PRO BTC ?? MILEI ???? WINS! + 3 NABS ???? Takeaways
Mario Andres Gutierrez, Msc
Critical Energy & Digital Infrastructure | Email in Contact Info
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W46 ‘23 Vibe Check
The Overview Vibe
Bitcoin pumped past $37,000 twice this week thanks to the election of Pro-Bitcoin Javier Milei to the ???? presidency and continuing bullish ETF sentiment. During the inter-epoch difficulty week, hashprice appreciated in contrast to the BTC price, poking $95/PH/DAY twice before ending the week above $85/PH/DAY. This relative increase in hashprice is due to the consistently higher percentage of the block rewards transactions fees are taking thanks to ordinals/inscriptions (see below). Hashrate continues to march towards 500 EH/s during the end of these shoulder months, pushing difficulty to expected new all-time highs this holiday season.
During a pretty uneventful trad-fi and BTC finance week, many industry peers gathered in COWTOWN USA aka Fort Worth Texas for the Texas Blockchain Council-organized North American Blockchain Summit. Below my 3 main takeaways from the conference.
Shout out to Lee Bratcher and all the organizers for putting on a great show in a great town. I look forward to attending next year and seeing the increase in engagement between the mining, energy, and policy sectors! Check out below how ERCOT CEO Pablo Vega hitting back against FUD and spitting straight facts about how Bitcoin Mining is good for the grid. HOW CAN WE NOT BE BULLISH?!
As Q3 results filed in (check the news section below), Tether (your nephew’s favorite central bank), announced their plans to invest $500M over the next six months to power over 1% of the network hashrate. All that free cash flow from holding T-bills will continue to build on the existing $1B of equity and debt poured into Northern Data as Tether looks to build its facilities in several countries. Portico/partner Northern Data just announced their 30 MW facility in North Dakota. Hashrate is going to go up forever lol.
Greenidge Generation gave itself a life raft through the sale of its 44 MW facility to NYDIG, eliminating its owed debt to the NYC investment bank and adding $6M in cash to its struggle bus of a balance sheet. Who wants to take this puppy private? Ironically, on the other side of capital markets, Pubco bridesmaid Rhodium got left at the altar by SPAC partner SliverSun Technologies. Probs best for them in the long run.
At the NABS conference in Fort Worth, Marathon-backed Auradine landed an elbow with the announcement of their Teraflux ASICs. The AT2880 air-cooled units will boast a 260 TH/s, 16 J/TH spec while the A13680 immersion-cooled units will come with a top TH/s of 375 TH/s and 15 J/TH. While the market will tell if these stats will be tried and true at the end of the day, the industry overwhelmingly welcomes this new entrant into the ASIC game. Derisking OEM risk from MicroBT and Bitmain is a step forward towards maturation.
As Q3 results consisted of losses, AI/Carbon/negative-power costs distractions, or dilutive capital raising (check them out below in the news section), the announcement that caught my attention came from Bitfarms. The ???? miner locked in a $0.02/kWh fixed rate at their MW Rio Cuarto site for the Argentinian summer period of November’23 to April’24. This period of low local gas prices allowed Bitfarms to decrease their power cost by 30% on the 54 MW provided by their private power generation partner.
What stands out to me is the prepaid condition of the contract and its $dollar-cent/KwH denomination. In a country with hyperinflation, it makes sense for a local power producer to demand better money. One would speculate that lower revenues denominated in the Dollar, a “relatively” harder currency are much better than a “higher” price in the Peso an inflating currency. As the dollar eventually nears significant inflation, will we see energy producers start to demand Bitcoin? Are we a cycle away from the Electro/Petro-Sat? I have a feeling that Argentina lead the world in the future.
I wish everyone an amazing and safe ?? day holiday with your friends and families. If you need any ideas on how to bring up Bitcoin at dinner, take inspiration from Jameson Lopp’s post above. I am excited to see my Buckeyes and Longhorns finish the season strong! Back to changing diapers. Cheers!
Bitcoin/Mining Metrics
Sources: Hashrate Index1, Bitbo2
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Commercial Portfolio Manager at ExxonMobil
1 年Viva la Libertad, Carajo!