The Future of Bitcoin Mining with Fred Thiel Keynote
In a discussion about the future of Bitcoin mining, Fred Thiel highlights several key developments. The efficiency of Bitcoin mining is on the rise, evident in the 30% reduction in energy required for the same hash rate achieved by the latest generation of machines from Bitmain, a major producer in the field. Notably, established Fortune 50 companies and semiconductor providers are venturing into the mining space, signifying a shift toward more professional involvement. The mining landscape is also evolving from traditional desktop-style setups to advanced, high-density industrial rigs optimized for energy efficiency, thanks to immersion cooling technology. Additionally, power companies are entering the scene, recognizing the potential for using excess energy for mining while simultaneously supporting renewable energy generation, including the utilization of hydrogen as a clean fuel and backup power source. Thiel predicts a significant transformation over the next five years, wherein large power companies could acquire mining operations, leading to a global fleet of energy resources that contribute to a cycle of load, renewable energy growth, and enhanced energy efficiency within the mining sector.
Transcripts are autogenerated. May contain typos.
[Music] um you know i think a couple of things one is bitcoin mining has to become more energy efficient and we're already seeing with the latest generation of machines from bitmain who is arguably the largest producer in the world a 30 reduction in the energy required to generate the same hash rate i think we're going to continue to see that curve accelerate you have a number of new asic and semiconductor providers who are aggressively coming into this space it was a fortune 50 company who's launching
a product later this year that is a merchant silicon vendor so now you're starting to see the professional uh typically specialists if you would coming into the space the other thing that you're going to see is you know bitcoin mining and ethereum mining today is predominantly done with these uh what almost look like desktop computers that sit on shelves and that is going to change as immersion comes you're going to have industrialized mining rigs that are really designed for high density um and you know high performance workflows
at low energy you're also going to start seeing um the power companies really coming in in a very big way in this space as dave mentioned where they're all of a sudden seeing hey you know i'm generating 700 700 megawatts of power let me have 150 to 200 megawatts of that as base load bitcoin mining i can curtail it myself and so as soon as the power company starts getting involved now all of a sudden you start seeing they have an incentive to deploy wind solar plus hydrogen why hydrogen well hydrogen is
the ultimate battery right if you use a certain amount of your power to crack hydrogen you get green hydrogen out of water which is 100 clean fuel when you burn it in a turbine to generate electricity when your wind and solar don't operate so you have this really virtuous cycle that's going to start developing in the power world where i personally think in the next five years um you know we won't be an independent company i think we're going to get bought by a very large power company and that power company is
going to have a global fleet of energy generation resources of which bitcoin mining and high performance tier zero data centers make up a good portion of the load and then that will pay for all of the load that then can go to consumers and in in the us this is becoming a very big issue um where you start seeing members of congress now wondering you know well if a bitcoin miner is taking electricity it's taking it away from a consumer and a that's just not the fact because there's excess capacity in the market but more importantly
the only incentive a power company has to build more generation capacity is that there's more load for it and if you don't have more load you won't have more renewable energy so i think it's a virtuous cycle and we'll see a sea change over the next five years and who does mining how it's done the type of technologies and it'll be much much more energy efficient and within 10 years we will likely see what i call net zero energy in mining meaning the miner generates all their own energy
you know we recapture heat from miners use that for energy generation essentially get a flywheel effect [Music]
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