AI?????? BOOM - ??Gate ?? Project & RIOT Exploring: Vibe Check CXVI
Mario Andres Gutierrez, Msc
Critical Energy & Digital Infrastructure | Email in Contact Info
Welcome to the latest issue of the Vibe Check! Vibe Check Covers the intersection of BTC ?? , data centers ??, and energy ??through a lens of orange pills and memes.
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W4’25 Vibe Check
Grab a ? and start the week with all the metrics and stories that shake and bake across the Bitcoin, Compute, and Energy intersection!
The Overview Vibe
As President Trump kicked off his term on Monday, Bitcoin continues to bounce between $100-107K as the market still figures out how much FOMO they have. As executive orders pardoned Ross Ulbricht was pardoned and set the road map for Bitcoin to be supported more broadly, one could only be more bullish. Trump hyped up the USA #1 $500B Stargate AI announcement headlined by OpenAI, Orcale, Softbank, and other technology giants. Other relevant EOs also promoted energy generation, specifically to support AI growth.
Hashprice tracked BTC price’s horizontal ossifications this week as we expect a slight ~2% downward difficulty adjustment by EOD Sunday. This is the first downward adjustment since September 2024, talk about a break lol. This is a consequence of a period of power price-sensitive hashrate oscillating due to curtailment participation during the snowpocalypse across North America last week. Let’s thank “Snow in Houston” for a breather in the ever-growing hashrate. I expect the network to keep ripping going into February.
During a week of many announcements, the most notable update this week was the announcement of Riot Platforms to commence exploring the use cases of AI/HPC for the remaining 600 MW of power capacity at their Corsicana Facility. While RIOT was in the only Bitcoin mining ranks with CSLK and MARA for much of 2024, activist investor Starboard’s significant stake in RIOT last month was surely the catalyst for this strategy pivot. With 600 MWs ready to rock in an increasingly volatility ERCOT power market and an hour south of the nation’s fourth-largest data center market, it seems like RIOT only has pure upside here! The mullet miner ranks continue to grow as the AI hunger for power can’t stop and won’t stop.
Texas continues to feed significant AI growth as the previously announced Oracle lease of the Crusoe Energy data center at the Lancium Energy campus in Abilene is part of the first tranche of the $100-500B AI Stargate project announced at the White House this week. While there has been much fanfare online between Elon Musk and Sam Altman regarding the capitalization of the project, the investment partnership of OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank rounds out a death row of capital in the sector. With Chinese hedge fund start-up DeepSeek FUDDing all this AI buzz, the Stargate project represented a Sputnik-like moment where the United States has all the tools to lead the world on what an AI future looks like.
Quickly making a turn into the world of off-grid flare gas bitcoin mining, the long-time lingering legal patent dispute between Crusoe Energy and Upstream Data has reached an ending, or at least a stopping point. From my non-legalese expertise, it seems like both sides get partial “wins” where the judge told both sides to go home since neither of their designs is patentable. This push seems like a general win for the operationally intensive world of off-grid Bitcoin mining, where every cost counts. I’ll be curious to see if we will see a round 2 in the future.
With the new administration pouring gasoline on the intersection of energy and computing, large institutional private equity firms are starting to dip their toes into generation-level ownership of power assets. It is not just large power producers or oil majors making a play for the elections. Blackstone acquired the 74 Potomac Energy Center, the principal natural gas generation facility that powers the electron needs of the data center valley in Northern Virginia. With regulators, investors, and operators are all aligned on the marginal growth of AI coming from THAT GUCCI GAS, is the real play here to sit on turbines? Does anyone know a guy who knows a guy at Seimans? Just put me in the queue!
Thanks for making it through the Vibe Check! Enjoy the BTC ?? , Datacenters ??, and Energy ?? specific headlines below. Remember to subscribe, call your mom, and stay hydrated! I’ll be headed to NEMS 2025 in Nashville this week. Shoot me a note, and we can grab time! Remember to subscribe, call your mom, and stay hydrated!
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Ok this week I start to work out lol