Anyone who pays attention to the public markets of Bitcoin minors will save that artificial intelligence (AI) and commercial pivots in high performance calculation (HPC) are all the rage among bitcoin minors. What started as a progressive trend last year suddenly has become a commercial strategy that many main public bitcoin minors explore.
This article appeared for the first time on BlockSpace mediaThe main publication of the Bitcoin industry dedicated to coverage of Bitcoin technology, markets, mining and ordinals. Get Space space Items directly in your reception box by clicking here.
Core Scientific, Bit Digital, Hut 8, Hive and Iren currently have commercial lines generating AI / HPC income, while Crusoe Energy and Lancium, Cipher, Terawulf, Riot and Bitfarms are in the development or exploration phase. With Softbank, Openai and others promising collectively up to $ 500 billion to accelerate AI developments in the United States through the Stargate project, which was announced in January, where the rush to the Does digital oil leave bitcoin pure-play minors?
Kevin dede, managing director of Equity Research at Investment Bank HC Wainwright, thinks there is a lot of space for both. In a recent episode of the Bitcoin scholarship program by The Mining Pod, Dede expressed that even if he would not bet against serious minors about AI / HPC, he would not underestimate the prospects Pure bitcoin bitcoin minors.
Does the launch of the Stargate project change the conversation on the AI pivots for bitcoin minors?
I think the conversation has changed when Core Scientific announced the coreweave agreement six to eight months ago. It really changed the dynamics. Another thing that people may not consider is that bitcoin minors can compete in different scales. Project Stargate concerns hyperscal installations, but there are small -scale implementation opportunities.
Bitdigital and Applied Digital has shown that you don’t need hyperscal to succeed. There are a lot of customers who want to access the calculation, and not all are hyperscalers.
Riot recently decided to suspend its 600 megawatts Corsicana phase 2 to assess it for AI / HPC. Why do you think they did this?
Riot asked militant investors to buy shares, which is ideal for action. The company has always been categorical to stick to Bitcoin exploitation. At their analyst meeting last June, CEO Jason said them that they wouldn’t make HPC.
The installation of Corsicana de Riot is incredible. The question is: 600 MW of HPC is worth more than 600 MW of Bitcoin operations? I think the answer is yes. HPC demand increases and applications are evolving; Simply scraping the surface. The real market is the business market, where companies use AI to optimize production.
By looking at Bit Digital and Core Scientific, what business strategy do you think the most up?
Let’s start with Bitdigital. They bought GPUs and rented a space in northern Iceland to meet the needs of a customer, who, I believe, is based somewhere in Europe, to manage models. From now on, Iceland and Europe are not as close as you think, which is important if they perform Calpel since Mainland Europe inference would be the main customer for this.
The Enovum agreement has passed and they obtained their first site, which represents approximately four megawatts. They have also just opened another site that they hope to have energized this summer, targeting five megawatts initially with plans to evolve up to 35 megawatts in HPC capacity this year. Sam Tapar, their CEO, often stresses that this acquisition opened the door to 288 potential megawatts of HPC capacity.
When it comes to assessing the risk, this really comes back to a number of factors. Bit Digital acquired a company with experienced experience in the construction and operation of these sites. But, of course, this adds another risk layer beyond the basic risk of execution. You superimpose the risk of tripping during the construction and operation of their next set of installations as the year progresses.
As for Core Scientific, I would be the last person to underestimate them. They brought really impressive talents. I asked their CEO, Adam Sullivan, on how all their plans met. He said there were many people in the world of the existing data center whose employees see limited growth trajectories. So, if you are an employee in one of these companies and you get a scientific core offer with action purchase options, you think: “My current options are two figures, but it could go to Of the two high figures or even triple figures. “This is how they were able to attract such great talents.
On the other hand, these new B200 chips they use are so much more powerful but also much more complex, and this could play in delays for the implementation of Coreweave on Core Scientific sites. I think a lot of that will be released in the next Core Scientific income call in March. They will probably go back to it if they are still on the right track to energize the first large installation of Coreweave in the second quarter and how they took up these networking challenges.
Do you think that the greatest advantage of AI / HPC pushes bitcoin extraction to the fringes, or can it coexist alongside HPC and AI?
I do not think that bitcoin extraction disappears. The concept of an AI-Bitcoin Mining hybrid data center is interesting. HPC power consumption is not as consistent as people could suppose it. It does not work 24/7/365. It depends on what’s going on – do they manage a new model? Are they supporting inference? These feeding loads will fluctuate.
It is not too difficult to imagine that a host with flexibility in its electricity purchase agreements (APP) to execute bitcoin minors when power is not necessary for HPC. It is simply a question of adjusting the load.
When you get back, it seems to me that there is room for both. We talked about Corsicana, but there are many other sites like those in western Texas. Mike Novogratz wants to transform Helios into an HPC center, but it’s in the middle of nowhere. You need a private plane to get there, and it’s a long journey of Lubbock. In addition, it is on wind energy, so the energy is inexpensive, but how will you execute inference from this site?
What is really interesting when you look at business models is the optionality. From a hybrid point of view, you have transparency. You can provide HPC income and assume a certain amount of the debt according to these margins. But if you also continue to run, you can benefit from an increase in the price of bitcoin and improve market dynamics.
I think that optionality is an opportunity that some of these new HPC companies offer investors. You have this stable HPC flow, then you have the potential of the Bitcoin rise reaching $ 200,000 this year. This is the intriguing proposal. For this reason, I think that many of these companies with experience in both will continue to do both.
