The Mining Pod | Blockspace Media

Ever wonder if this flare gas thing with Bitcoin mining is real? Can it actually scale to solve real world climate issues? And how would someone go about making a project like that in the first place?

Justin Ballard, General Counsel at Akon Energy & Founding Partner at Firm 21, shares insights on Bitcoin mining's legal landscape, energy deals, flare gas mining, and the industry's future. He discusses the challenges and opportunities in navigating this space, drawing parallels to the oil and gas industry.

Chapter Markers:

00:00 Start

04:37 Justin's background

08:37 Mining legal structures

15:41 Energy deal examples

18:55 Flare gas reality check

23:30 Legal gas mining deals

30:00 Learnings big/small operations

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

The hardware game is becoming more competitive, with new entrants like Jack Dorsey’s Block, Marathon Digital-backed Auradine and more. And then there’s this whole AI thing which mining CEOs and others keep talking about! 

To make it straight, we brought on ePIC Blockchain co-founder Earl Mai to discuss ePIC’s hardware product line, the difficulties of getting a hardware startup off the ground, what its like to compete against Bitmain and how mining–and AI–could converge together over the next few years!

Chapter Markers:

00:00 Start

03:07 Earl's background

04:51 ePIC's products

05:45 Earl's early mining days

09:50 Moving from alts to bitcoin

12:46 ASIC design process

15:36 Why Bitmain dominates?

20:15 Bitmian chip design

21:51 Don't fight Bitmain

24:41 Components

26:18 Shoebox form factor

27:39 How not to get scammed

29:37 Next gen ASICS

30:34 Intel update

31:20 Competition in the space

33:14 Is Bitmain slowing template propagation?

39:06 Competitive edge on open network

40:43 Where's the new competitive edge?

44:20 AI and Bitcoin Mining

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

Will and Charlie dig into this week’s Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining news, including the short report leveled at Riot Platforms, CoreWeave’s declined bid to purchase Core Scientific, BitDeer buying a fabless ASIC manufacturer for $140 million in shares and lastly, Cleanspark’s involvement in the Cheyenne, Wyoming Bitcoin mining slapped with an executive order by the Biden administration.

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

02:31 Difficulty update

04:51 Mining stocks

08:04 Riot & Bitfarms

16:30 Core Scientific rejects Coreweave

22:00 Desiweminer (new AISC)

27:21 Cleanspark vs White House

Satoshi Action Fund's Poker Tournament at Mining Disrupt!

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

Today we’re joined by Sven Hildebrandt and Frederik Vyncke of the European Bitcoin Mining Association (EBEA) to discuss the growing regulatory threat to Bitcoin mining in Europe. Sven and Frederik detail the mining landscape, how the new MiCA regulation will affect mining, the EBEA’s push to collect mining data and how other high intensity energy industries compare to Bitcoin mining in Europe.

Check out the EBEA at https://ebea.work/

Follow our guests on Twitter: @vyncke_frederik @SvenHildebrandt

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

00:00 Start

03:32 Frederik Vyncke background

04:31 Sven Hildebrandt background

06:13 European Bitcoin Energy Association

11:13 Perception of mining in EU now?

17:34 MICA regulation & mining

20:12 Data required by MICA

21:28 What if no data?

22:09 Service providers on the hook not miners

23:01 This seems stupid...

24:30 Energy mix data

29:08 Complying with regulations as a miner

32:20 Where is hashrate in the EU?

35:39 South East EU mining

37:36 AI power demand

42:48 Regulatory wishlist

45:21 Public data vs proprietary data

46:04 Convincing miners to comply

49:48 Wrapping 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.

👉 Watch our newest documentary, The Big Empty!

Follow our host on Twitter, @wsfoxley.

"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

What’s happening in the Bitcoin mining market? Did the halving bring us into a new landscape? And how are miners surviving in such hostile revenue territory? We sit down with Shanon Squires, a long time Bitcoin miner and current Chief Mining Officer at Compass Mining.

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

03:02 Shannon intro

06:45 Green field vs rack ready sites

08:23 US mining vs global

10:05 Self taught

11:04 Compass mining move

12:30 Compass business update

14:58 Why has hosting survived?

17:13 The Accelerated program

18:04 How does Accelerated work?

20:18 Facility sizes

22:04 10 megawatts or bust

25:14 Cost per megawatt?

25:42 Transformers are abundant now, right? Right?

27:30 Halving bankruptcies?

28:50 S19 rig bear market

30:38 ASIC sales

32:24 Repair market

35:31 Why are manufacturers training technicians

36:56 Predictions

38:33 $400k per megawatt

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!

👉 Watch our livestream on Samourai Wallet!

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

We're off at Consensus 2024 so we're airing one of our favorite shows from The Gwart Show, one of our other podcasts on the Blockspace Podcast Network. We'll be back next week with EXTRA Mining Pod shows, but enjoy this Bitcoin podcast in between!

Allen Farrington, co-founder of Axiom, joins The Gwart Show to discuss scaling Bitcoin, the role of venture capital in Bitcoin’s ecosystem, his thoughts on DeFi, NFTs, and stablecoins, and the potential for Bitcoin to supplant fiat money. He also shares his insights on the ordinals debate and the future of Bitcoin infrastructure.

Follow the show by going to one of these links!

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7CGboRclb7QaNOhLGgpuMg

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-gwart-show-bitcoin-tech-culture/id1725892826

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55oAYu4Hc5A&t

RSS: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/thegwartshow

Website: https://blockspace.media/podcast/laser-eyes-stay-on-with-allen-farrington/

Follow our guest on Twitter: @allenf32

Follow our host: @gwartygwart

👋The Gwart Show is proudly presented by Ellipsis Labs! Ellipsis Labs is building foundational products in DeFi. Their first product @PhoenixTrade is the leading orderbook DEX on Solana. The team is growing—visit ellipsislabs.xyz for engineering opportunities.

Questions or want to sponsor? [email protected]

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Chief Research Officer at Bitcoin miner Griid, Mike Hamilton is an experienced & well-known Bitcoin miner. But even more impressive might be his feat snagging of the second Runes ticker once the moment the protocol launched last April. 

Mike talks about how his experience with Bitcoin and tinkerer mentality let him beat all the other teams competing for the top Runes spots. Mike also discusses Bitcoin mining, the role miners may play going forwards, and his personal project “Mutable Trees.”

Follow along on your favorite podcast player of choice by clicking here.

Chapters:

00:00:00 Start

00:02:55 Mike intro

00:08:12 What is etching & hard coding?

00:09:59 Acquiring the Runes ticker

00:15:01 Building Runes tools

00:19:24 Airdropping

00:23:54 Miners learning Runes

00:26:38 Managing UTXOs

00:32:17 Including Runes in business model

00:34:26 Block templates

00:38:43 Miners vs Maxi

00:40:16 Fix the filters?

00:42:35 Mutable Trees

00:48:34 OP_CAT

00:52:07 Miners & soft forks

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!

👉 Watch our livestream on Samourai Wallet!

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 news roundup, we discuss Bitcoin mining stocks, Venezuela banning Bitcoin mining, the FIT21 bill passing the US House of Representatives, MetaMask possibly adding Bitcoin, the Rabbit AI founder’s murky Bitcoin past and more!

Enjoying the show? Subscribe to the RSS feed for the podcast here.

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

02:29 Difficulty update

05:02 FIT21 bill

12:07 Venezuela illegal mining

16:44 Metamask + Bitcoin

26:28 Rabbit AI

👉 Check out our NEW referral network!

👉 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 joined by Storm Rund of the Oklahoma Bitcoin Association to discuss the groundbreaking Bitcoin legislation passed in the state of Oklahoma! In this show, Storm gives an overview of Bitcoin mining in OK (nearly over 1 gigawatt in size!), the legislative process, what the law does for Bitcoiners and what future bills Storm is working on with the OKA!

Enjoying the show? Subscribe to the RSS feed for the podcast here.

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

03:28 Storm intro

06:12 Mining power usage in OK

08:16 Legislative process & bill

15:27 The OPA mission

17:59 Upcoming bills

19:28 Practical miner considerations

22:58 Why is BTC legislation uncommon?

27:29 Red Team vs Blue Team

30:34 Story:FUD flyer

33:03 What resonates w/ politicians

38:20 Become a member

👉 Check out our NEW referral network!

👉 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

Matt Kimmell and Will Foxley of Blockspace Media jump into this week’s Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining news including a network healthy check, mining stocks slowly bleeding out while Bitcoin ETFs continue to grow in strength, the Biden administration forcing the divestment of a Bitcoin mining farm from Chinese owners outside a nuclear power plant in Wyoming, and Bitfarms’ lawsuit with its former CEO!

Enjoying the show? Subscribe to the RSS feed for the podcast here.

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

03:34 Difficulty update

08:24 Inefficient miners exit: JP Morgan

10:18 ETF updates

14:06 Choppy for public miners

17:39 US blocks China miners

22:35 Bitfarms exec shakeup

👉 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