Blockspace: AI & Bitcoin – Episode Summary

Episode Title: Arkade Raises $5.1M, CleanSpark's on BTC Price, Luxor's Mining Outlook, and the IRS New Crypto Form
Date: March 13, 2026
Hosts: Charlie Spears, Colin Harper
Guests: Alex (Ark Labs), Rory Murray (CleanSpark), Alex Bloom (2 Prime), Jamie Gill (Luxor)

Episode Overview

This jam-packed episode of Blockspace dives into the latest in Bitcoin funding, mining market dynamics, legal and regulatory shakeups, and the nuanced reality of Bitcoin’s circulating supply. The show features key voices from startups & industry giants, providing expert insights on programmable finance, miner financing and risk, evolving ASIC markets, and IRS scrutiny of crypto users.

Key Segments & Timestamps

1. Bitcoin Market Update & Miner Revenue Context (00:05–08:44)
2. Interview: Alex (Ark Labs) on their $5.1M Raise and Programmable Finance on Bitcoin (08:44–30:13)
3. BTC Price Resilience & Miner Financing: Rory Murray (CleanSpark) & Alex Bloom (2 Prime) (30:15–46:45)
4. Luxor's Mining Market Deep Dive with Jamie Gill (46:45–59:57)
5. IRS's New Crypto Audit Form (60:24–67:34)
6. Binance, CZ vs. Wall Street Journal, and Exchange Controversies (67:34–77:48)
7. Bitcoin’s 20 Millionth Coin Milestone & Technical Trivia (79:25–82:02)

1. Bitcoin Market Update & Mining Economics

(00:05–08:44)

• BTC Price Moves: Bitcoin up 10% over five days, hitting near $74K as US equities tumble amid geopolitical tensions.
  • “Apparently World War 3 is good for bitcoin, but it’s not really good for the rest of the market.” — Colin Harper (01:47)
• Stock Market Woes: Nearly $1T wiped from the US market; tech giants leading the selloff.
• Mining Revenue: Despite price surges, hash rate is flat and hash price is at historic lows.
  • “Hash rate is really just flat … mining revenue, that is, hash price, is just above an all-time low.” — Colin (05:21)
• Transaction Volume: Declining; the bulk of recent transaction fees has come from NFT-esque activity and token speculation, not fundamental or sustained growth.
  • “The most transaction volume that we’ve had in bitcoin in recent years is from gambling on monkey pictures… sparked with ordinals.” — Colin (07:28)

2. Ark Labs’ $5.1M Raise: Alex on Programmable Finance for Bitcoin

(08:44–30:13)

Background

• Ark Labs: Raised $5.1M in a round led by Tether and other prominent VCs to build "programmable finance on bitcoin."
• Ark, Arcade, Ark Labs: Ark is a batching protocol that compacts off-chain execution into Taproot trees. Ark Labs engineers the protocol; Arcade is their platform/wallet.

Notable Quotes

• “Arc is kind of like a batching protocol for on-chain operations. Allows you to nest and compact a lot of off-chain execution into taproot trees.” — Alex (10:35)
• “We think … we have bitcoin foundations but we don’t necessarily have a bitcoin identity … from a pragmatic perspective, people are using stablecoins for payments much more than probably they’re using Bitcoin for payment.” — Alex (15:18)
• On stablecoins and why the Tether partnership matters: “It becomes very important…If you’re building a platform for digital finance …you can’t avoid having some sort of stablecoin infrastructure.” — Alex (15:18)

Ecosystem & Roadmap

• Platform openness: Actively encouraging third-party integrations; notable partner is Bolts for cross-chain swaps.
• Stablecoins as a bridge: Key focus, with Tether’s involvement hinting at future direct USDT issuance/cross-chain flows.
• Critique of “payment blockchains” — argues payment solutions need programmability and dispute mediation (like fraud resolution in Stripe/Visa), not just simple value transfer.
  • “All the features that these payment blockchains are busy delivering ... we’re able to go head to head with these platforms, while maintaining a sense of neutrality for all actors.” — Alex (18:50)
• Ideal Users/Use Cases: Developers, businesses, institutions needing advanced Bitcoin functionality (escrow, lending, payment processing) beyond simple A-to-B payments.
  • “With the beauty of AI now … Charlie might be put in a situation where he’s going to be able to create his own lending and borrowing service.” — Alex (23:00)
• On L2s: Rejects the category as outdated; sees "building on bitcoin" overtaking the L2 vs L1 narrative.
  • “Getting bogged down into the layer two conversation, we’ve decided to completely move away from this because it’s not very productive.” — Alex (28:30)

Fun/Technical “Curveball” Potential

• Use as a testbed for covenants/ZK proofs, potentially reinvigorating protocol debates by allowing experimentation without on-chain changes.
  • “Maybe we’re kind of able to shake a bit of the conversation in bitcoin around covenants … Why don’t you come play around with covenants on Arcade?” — Alex (26:37)

3. BTC Price Resilience & Miner Financing: CleanSpark and 2 Prime

(30:15–46:45)

• Macro Shocks & BTC’s Performance: Discussion on how Bitcoin fared relative to global turmoil.
  • “It might front run a run back up. But I wouldn’t say it’s an amazing store value now that it’s down, I don’t know, 45% instead of 50% from the highs.” — Alex Bloom, 2 Prime (32:17)
  • “Bitcoin often leads things … because it’s a tip of the spear asset. It often leads things to the downside, it often leads to the upside.”— Rory Murray, CleanSpark (35:05)
• Miner’s Perspective:
  • CleanSpark benefited from volatility; strategic hedging, active risk management, and taking “singles and doubles” in volatile quarters.
    • “We like to sell high and buy low… we believe that over a cycle that puts us in a strong position to accumulate dollars, accumulate coin, and benefit from volatility over time.” — Rory (43:00)
• Institutional Lending Risks:
  • Institutional clients were less likely to be liquidated, but liquidation and early repayments did occur given market stress; DeFi lending risks could cascade if rates spike and funds are pulled.
    • “Some institutional borrowers don’t even know the end source of their money are these DeFi pools...you could see major problems.” — Alex Bloom (40:00)
• DeFi Integration Worries:
  • Underappreciated risks: smart contract vulnerabilities and floating-rate capital mismatches between DeFi sources and fixed-rate institutional lending.

4. Luxor’s Mining Outlook with Jamie Gill

(46:45–59:57)

• Bear Market Mining
  • Despite low hash price, sophisticated miners are buying used ASICs aggressively (“when there’s blood in the streets…”).
    • “The most sophisticated operators…are ready for these bear markets and have enabled themselves to be buying when there’s blood in the streets.” — Jamie Gill, Luxor (48:11)
    • “About 85% of that is used machines.” (48:45)
• ASIC Pricing & Cycles:
  • S19 Pro J’s down to $80/unit (from $10-12K at peak).
  • Importance of firmware customization to extend viability of used hardware.
    • “Firmware is and has been for some time a deciding factor for those operators on even new gen.” — Jamie (53:14)
• Hydro-Cooled ASIC Market:
  • Still limited secondary market due to infrastructure and form factor; expects it to become more prominent next year. (55:19)
• Geopolitical Shock / Shipping Costs
  • Strait of Hormuz closure and general conflict: rerouted shipping, raised energy and insurance costs, slowing Asia-US hardware movement.
    • “If those shipping rates get too high I could definitely see a continued decrease in volume out of Asia into the US and that obviously puts a premium on US landed stock.” — Jamie (58:40)

5. IRS's New Crypto Audit Form: Form 1099-DA

(60:24–67:34)

• What is it?: IRS releases Form 1099-DA, requiring users to account for all wallets and exchanges used, signed under penalty of perjury.
  • “If you get this form, do not fill it out without a tax attorney. This is the kind of overreach that pushes people towards self custody and privacy preserving tools like Bitcoin.” — Charlie [paraphrasing TFTC] (63:44)
• Community Reaction:
  • Received negatively—classic lose/lose: unable to remember every platform, but omitting info is perjury risk; includes now-defunct, obscure exchanges, making compliance extremely difficult.
    • “If you list everything, now they know where to go.” — Andrew Gordon, CPA/attorney (62:50)
  • “There are processes in place [for securities]. Crypto very much was the car that was built as people were driving it.” — Colin (64:00)

6. Binance, CZ, and Exchange Controversies

(67:34–77:48)

• Forbes: CZ “Moggs” Gates:
  • Binance founder’s net worth (ostensibly $108B) leapfrogs Bill Gates, though CZ disputes the numbers, pointing to crypto’s recent selloff.
    • “Didn’t read the Forbes article, but if you just look at the little chart, you know it’s wrong. Crypto prices dropped by more than 50% in 2026 already and my net worth went up? Wish they could apply some common sense and logic.” — CZ, via tweet (68:48)
• WSJ Lawsuit:
  • Binance sues the Wall Street Journal for defamation over Iran sanctions violation claims (alleging $1.7B sent to Iranian entities).
  • Binance argues funds never left directly to sanctioned parties, and compliance team firings unrelated to these allegations.
    • “Binance was saying that the funds flowed into Binance, but they did not leave and then go into the sanctioned addresses for Iranian entities… once they saw these transactions... they actually flagged them and… alerted law enforcement." — Colin (72:48)
• US Legal & Policy Context:
  • CZ’s historical prison sentence, shifting US regulatory stances, and the difficult relationship Chinese-born crypto billionaires have with global regulatory regimes.
    • “If you are the wealthiest known bitcoiner in the world, you don’t really want that to be a news story.” — Charlie (77:11)

7. Bitcoin’s 20 Millionth Coin: Technical Trivia & Circulating Supply Facts

(79:25–82:02)

• Why It’s Not Exactly 20 Million:
  • True minted supply lags expectation due to early miners forgetting to pay themselves (unclaimed coins); supply is more like 20,999,000, not 21M.
  • “There will actually only ever be 20,999,000 something something something bitcoin, because we’ve destroyed somewhere around 518 [coins].” — Charlie (81:32)
• Media Confusion:
  • Many outlets misreported when the 20M milestone was crossed.
  • “It’s a cute technicality and a fun piece of bitcoin trivia.” — Colin (81:58)

Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Arc is kind of like the fundamental primitive that is being leveraged here. It is this new technology … deployed by different teams in different ways.” — Alex, Ark Labs (10:35)
• “Bitcoin often leads things because it’s a tip of the spear asset ... leads things to the downside, leads us to the upside.” — Rory, CleanSpark (35:05)
• “If you get this [IRS] form, do not fill it out without a tax attorney … The government doesn’t send forms like this to help you, they send it to help build a case.” — per TFTC, read by Charlie (63:44)
• “Firmware is and has been for some time a deciding factor for those operators...” — Jamie, Luxor (53:14)
• “There are processes in place [for securities]. Crypto very much was the car that was built as people were driving it.” — Colin (64:00)
• “If you are the wealthiest known bitcoiner in the world, you don’t really want that to be a news story.” — Charlie (77:11)
• “There will actually only ever be 20,999,000 something something bitcoin, because we’ve destroyed somewhere around 518 [coins].” — Charlie (81:32)

Further Resources & Upcoming

• Blockspace’s technical and investor conference: April 16, New York Times Center. Visit upnext.dev.

Next Episode Teasers

• Features Leaden and Valentin Rousseau (Hash Labs): best/worst places to mine Bitcoin.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of Bitcoin’s technology, financial infrastructure, regulatory landscape, and market dynamics—with timely, opinionated, and expert commentary from the voices shaping the industry.