northern Data IPO

20:05 GDA IPO

26:28 Bad Boys: ASIC thief

28:08 Ordinals number go down :(

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.

-

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 and distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Damien Somerset.

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

Industry expert Ian Descôteaux from Pow.Re discusses evidence of pool consolidation, risks to Bitcoin, and potential solutions for decentralization. This podcast explores the growing centralization of Bitcoin mining pools, focusing on proxy pools and their potential impact on the network.

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

02:48 Checksum's bio

03:34 Canada & South America hash rate

06:42 Mining pool centralization

09:14 Proxy pools

11:57 Proxy pool diagram

13:57 F2Pool use proxy?

15:14 F2Pool block template

16:09 Cobo yield & risk

19:31 Merkle tree evidence

25:28 UTXO accelerator

29:59 Selfish mining & 51%

33:35 Covenants

36:26 Antpool incentives

38:38 Block withholding attacks

40:17 How to fix?

43:32 Are new pools likely?

45:52 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.

👉 Watch our newest documentary, The Big Empty!

Follow our host on Twitter, @wsfoxley.

-

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 with Senior Producer Michele Musso and Executive Producer Jared Schwartz.

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

Portland Hodl, a Bitcoin developer with Marathon Digital, discusses Slipstream, Bitcoin Core, soft forks, and the future of Bitcoin. He shares insights on mining innovations, blockchain reorganizations, and the importance of Bitcoin education. The conversation covers technical aspects and broader implications for Bitcoin's development and adoption.

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

02:54 Thought on Bitcoin

06:24 Slipstream

12:42 Consensus vs standardness

19:35 Slipstream technical challenges

26:35 Slipstream profitability

29:00 Why don't more pools MEV?

34:46 Not enough developers

41:17 The infamous/famous M block

49:12 Bitcoin has always been a data storage network

52:19 Re-org of Testnet4

59:39 Testnet3 hijinks

1:06:48 Thoughts on Bitcoin Core

1:13:15 Client diversity

1:17:58 Softforks

1:24:48 Consequences of softforks

1:34:42 Orange-pilling people

1:37:20 What Bitcoiners DON'T understand

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.

-

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 with Senior Producer Michele Musso and Executive Producer Jared Schwartz. 

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

Will and Charlie jump on the microphone to discuss Bitmain’s newest ASICs, the S21 XP and S21 XP Hydro miners! We compare against other ASICs like Canaan, Bitdeer and MicroBT while taking a larger view about how the ASIC market is going to transform over the next few years. We cover topics like AI infrastructure, commoditization of chips and how to compete in a centralized ASIC market!

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

04:11 S21 Hydro

06:53 Rackspace & rigs swapping

13:46 AntSpaces

15:56 Bitmain competitors

22:54 Rig "commoditization"

26:18 New Rig makers

42:46 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.

👉 Watch our newest documentary, The Big Empty!

Follow our host on Twitter, @wsfoxley.

-

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 and distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Damien Somerset.

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

Ben Weng and Payne Cong of Foundation Logic, the team behind the new ElphaPex Dogecoin/Litcoin miner, join The Mining Pod to discuss their new ASIC mining startup, competing with industry giants, and the future of script mining. Learn about hardware startups, profitability comparisons, and the potential for diversifying mining revenue.

Chapters:

00:00 Start

03:20 Ben Weng background

04:29 Payne Cong background

06:32 Litecoin+Dogecoin ASIC

09:40 Why these coins?

14:50 Is Litecoin the main revenue?

18:39 Profitability

21:10 Other revenue sources

24:40 Calculators

25:50 Hardware form factor

28:15 Repairs

33:41 Chips & production

35:56 What foundry

36:50 Chip allocations from Samsung

38:40 Bitmain competition

42:46 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.

👉 Watch our newest documentary, The Big Empty!

Follow our host on Twitter, @wsfoxley.

-

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 and distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Damien Somerset.

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

Ryan Nuckolls, a 10th-generation Texan and Bitcoin veteran, discusses the intersection of energy and Bitcoin mining in Texas. He shares insights on optimizing mining infrastructure, the benefits of Bitcoin for the Texas grid, and the industry's future. Nuckolls believes Texas is poised for significant growth in Bitcoin mining.

Chapters:

03:12 Ryan's background

04:38 Infrastructure as a service

08:24 Generation vs demand

11:03 When Bitcoin came to ERCOT

13:47 Example deal

16:26 Due diligence beforehand

17:13 Capital intensive ops

19:25 Demand on ERCOT

21:43 Trading energy on ERCOT

25:35 What is energy trading?

30:06 The future of ERCOT & Bitcoin

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.

-

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 with Senior Producer Michele Musso and Executive Producer Jared Schwartz.

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