← Blockspace: AI & Bitcoin
Blockspace: AI & Bitcoin
Whatsminer Firmware is Finally Here, Bitcoin Vegas Recap w/ BTC Inc’s Brandon Green, DeFi is in Shambles
01:01:16
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. What's up y'?
- [00:06]
B
All?
- [00:06]
A
Welcome back to Block Space Live. We are coming at y' all live from Las Vegas with Ethan Vera, CEO of Luxury Technology, as our first guest today. We'll also have Jay Patel of Ligos on to talk about some of the fallout from the Kelp Dao hack. And we also have Brandon Green, CEO of BTC Inc. To talk about Bitcoin Vegas this year and why they're deciding to go back down south to Nashville next year. We've got a few news items. The Canon and Tether Bitcoin mining collaboration and we're going to be giving our our takes on the conference this year to close out the show.
- [00:36]
C
We have a lot of takes even though most of our conference has been in the hall. Still got some takes. This is Blockspace Live. We go live Monday, Wednesday, Friday at noon Eastern. Even though we're on the west coast right now, it is morning. This podcast becomes goes onto your RSS feeds, Spotify, Apple podcasts, anywhere you get podcasts. And then if you like this conversation, you'll Love Our NewsLet newsletter.blogspace media.com BlockSpace Live is brought to you by CleanSpark. Nasdaq listed ticker CLSK let's kick it off.
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A
Mr. Vera, thank you for joining us.
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B
Ethan Vera Good to be here, man. This is what being a veteran of conference looks like. Day 4 9am we're hanging in there,
- [01:20]
A
hanging on by a thread as always. A bustling conference. Lots of stuff in the conference and outside of it and and as always, a lot of announcements. And y' all had some big news coming into the conference this week. It's a really cool deal with Micro BT announced as you roll out firmware for what's Miner. So can you give us a quick rundown for our listeners of what this deal is and the synergies at play?
- [01:41]
B
Yeah, I think we're one of the rare teams still building in the in the bitcoin mining space. Not to say we're not interested in AI, but we want to keep shipping products. So for the past two and a half years we've been working on a firmware development and operating system that sits on the Micro BT device. For a long time it's been like the holy grail of firmware development, right? Like various third party teams have tried to approach it and build on top of stock firmware and for whatever reason, every single team has given up. Now the consensus was that Micro BT had better stock firmware than some of the other manufacturers. So there's already like more features and performance you could get from it. The potential uplift was maybe a little bit less than going from other stocks, but the hard development cycle basically led other teams to give up and we kept persevering and finally got it out. So yeah, it's excited to do so.
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A
You just mentioned that, you know, firmware for a what's Miner has been kind of the holy grail of the firmware scene for a while. I mean, third party firmware for ant miners been around for a long time. Luxor cracked that nut a few years ago. Y' all been working on the what's Miner stuff for a couple years at this point. Why has it been such a long journey? You know, as Charlie was joking for the stream, there's.
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C
My entire mining career was defined by when what's Miner. It was a meme for years. And now we have what's Miner for where?
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A
Because a lot of bitcoin miners, they love Microbt machines. They're very robust, they're pretty well built. And now we finally have firmware for it. What was so hard about cracking firmware for these machines versus the main models?
- [03:12]
B
Yeah, when what's Miner everyone was sponsored tm. And then eventually everyone went to never tm. We're like, no. And so when we approached the development like we knew that a lot of our clients like the Micro bts, I mean people describe them as like workhorses. You see them running in places like Africa, like gridless. Guys are always very impressed by the quality of the machine and so very well respected manufacturer out there and definitely, you know, has a lot of market share. So we wanted to build compatibility with it. And so yeah, we dedicated a lot of firmware engineering resources to this, which is never like an easy decision as a business. Like are you going to dedicate all these very proficient people that could be working on something else for that long to a task in which you don't know what the outcome is going to be. But we're happy it worked out and really a lot of the difficulty was just on the actual machine specs of the different hashboard types, the control boards, the power supply units that come with it. Every complexity in the machine and every time that's different machine to machine, that becomes very difficult for us to work on.
- [04:17]
A
And you said that what's minor machines could have one of a hundred plus different control boards.
- [04:23]
B
Right.
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A
And so part of the problem here is Bitmain uses like what? Like three or four, give or take. And, and, and if you're designing firmware, you have to make sure that you can break into that piece before you can actually get the machine to be
- [04:35]
B
compatible with your firmware.
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A
So like your team had to go through all of those different models to figure it out.
- [04:40]
B
Yeah, exactly. More. So there's more hashboard variants than control board types.
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A
Got it.
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B
But even so, each of these components you need to build compatibility for. And so once we started getting our hands on fleets of, we started with the M5X series, focused on the air cooled machines. You start to realize how many different components are in here. They're not very standardized in terms of which hash boards, control boards and power supply units they use. And so the firmware team has been super busy trying to get compatibility with enough for us to go to a large mining client and be able to actually start servicing them. Right. Because they themselves as a fleet might have a bunch of different variants. And if we can only install on like 5% of their fleet, it's an annoyance for them. They want to do it all in one go.
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C
So this might elicit a political answer. So like these manufacturers, Bitmain, Microbt, Canon, they don't exactly hand you the full spec sheet and work with you to help you develop third party firmware. So explain to me what you have to then do in order to get this firmware live across an abundance of different variations.
- [05:54]
B
Yeah, you're right, they don't today. I'm hoping that changes in the future. Our pitch to the manufacturers is friendly. You have a great machine, a lot of people buy it, Right. They put in billions of dollars a year into buying these machines. Let us build on top of it. Right. Like we want to build on the what's minor on the Antminer, on the Avalon ecosystems. So I'm hoping that changes. And I would say we're pretty close with two manufacturers actually. One, in fact has been very open with us and has shared a lot of data that we plan to build on moving forward. I think for us really what would be very helpful is getting that information so we don't have to reverse engineer to be able to install on the control board. But then two is to be covered under the manufacturer warranty. Most of these machines ship with like 12 months when they're brand new. And if you install a third party, it violates those terms. And miners don't want to install it on new machines. So our pitch to them is like we have certain protections in place and the firmware regarding thermal dynamics. So like monitoring temperatures on the control boards and the hash boards and we feel like that's the number one cause of failure of the machine. And so we actually think it's like safer to run a firmware that has like thermal management. And so our, our, our holy grail pitch to them is really let us be covered under your manufacturer warranty.
- [07:17]
A
So one part of this announcement, there's obviously the firmware and you said y' all started with M50. I'm assume M60, M70 soon when. But there's also this strategic investment from micro BT into Luxor. And then there's this purchase commitment for $100 million worth of machines for. For what's miners as well. Can you break down some of those other elements of the deal? Because I find it interesting to be packaged together because obviously the firmware component, something I've been working on for a long time, and it seems like the strategic investment and the commitment for future purchasing orders is something that was kind of added into this deal to throw it all together.
- [07:54]
B
Yeah. So, yeah, the firmware development cycle was like multiple years. This deal has been contemplated for a much shorter time. But everything aligns so nicely into one. And it was great to be able to come to the conference and speak to. The strategic investment for us is just like it's a stamp of approval from one of the OGs in the space and a good manufacturer. It also aligns us strategically, so it doesn't necessarily come with commitments from MicroBT to support our business in a certain way. But having a stake in Luxor obviously is good in aligning our incentives at the same time. The machine purchase key theme, I think on block space right now is that everyone's pivoting to AI. Where is the demand for machines? Who's buying $100 million worth of equipment right now in today's bear market? I think we have a unique buyer universe across not just private companies in the US but also international. We're doing a lot of work in Latin America we've talked about previously on the podcast. And so, yeah, the goal is for us to kind of help push Micro BT to our clients that are looking to expand. Micro BT is doing a lot of unique structures, things like hosting and selling at the same time. So we're able to kind of package that with some of our finance offering and give a few clients in our universe a unique opportunity there.
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A
You mentioned that. Who's going to be buying $100 million worth of machines in the current market environment. And I can't help but look at this deal in context with some others that have come out recently in the sense that it seems like the OEMs and their closest partners are really kind of starting to consolidate and like plant flags in the ground. You know, we've seen. We're going to cover it on the show later today as one of our news items. But Kinnan is furnishing tether hash boards. They're going to be building these rigs with their own control boards and other parts in this kind of collaborative release. I've also been talking to some bitcoin miners here who work with Bitmain. They say that right now they're one of their biggest clients. So Bitmain is really trying to keep those relationships close as we see these AI pivots really disrupt the ASIC market and we see the largest buyers and public miners dry up. Do you get the sense that a lot of these partners and specifically the ASIC manufacturers are really trying to consolidate these relationships and doing what they can to keep them close in this bear market?
- [10:11]
B
Yeah, I think that's true. And my framework for looking at it would be like it's multi year and at least 12 months plus like when you plan your foundry, your chip productions, your manufacturing runs. Right. So historically there's been a few billion worth of capex, let's call it 3 to 5 billion of machines delivered to the market every year. And so those manufacturers were expecting another big year. 2025 was great for them. Certainly the first two quarters were. And now we're at a place where network hash rate's down what, 2,300PETA hash since its peak. And that means that really there's not a lot of net new buying going on. There's definitely a few miners that are still expanding fleets but it's the minority. And so the manufacturers need to get creative in how they look at these structures and a lot of them are moving down the stack. Like let's go partner with miners where they are. Maybe they don't have the capital expenditure for the machines today. So we can strike a hosting deal and a sale deal or a like a mine to own deal in which you know, mines to a certain payback ownership flips. So I think all the manufacturers are just like in the position where they're like we can't just rely on our old business model, we need to find new ones.
- [11:22]
C
And in light of that I'm hearing here in Vegas, because I talk more to the bitcoin developers these days but sometimes I go to a mining thing and I talk to miners still the secondary market for these rigs is pretty active. You know, I feel like it always gets active during bear markets. But is, is there a different dynamic right now? How does this change the game for the, you know, the OEM manufacturing machines? You know, what do you see happening this bear market in the new versus used?
- [11:50]
B
And I should have brought that up because they're actually like fully intertwined. Right. So like here we have like call it a dozen or so publicly listed companies that have expressed interest in fully pivoting to the AI data center world and are going to be selling their mining fleet. I personally think that's going to take longer than Some of those CEOs might say it will, but let's say it happens. Over the next 24 months each of those companies is going to be liquidating something like 20 to in some cases over a hundred thousand machines each. Right. And so basically every quarter there's going to be like a big pubco that's like selling all of their fleet, that's competing with the manufacturers trying to sell in the market too. Because if you're a new buyer, if you're a buyer of machines expanding your fleet, you're looking at what's the deal from the manufacturers and what's the deal that I can go get used machines for? And they're going head to head. We worked on a pretty large sales mandate in Q1, went very smoothly. But I think as, as the quarters go on, it's going to become more and more difficult for the pubcos to start moving their machines because there's really no natural buyer of that level of machines. So we've approached a few of them to try and structure like more thoughtful sales processes.
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A
A trickle rather than a flood perhaps.
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B
Yeah, think, think of it like an order book, right? Like, so if you're trading on a thin market with not a lot of depth, right. And there's only, you know, 10 or 15 BTC up and down on the bid and ask and you try and go blast it with 25. What you do is you just take out the whole order book. That that's essentially how the ASICS trade. Right. Like we'll go to market and they'll be like, okay, I have demand for, you know, a thousand ASICs at $8 a terahash and 3,000 at 7 and 10,000 at 6 and, and if you want to sell 20,000, you're basically just drawing the price down.
- [13:35]
A
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's been really interesting to see how the ASIC market's kind of had its head turned over with all of the AI pivots. But, Ethan, we'll let you go. Really appreciate you joining us, man. And enjoy the rest of the conference and best of luck with the M60 and M70s.
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B
Soon.
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C
Soon.
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B
Thanks for having me on, guys.
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A
Thanks.
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C
Okay, we're gonna put him in the backstage back there. And we're gonna pivot to our next guest. Adios, Ethan. We are gonna pivot to our next guest. CEO of Lygos Finance, Jay Patel. Have a slightly different setup here. We bring him on here.
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A
Jay, welcome to the show.
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D
Hey, how you guys doing?
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A
Pretty good, man. You know, it's been a fun week at Vegas and getting to do some live shows is great. It's always nice to have you calling in and we're going to be talking about. Yeah, I was a little sad that we couldn't do this one live, but hopefully next year.
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C
But actually, my. I have a question for you. Like, we're deep in the weeds. We're in the halls, we're talking to people. Have you been paying attention to the conference from the Internet? And what's your impression as a person who hasn't been attending or but has been watching the public discourse and the videos from it?
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D
I think the, you know, the very controversial points around, like, the DOJ panel and those things have popped up. I haven't gotten a bunch on my feed. You know, I think it's the online discourse I feel like from the conference has definitely been focused around that, like, was like the FBI DOJ panel and then maybe some of the Quantum quantum discussions. And then there was some outrage on both sides about the Jack Mahlers quote regarding Saylor's financing strategy.
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C
I actually didn't see this, so I'm a little out of the loop. Can you catch us up to speed live?
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D
Yeah. And I don't think he meant this in any kind of disrespectful way to the business that MicroStrategy's built. But just mentioned that MicroStrategy used to effectively borrow at 0% using the convertible bonds. Granted, there's some equity pressure and now they're borrowing at 12%. And so clearly, like, as the business is scaling the cost of getting the capital to buy more bitcoin has gotten higher and they're going to need to think about creative ways to bring that down over time. I think that outraged some of the strategy maxis, for lack of a better term. But I think it carries with the topic that we talked about previously, which is just that all of these bitcoin treasury companies are going to have to find some unique Way to buy more bitcoin without paying more and more interest. It's great that stretch pays 11 and a half percent now, but I don't think even Saylor wants to keep paying that much forever.
- [16:26]
A
Yeah, it was interesting to see some of the back and forth about where people were attending talks because there was this one tweet people said, oh, no one cares about treasury companies, but Sailors talk was packed. I was talking with Charlie, it's like, well, of course, like that's, you know, how many strategy fanboys and Stretch fanboys there are at this conference.
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C
The, the Dial in Cash Patel talk was empty and the Sailor room was packed to the gills. Obviously people want to buy this product or at least enough people to fill a room do.
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A
Yeah, for sure. But anyway, we'll leave the treasury stuff by the, by the wayside. Jay, we wanted to get you on to get some thoughts on the fallout of the Kelp Dao hack. Now we kind of talked about this on our last segment as well. It's still fresh, but this whole thing is really kind of cascaded into what's becoming kind of a governance crisis for Defi and a huge delegitimizer, I think, for a lot of these platforms that are promising decentralized finance. So can you just give some of our audience a quick rundown of some of the, the fallout we've seen from the Kelp Dao hack. And for some context, this Dao called, this Defi platform called Kelp Dao was hacked for 293 million, I believe, of staked Eth that was then deposited into other lending protocols like AAVE and Compound, that staked eth is just a synthetic ETH and the actual backing for it the hackers didn't get. So it's created this problem where you basically have fake collateral on these lending protocols. And so Jay, what have been some of the knock on effects of this hack that you've seen? And the most salient ones?
- [18:02]
D
Yeah, for sure. I think the big ones are broadly the L2s, the Ethereum L2s and then Lido, which is the operator of Staked Eth and liquid staked Eth. And I think the reason being one early days, I think in folks who haven't kept up with it recently, it seems like they've put together enough donations plus loans. I think they're a little cagey about what's a donation and what's a loan, but enough ETH to kind of fill the hole across AAVE and a bunch of other kind of defi protocols and some private donations and things of that sort and some recovered ETH that they stole back from the hacker on Arbitrum. But effectively I think the big exposures and the knock on effects were quickly after the hack. AAVE was very fast to make this whole statement about how they believe that the kelp RS eth on L1 is still fully backed and the exposure is limited to L2s. And I think the implicit statement there was basically like, hey, if you're a depositor on L1 you're good. If you're L2 you're like subordinated to the L1, which is obviously, I think the thesis on ETH has always been oh, if I'm on L2, I get all the security guarantees of L1 with a cheaper gas and all the bridge tokens have the same rights. And clearly the intention there was maybe that's not the case. So a lot of these L2s, Arbitrum mantle, a few others have had to kind of step up and resolve this. Otherwise who's going to participate on defi on this L2 if anytime there's a hack, they're basically first loss for folks on Ethereum Core L1. The other was Staked Eth Lido Staked Eth. Part of the reason they have such a massive TVL is what we talked about before, which is these folks that do looping strategies, they borrow against their eth, they buy staked eth, they deposit the staked eth as collateral and kind of loop that and you know, get more returns off of the ETH inflation from staking rewards. If the ETH lending market collapsed, you know, the TVL for LIGO state ETH would definitely drop. And so there was these kind of knock on effects unrelated to people who were even doing anything with Kelp rse, which is why I think this was a kind of situation where everyone was willing to put this 160,000 ETH together for the bailout because if they didn't there would be some pretty serious consequences.
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A
Yeah, let's zoom in on that. So there's this effort called United Defi and it's an effort for a recovery process to remediate this hack. And it's led, I believe by AAVE and some of the other big industry DEFI leaders. What are your thoughts on this and can you break down for our listeners exactly what's going on with this recovery effort? Like what steps are they going to take to try to write this?
- [20:45]
D
Yeah, so the recovery effort broadly is from my understanding, a combination of Loans, primarily mantle, making a loan to Defi United and other participants, just directly donating ETH to make the protocols whole, essentially erase the bad debt. What's interesting here, though, is a. There's the whole governance side of things. All of these protocols, like, they're saying that they're going to be able to do this, and they likely will, but they'll have to have governance proposals that pass, and there's probably going to be some expectation of, like, okay, if I'm bailing out some users of a DEFI protocol, are we getting something in return? I think that remains to be answered. The other is kind of this implicit. Like, I think some folks will take the stance that, hey, I wasn't a depositor in these protocols. If I'm like a holder of Arbitrum or any of the other protocol treasury tokens, like, why are we bailing them out? And isn't there some moral hazard? Like, if we're just going to keep bailing out every DEFI hack, then of course these people are going to deposit in these vaults at extremely low rates. And does that set a good precedent for the industry? It's almost like we're kind of looping all the way back to why Bitcoin and to some extent the rest of decentralized finance start in the first place.
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A
Well, it is interesting because Charlie and I were talking about it before the stream because we were thinking through, okay, this Defi United is going to get together, they're going to pull. They're going to take loans and pull together assets and take on risk to try to unwind these staked ETH positions. But who gets to keep, you know, who gets to keep the bag when all of this is done? Right.
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C
There's ETH underlying that is still staked, that there was like the, the liquid token was issued. Yeah, that's what was stolen. So I like, at some point, like, when does this, when do the, when does this come back to the underlying staked eth?
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A
Yeah, like, do the Kelp DAO users get made whole. Do the companies orchestrating this bailout, are they going to keep a piece? I mean, to your. I just kind of speaking to your point, this does create a kind of philosophical quandary and a huge governance issue for Defi.
- [22:57]
D
Yeah, for sure. And then there's the other aspect, which is like, if this, if this hack were bigger, right, if the exposure were two or three times the size, then, you know, these Treasuries might not have been able to even cover the whole, like, to some extent they're fortunate that it was only the $280 million of exposure. But yeah, whose obligation is it to kind of COVID this whole. Obviously it kind of makes sense for AAVE and like the AAVE protocol Treasury, because even though they weren't the ones that got hacked, they were supporting this as collateral. And if they don't do the bailout, then basically, you know, everyone's going to exit AAVE and and then the value of the protocol will go down. But for these L2s, like, it is a philosophical moral quandary, like who deserves bailouts and who doesn't. Once you start bailing out people, there's an expectation that if you're going to bail out a $280 million hack, maybe there's a $20 million hacks hack next week. Do they deserve the bailout and on what terms?
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A
Jay, this has been really fun. I've got to run to go bring up our next guest, but Charlie's got
- [24:03]
C
a few closing questions.
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A
Have a great week, man.
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C
Okay. Is this the end of looping as we know it? Looping's been like the secret industry wide hack. Is this the end of looping your DEFI yield?
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D
Yes, and I think primarily not in the ways that people are thinking. So first, I believe that if DEFI wants to grow, they need to attract more institutional capital. And institutions are not going to underwrite massive unbounded EVM smart contract risk. They want auditable contracts. And so there's one aspect of this which is that institutions are not going to deposit into these massive pooled markets where your collateral is being used to be lent to someone else so that they can do a looping trade. That's just not realistic. But the other reason I think is that DEFI broadly found itself in this weird local maxima where you want to get more and more tvl. And what's the easiest thing to attract? It's these people looping on token emissions. Basically, that's what staked ETH is. And to some extent you can keep doing that, but then you need to attract capital from outside the circular economy. You need to get people who want to borrow against their Bitcoin to do things in the real world or bring other assets on chain. And these kind of things require better primitives and different primitives than the ones that looping, you know, these kind of looping driven decisions enable. So I think we'll see a shift towards, you know, morphos isolated markets. I think we'll see a shift towards, you know, institutions looking for, you know, either whether it's via DLCs that Legos is building or other solutions, kind of isolated risk so that they can get the benefits of non custodial and trustless finance without you know, this, these kind of protocol risk. But I do think that we might have seen the peak of looping and you know there's like the, the level of leverage in the space particularly just to turn a, you know, a 2 or 3% staking reward into 10 or 12% was, was kind of crazy.
- [26:10]
C
Okay, so this hack happened, I forget like it seems like two weeks over two weeks ago and the story keeps going on, it's still top line. It's been a while since we had like a crypto defi story that was this top of mind for this long. My last question is what happens next? I don't know. What's the next tactical couple steps in this hack? Remediation, patching the holes of the DEFI ecosystem. What do you think happens next over the next few weeks?
- [26:43]
D
Yeah, I think there's the recovery efforts which are still very complicated. You think about, oh they have all this eth that they're going to make people whole with. Well these protocols are all like semi decentralized. They're like decentralized but there's multi sig upgrades and things that they could do. But they actually need to find a technical path to kind of erase the bad debt and make everyone whole. But then there's also if you want to attract incremental users after this, what are you going to do? So I think these protocols are going to need to start competing not just on the returns that they provide, but also the risk. Like what are the decisions this protocol is making so that my dollars won't end up lost like the 280 million that were prior. So I think that will be the primary focus for these protocols is like how do you differentiate? Not by the massive APYS you can pay out and the looping incentives and whatever else, but how, how do you keep people's funds safe? Because at the end of the day you're going to want to attract more capital that's not currently on chain. There's only so much TVL that you can kind of invent out of thin air. And so I think risk will become top of mind whether it's by setting more limits, more security around bridges and maybe it is a shift to, you know, something that has kind of more auditable features and less kind of unbounded risk.
- [28:09]
C
Jay Patel, thank you so much for joining Remote. We'll keep the we'll keep things locked down here in Vegas. Thank you for joining and see you again next week.
- [28:20]
D
Take care.
- [28:20]
C
Adios again. We are live from Las Vegas. So next you stick around. Don't leave. We have BTC Inc. CEO Brandon Green on his way up to the block space studio here at the Venetian. But before that, a word from our sponsor. Don't leave. We're bringing in the head honcho of the conference here momentarily now. We're from our Clean. From our sponsor, CleanSpark.
- [28:46]
A
We are CleanSpark, America's Bitcoin miner. A publicly traded company with the largest operating hash rate powered entirely by self operated infrastructure across four states. This is our proof of work. We are setting the standard for what's next. Learn more about the intersection of energy and bitcoin@cleanspark.com all right, y', all, welcome back. Thank you for hanging in with us there. We have got Brandon Green, the newly minted CEO of BTC Inc. It's not that it's somewhat new. It's, it's. It's pretty fresh.
- [29:27]
E
Yeah. Still. Still fresh.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Yeah. So thanks for taking time, man. I know it's super busy for you. Obviously y' all are running the conference, so we appreciate you carving out some time to hop on the stream. Just to dive right into it. What are your thoughts and feelings about Bitcoin Vegas 2026? It just seems like the conference keeps upping the ante each year. No, no pun intended, but just curious how you're feeling about this week.
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E
Week? Yeah, we were all in on this conference.
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B
So.
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E
Keeping the gambling theme going? No, like we went into this event kind of being like, okay, it's bear market, you know, vibes will be a little more muted. We'll be a little honed in on kind of, you know, fixing problems, solving, you know, issues that have come up in the past, bull market, et cetera, et cetera. It has not felt like a bear market conference. It has felt very fun, very high vibes. I feel like all the right people are here. The, you know, people that are most upset about the conference are the ones that secretly have FOMO and are staying home. And so it's, it's been like a fun experience. And it's, you know, every year it's just great to see everybody. And I feel like, you know, this is at least the one place where, you know, kind of everyone across the industry is going to be there. You get to meet up with old friends. So it's been, it's been really fun in that Way too our mark that
- [30:41]
C
the hall conference is absolutely popping off this year. I don't know if it's like the Venetian and the more open layout, but I cannot make it through the halls without like 10 minions stopping me.
- [30:54]
E
Yeah, no, it is fun. I think that's like something that has emerged this year. It wasn't really a thing last year, but yeah, I was, I was actually telling Colin on the way up here. It's just like you walk through, there's all sorts of people. You know, there's random people you don't know too. It's like a fun vibe of all of it. But yeah, I mean, you know, it's like these, these bear markets. Even though it doesn't feel like a bear market here, it's still this moment where you kind of get to just like, see everyone. The egos are down, everyone's just happy to be here. And, you know, if the price maybe hits 80k, then, you know, that's even more fun. So. Yeah.
- [31:27]
C
Yeah.
- [31:27]
A
I think this area, this venue is particularly suited for those hallway conversations. There are all these little honeycomb hallways, you know.
- [31:34]
E
All right.
- [31:35]
C
I can't actually escape the whole conference. I don't know how to leave the whole conference. Yeah.
- [31:39]
A
And when going back to what you were saying, this has really become a conference where, I mean, people obviously come here to get deals done, but it's also a way for people to connect with industry friends and really kind of keep fostering those relationships. And that's one thing that I think is incredible about it. You have so many people here. You, you, you're walking down the hallway and then you're bound to just get caught up. Especially if you work in the industry for a while, just with just a bunch of random side conversations. And on the note of attendance, I don't know if you can answer this. Last year, I believe the tally was somewhere around 30,000. We wrote about it in our newsletter. Curious what is going to clock in at this year?
- [32:10]
E
Yeah, so I told Colin before this, I actually can't answer this question because we're a public company now. We have to like file public filings now to say these kinds of things. So. But he told me he's gonna ask it anyway, so. Yeah. Can't say. Check out the Edgar filings. Woo. Public company stuff. But it's been a great event and, you know, turnout's been fantastic.
- [32:30]
C
Yeah.
- [32:31]
A
I will say, at least from what I've seen in terms of turnout for it being a bear market, like a good presence, both from the retail and bitcoiner enthusiast side and from companies this
- [32:43]
B
year,
- [32:45]
A
on the note of the bear market, obviously Bitcoin magazine and the bitcoin conference has a strong brand presence. People want to come to this conference, but you do have to think about structuring a conference different in a bear market versus a bull market, obviously. What are some of the hardest challenges and considerations that you all had to go through when devising this conference? You know, probably like a laundry list.
- [33:04]
B
Right.
- [33:04]
A
But, like, what are some of the ones that pop out?
- [33:06]
E
Yeah, we should just name all of the controversies we just barreled through, like, full steam ahead. No, I mean, that is. The thing is, like, a lot of conferences, and I'll say this about, like, conferences broadly, not even in this space, is like, you know, there's a. There's an advantage to sort of planning out the content way in advance because you can lock in the speakers, you lock in the programming, you get the agenda out. Everyone knows what's happening. You get to build hype around that. It's fantastic. We don't do that. We basically wait to the very last minute to get the agenda out. Because bitcoin's always changing. There's always new stuff coming on. There's always new speakers we got to pull in. And there's so much attention and excitement around the event that, you know, some of the biggest speakers don't confirm until just a couple of weeks out. And so, yeah, we try and stay on topic. There's been obviously a few different topics we've had to lean into heavily this year. I won't say the Q word, but, you know. Yeah, so. So I'm not gonna say it. I'm not gonna say it. You're welcome. So. But yeah, there's just like, there's all these different topics, all these things people care about, obviously. Like the coding country day, our policy day. There was a heavy angle on Free Samurai, freeing the developers. That was something that, you know, it. It was. Obviously, it's been an issue for. For years now, but it's something that really built in momentum over the past, like, two weeks leading into the event, which is awesome. Sometimes I feel like people don't understand, like, what our game is here. Like, that's our goal is if we can use the conference to build momentum around fearing the developers. Like, we've done our job right. You know, that's what we did with Ross. You know, like, we wanted to do that again. And so it's been like, a cool experience getting to see that sort of organically build and hopefully we can ride some momentum to make something happen there. But needless to say, and I know I'm rambling, is like, you got to really lean into what's going on in bitcoin in the moment in order to build these agendas, and it's not an easy task.
- [35:10]
C
Okay, so I've lost all my money in Vegas, so we have to leave. We have to go somewhere else. You guys just announced we're going back to Nashville a little more. It's. How do I say, A little more family friendly of a town. You could say, tell them, oh, brother.
- [35:27]
A
Go to Broadway at like, at 10, 10pm on.
- [35:31]
C
Yeah, well, I'm not a. Not a good invite. Many bachelorette parties. No. Tell me about this. Talk about the Nashville return.
- [35:39]
E
Yeah, well, so, you know, first and foremost, Nashville's home for us. Nashville is where Bitcoin magazine is headquartered. It's. It's home for me personally, Colin. You know, we. We love Nashville. And I actually think that there's a lot of aspects of Nashville that just fits so well into the bitcoiner ethos. It's a lot low pressure fun. You know, you don't have to dress up and. And show up and be seen and all this kind of stuff. You just get to hang out with people you love, have a good time, drink a beer, dance to some songs, listen to some music. It's a. It's a fun town. And then it also has fantastic infrastructure to throw an event. It's easy to get to. You know, it's. It's one of the most centrally located places for someone to drive to. So, you know, all the people that just hate jumping on planes, this is the easiest event to get to for. For a lot of reasons. And so it's. We love doing it in 2024. Obviously, we did some fun things in 2024 to make it extra special. We'll see what we can cook up next year. But yeah, we are so excited to get back to Nashville.
- [36:42]
A
Yeah, I'm really stoked for. For that, man. Obviously, I'm in a biased as a Tennessee and an Ashevillian, but I do think it's a really good town. I assume it'll be in the convention center again.
- [36:49]
E
Yeah, back in the.
- [36:50]
A
I mean, and that's perfect because if you want to. I mean, one of the things that's really nice about the Venetian and Las Vegas is you can do everything in the casino. And so there's a really nice element to where the conference lets out. And all your happy hours are like, within One walking distance in the facility.
- [37:05]
B
Right.
- [37:05]
A
I think Nashville has the same thing. A little more open air, though. You can go from the convention center to Broadway. You know, you can go to second Ave. You can. Even if you want to do some stuff more low key, you could hop over to East Nashville super easily.
- [37:16]
E
And it's like you just had to
- [37:17]
A
plug East Nashville, dude. You know, if y' all are going to the conference next year, definitely check out East Nashville for some good eats and some. Some bar night hopping after the conference. But, you know, when I think about. I think about going back to Nashville and just where y' all have been for the conference. So for those of you.
- [37:33]
C
A quick.
- [37:34]
A
Some quick BTC Inc. History from an erstwhile reporter at Bitcoin magazine. The first bitcoin conference was in a glorified parking garage in San Francisco. One of the best conferences I've ever been to. Freaking loved it. It was really bold at the time. Companies took a big risk. 2020 hit Covid happened. Y' all couldn't do it in San Francisco again. Shelved the conference for a year, and then made a bold decision to go to Miami. I just. I still remember the hit pieces. You know, there was so many articles.
- [38:00]
E
The super Spreader event.
- [38:01]
A
The Super Spreader event because. And it was. It was one. It was the biggest bitcoin conference ever at the time. And so. And it was right in the middle of COVID Super refreshing, though, because it was like, people willing to get out and have fun and do in person events. But it was controversial for certain people, but in a lot of regards, just cemented Bitcoin magazine and BTC Inc. As a place for these conferences going forward.
- [38:22]
B
Yeah.
- [38:23]
E
You know, that event was also, like, peak hall monitor era of, like, media, where, you know, their whole job was just to, like, monitor the fun you're having and make sure everyone knows that these people are having fun and it's bad. And I remember, like, the New York Times piece on that. I think the final line of it maybe is the Rolling Stones piece. I forget which one. You know, they went and interviewed a, like, dancer from 11, you know, just to, like, ask her what she thought about the conference. And, you know, she, like, shrugs. She's like, it's taking over. That's how they ended it, you know, and it's like this. I don't know, man.
- [38:57]
A
I don't. Yeah, people are coming and spending money.
- [39:00]
E
Yeah. Yeah, it's. That was a special event. And, you know, like, one thing that I do love about the Nashville venue that it's hard to do in Miami beach, it's hard to do here in Vegas is to like build a little more grunge to it, a little more flow to it. Because, because these, these venues are so built for this that it's all just plug and play and it's, you know, I think it's a little sanitized. Right. And what I liked about svn, what I liked about Mana Winwood in Miami, what I love about Nashville is you have sort of the venue where the expo hall is some stages and then you can just bust straight out and like have a fun experience on the town. And, and that's what I'm excited to get back to.
- [39:42]
A
You can really interact with the city for sure.
- [39:46]
C
Well, I was gonna throw a curveball question shoot and you may have to 8k this or something, I don't know. Okay, so I was, we've organized a small 200 person conference a couple weeks ago. So I'm thinking about from a conference organizing perspective, how you budget and everything. I was talking to somebody, I think a local Las Vegas person and they were like, well, you know, the Las Vegas Mafia is real. It costs more than you think. Throw an event. Is there anything you can comment about that direction? Because they were saying like, you know, there's some pipers you have to pay along the way perhaps.
- [40:19]
E
I don't think the Las Vegas Mafia is publicly traded. So no, it's really like we haven't had that issue at all. What we do have to run into is, especially in these like highly set up conference towns is it's all union labor. You know, you kind of have to go through the right contract or contacts in order to get the people who build this thing. I mean, when you look at an event of our scale, you're talking about hundreds on hundreds of people that are in the background helping make sure this event is successful. From the catering to the AV to the security, to the production, you know, build out, to the tear down. I mean it's, it's a massive effort to get it all built up and torn down and facilitated. And so, you know, like all of those things for sure, like costs money. There's just no way around that. You know, it costs money. It costs money everywhere. But you know, once you get into towns like this, yeah, it's very unionized. It's even more expensive. There's all these rules. It's just something you have to deal with. But you know, we're used to that at this point.
- [41:21]
A
So as a closing question, Brandon, going Back to my ramblings about the history of the conference. You know, y' all been all around. You've done it in a bunch of different cities. It's gone from a conference of like 2,000 people to, you know, at its peak, you know, last year, over 30,000. When you reflect on the growth of the conference, what do you think about in terms of what it means for the trajectory of the company and where you want to see the conference grow in the future?
- [41:45]
E
Yeah, it's great question. I mean, when I think about the growth of the conference, I think it really just maps the growth of bitcoin. And, you know, the whole reason we do this is to try and move bitcoin forward. You know, I tell the team every year, it's like, if we can take every single person who comes to this conference and bring them one step further along their bitcoin journey, wherever they are. To the most expert bitcoin technical folks, all the way to people who literally heard the word the first time when they walked in the building, we want everyone to fall a little further down the rabbit hole and in that way sort of push bitcoin forward. And so when I look at our growth, I think it comes from us authentically wanting to do amazing things for bitcoin and then just mapping to bitcoin's growth. And so when I look at where we've come from, I really just look at how far bitcoin's come. And to our very first event in 2019. That was the middle of the civil War, really. It was right at the end of the civil war. You know, bitcoin cash had lost handedly. They were fighting with Craig and bsv at that point. Lightning had sort of just really gone main net. And we wanted to just sort of repair the community, give people a place to go have fun again and connect and be bitcoiners. And I think bitcoin at the time was maybe, I don't know, $3,000.
- [43:17]
A
It made actually it. During that event, it pumped above. It was the fake summer pump.
- [43:22]
B
Above.
- [43:22]
E
Yeah, yeah.
- [43:23]
C
Winter 12 or 13. I bought a bunch of mining rigs at the top of that. That was a very expensive summer for me.
- [43:29]
E
Congratulations. Yeah, thank you. This is why you don't buy the bitcoin mining rigs. You just buy conference tickets and it actually saves you money.
- [43:37]
C
How do I trade conference tickets? Can I like a liquid conference ticket?
- [43:42]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [43:43]
E
Four tickets equals one asic. So that's the current exchange rate. No, but yeah, that was a crazy summer. We did. We Bounce back hard. But yeah, I mean, I just think back to like that time and then, you know, we had obviously to go through Covid, but then we had el Salvador in 2021. We had, you know, sort of the beginning of the institutionalization of the space. You had the mining industry really take off around then. And it's just like the meteoric growth of bitcoin, not just from a price perspective, but from a fact that it is impacting every single major institution or vertical of the global economy at this point. And sometimes in small ways, but in some way. And I think that that is just an amazing, amazing thing to think about as you take a step back and just look at how far we've come. And so when I look to the future of this event, Maybe it's Bitcoin 2035 will do on the moon at some point, maybe a Mars colony bitcoin conference. But yeah, I mean, we're going to be there as humanity moves forward using bitcoin as its money.
- [44:56]
A
Brandon Green, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to join us, man.
- [44:59]
C
Appreciate it.
- [45:00]
E
Thank you, man.
- [45:00]
A
Congratulations on the conference, man. Seriously, great job as always.
- [45:03]
E
Thanks so much.
- [45:04]
C
Thank you.
- [45:04]
E
He's gonna love you guys.
- [45:05]
C
He's gonna go keep the wheels on the bus. So you are free to go. We're gonna keep on with our stream.
- [45:12]
E
Thank you guys.
- [45:12]
A
Thanks, Brandon. All right, and before we move on to our stories for the week, quick word from our sponsor, Luxor. This episode is brought to you by Luxor's Commander Bitcoin miner management software built for enterprise operations. Commander gives you real time fleet monitoring bulk remote commands across your fleet. And Intelligent Miner, an automated profitability engine that runs every five minutes, adjusting power settings to live hash rate and energy markets. ERCOT back tests show over 10% more profitability with intelligent mining versus binary mining. Commander Pro is $100 per megawatt or a 25 basis point pool fee adder. So roughly half the cost of competitors. And it's free with a 60 day free trial. Get started at Luxor. Tech forward slash Commander. All right, Charlie, I guess we'll close with news, the tether stuff because I think maybe we'll just spend the next five minutes or so riffing on our thoughts on the conference, kind of as an add on to that segment. So I mean, what's been your biggest takeaway? I know you said you haven't really been in the conference very much, but the like you said, the hallway conferences are the conference, right? It's part of the experience.
- [46:15]
C
Yeah. So it's funny, I feel that people who are online, who are not at the conference actually get a better sense for the conference is like, just by they're able to watch the talks. I haven't watched a single talk. I've mainly walked the floor of the conference twice now, the booths, and just chatted with a bunch of people. I would say, like, the main thing about this conference is that everyone is here. And because of that, it is the best place to have that once a year touch point with someone you don't typically get FaceTime with. And it happens organically in the hallway. So my assessment of the conference is I heard all these people saying we're not going to go, or that this conference is cooked or like, it's a. Has been. Maybe there's a different take on programming or like, vendors. But as far as, like, who's at the conference in the hallways, who I'm talking to, it could be 2020. It could be 2021. I'm having the same very important, like, useful, productive conversations just with the people who I've known for years now in the industry. So it's kind of. It's like a. It's like a mainstay touch point as far as, like, as far as like some specific takeaways. I thought that Brandon talked about it just a moment ago. The samurai topic and the Free Samurai rally is very popular among the plebs. I myself support the Free Samurai movement, but it was kind of interesting because there's the viral video of Kash Patel calling in to an empty crowd on the first day. And this was a point of contention for the Free Samurai people because they're like, why are you having the, you know, you know, one of the guys
- [48:13]
A
here, the director of the FBI, a guy who's part of the establishment that's putting these developers you like.
- [48:19]
C
Okay, this was really interesting because I, you know, I've been a little bit removed from the online discourse on this. What are your, what are your takes on this?
- [48:28]
A
I mean, my takes on this are a few things. I think one thing that the bitcoin conference does really well is, like, it does play a lot of sides and keeps a lot of allies. And some people, you know, spurn them because they think they're not purists enough or maximalist enough. That's fine. I don't think that actually, you know, all of the boycotting of the conference, like, ultimately doesn't. Didn't matter. Like, all the companies that I would want at a conference if I were running this are here and there's.
- [48:51]
C
Yeah, all the companies are here. That's like something a lot of the people say. Like nobody's coming.
- [48:55]
A
Can't tell. Yeah, all the companies are here. And I, it didn't seem like, I'm sure that they had to have some give or take and some leeway on their sponsorship packages. Right. Because it's not a bull market. But all of the big companies that have sponsored in the past are here. The exhibitors place is packed. So I mean on the one hand, you know, obviously the BTC Inc. Has a close relationship with the Trump administration. Trump came to speak at Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville. They've had Eric Trump American Bitcoin announced their launch here last year. You know, they have always kind of kept that relationship close. So I think, you know, having cash on is just another thing of like how can we get a high profile person in politics to our conference? Because at the end of the day, negative or positive press that's going to generate press for your conference is just a smart move. It does kind of betray though this schism in the bitcoin industry, right, where it's like as the suits come in, there are a lot of cipher punk minded people who don't want any of those people involved in what the, in the conference and in the, this ecosystem and this culture. And I understand where they're coming from to a point, but you also have to understand that they're running a business and they're trying to make this conference as big and as good as it can be. And the headliners and the suits bring money and attention.
- [50:05]
B
Right?
- [50:06]
C
Yeah, it's, it's really interesting because I would say that the bitcoin conference is the big tent conference. There's even stuff that is like not really bitcoin focused which is here they put the less bitcoin aligned vendors and booths around the edge of the expo room. But what's interesting is I would say that among the different camps in bitcoin there are some which have irreconcilable differences and yet everyone's here in the same room. I wonder how long that can last. I would love for it to be able to last forever, but there are some hard lines.
- [50:41]
A
Which people will drop? Yeah, I mean I think some people will drop, but ultimately I think that the, the bitcoin conference is a lot like Twitter. Like no, like can't leave. Well, the network effects are so strong at this point that, and I'm not saying they're doing this but they could kind of trash the conference. And there would still probably be some interest because this is the conference that people go to, not just to do deals, like I was saying with Brandon, but to meet up with their friends. And so, you know, you. You almost have this mind share that I think is going to be really hard to replicate. And the branding is so strong, you know, and I do.
- [51:14]
C
It has the network effect.
- [51:15]
A
It has the network effects. And I will just, again, just to highlight that point, a lot of companies are still here. The one question I really do have for them going forward, I saw a lot of bitcoin miners sponsoring this year, like CleanSpark did, the energy Stage. They did. They had a huge booth. They had a networking space, too. Believe some other miners were also pretty high up in the sponsorship tier. I wonder how many of those guys resign next year. Like, how. How is this. Will this conference still be worth it for them? And that's kind of one place that I'm at because that's. That's a significant source of revenue for the conference.
- [51:45]
C
That's a good angle because all the miners are switching to AI. This is not the AI conference. That's actually a notable thing that's lacking from this conference is that there's very little discussion about AI. There's like, you know, there's, you know, like payments Rails and there's like, you know, payment protocols discussion. But it's mainly like developer talk. As far as I'm aware. There's not much AI like platforming even on the main stage, really, because there's like, frankly, not a lot of crossover to talk about unless you're a bitcoin miner. And that's crazy because it's a core of the American bitcoin industry. It is like the backbone in the American industry, the American bitcoin miner. And they're pivoting to AI. Where. Yeah. Where's this core base go?
- [52:32]
A
Yeah, I'm really curious. I think some companies, like Clean Spark, they're still going to keep a lot of bitcoin mining, so they might still find value coming here.
- [52:38]
D
Right.
- [52:38]
A
But you have to wonder about, like, the irons of the world, maybe the Terror Wolves, things like that. But anyway, overall, I thought it's been a really good conference. There are things I love about Vegas. I'm happy that it's not going to be here next year.
- [52:50]
C
I'm also glad it's leaving Vegas. I'll say, you know, I can only come here, so I can only fly into the desert so long.
- [52:55]
A
Yeah. Also, it kind of feels like a forced marathon. You know, it's like you don't really want to do it, but you know, you're gonna have to run the strip a little bit.
- [53:02]
C
There's. There's too many screens in Las Vegas. There's not enough, like, cool, smoky casino joints.
- [53:09]
A
Well, this is the thing that I've been really disappointed in, walking through the casinos. There's no allure or romance to it because it's all just Candy Crush slot machines.
- [53:18]
C
Get. Play Candy Crush on your phone. It's the same thing.
- [53:20]
A
Exactly. And you go by the craps and the roulette and the blackjack tables, and they're empty. But anyway, we do not endorse gambling here on the Block Space podcast. Except if it's on cryptocurrency.
- [53:31]
C
Y you're trading shitters on Dex Critter. Okay.
- [53:34]
A
All righty. We're going to move on to our last item today and the only news item, this deal with Tether and Kanan. But first, a quick word from our sponsor, Lygos. Hedge funds are getting liquidated. Is your Bitcoin safe? It's not just Bitcoin's price drying up whales. Lenders, big hedge funds, are reeling after the liquidation events on October 10th and February 5th. Counterparty risk is rampant. So it's more important than ever to know who holds your keys. And with Lygos, you're. You are always in control of your keys. Don't be the next FCX or Celsius victim. Get yourself signed up with Lygos. If you're thinking about getting into BTC lending. They are block spaces preferred non custodial lender. They use Bitcoin native smart contracts to make sure that you always are in control of your Bitcoin. No other counterparties are. No one holds your keys except for you. There's no wrapping, no bridging, no rehab authentication. You can get competitive rates for as low as 10% APR. Go to Lygos Finance to learn more.
- [54:30]
C
Okay, we got one story, one news story, and it's obviously Tether related, so bear with us. This is a story we also published. Even though we're all on the road, we put this out. Canaan and Tether announce that they are
- [54:45]
A
building a little collaborative ASIC build here. So let me get this up on the screen. Canaan and Tether have a mining infrastructure collaboration that they just announced this week. And what this is is Kanan is building hash boards for Tether and then Tether is then taking those hash boards and they are building the rest of the shoebox miner and adding on the control boards and other infrastructure. I thought this was really interesting just in context of a lot of the stuff that we talked to Ethan about. And before we get into the nitty gritty here, just a. A few more details from this. The order I'm quoting directly from the Block Space Media article here. The order follows a 2025 proof of concept project conducted under a framework agreement between Kane and Tether and Acme Swisstech, a Swiss company.
- [55:38]
C
Acme, like the Wile E. Coyote?
- [55:40]
A
Oh, it is. Oh, gosh. Acme. So the Acme Swiss tech company, they're the ones, it seems like they build bitcoin mining design. So I'm assuming Tether worked for them and for things like who cooling and other infrastructure for these designs. And it's specifically going to be an emerging cooled mining system. So that's where the Swiss company comes in, helping Tether with some of the infrastructure and hardware for that. And the Tether is going to be bringing their own hash boards as well. This is super interesting to me because it plays back. Oh, do you have.
- [56:09]
C
No, I was just gonna say immersion. Like, yeah, everybody's doing water cooled.
- [56:12]
A
Yeah, it's. It's super interesting to see Tether plant the flag in the ground for immersion. I also really like this collaborative structure that they have with Kanan because it plays into what I was talking about with Ethan. It seems like we've reached a point where the OEMs are starting to get really creative with how they're structuring deals and how they're working with some of their bigger clients. Because what this reads like to me is Kanan's in a position where they're like, Tether doesn't want to just come in and buy our own machines. They don't want to buy our air cooled immersion or water cooled models. But they're willing to buy the hash boards and build their own rigs to spec for what they need it for. And I think that if you were in a seller's market for asics like we've seen basically, obviously in every bull market, even in some bear markets, there was enough buying pressure from the public markets that it was still the OEMs and the manufacturers like Bitman can and Microbt still had all the cards when they were negotiating. Now they have lost their largest customer with the public miners. A lot of these guys aren't buying new machines we were talking about with Ethan. The ASIC market is just completely turned on its head. So they're going to have to work with these companies a little bit more. And so I can't help but see this in conversation with the Luxor deal with what's Miner and some of the chatter I've heard from the larger public and private miners that are at this conference who are saying look, Bitmain is coming to us now and they really are trying to keep our business because all that deal flow that they were used to is dried up. I mean Ethan said The number what 3 to 5 billion annually in ASIC sales at the peak and it's clearly nowhere near that right now, at least for the new market.
- [57:37]
C
Yeah. So I think it's, it's equally interesting to me that it's Tether and Canaan and not Tether and Microbt or Tether and Bitmain. Canaan is the smallest of the major bitcoin mining manufacturers. You and I were trying to remember exactly what the more breakdown of rig makeup across the entire bitcoin mining industry or bitcoin mining industry is. It's like 80% Bitmain, 1015 plus percent
- [58:08]
A
micro BT and give or take 5% for Canon.
- [58:11]
C
Yeah, ballpark. And so that's like the scale here. So it's interesting. Tether conspicuously does not have this deal with Bitmain announced or maybe even like working on it. But Canaan's kind of with their Avalon series I would say always. They've always probably been one of the more, they've been a little more agile over the years. They've thrown, they've, they've taken a little more risks which makes sense because you know, if you're the smallest you can try to gain market share through some clever, you know, clever pivots. So this is really interesting. This also on the back of Tether announcing their mining, their mdk, their mining development kit which if you're not familiar, so I don't think we referenced in the article but like this is kind of a full stack modular ASIC management tool.
- [59:03]
A
Sounds a lot like Foreman or like what Luxor is doing with Commander.
- [59:06]
C
Yeah, it's a little bit of a hybrid of. Yeah, I think it's a hybrid. I don't think it's firmware but it's like everything but so also pretty interesting. Tether, the largest, probably largest private bitcoin miner through their electron arm and so they have a hash rate to demo all this stuff to test it all out. You know I think if you've got, I don't know how public it is but they've got many exahash it gives you a lot of, like, leeway to take this partnership with Kaden and deploy that onto your own stuff at scale. You don't have to get these other counterparties involved to be like, and now we have this deal, and now we have to have somebody to run it. And you're like, no, you have that all in house. So will be interesting to see them. I mean, I assume that they've been. I. Well, I talked to some tether folks. They have been testing their MDK internally for quite some time now. So this is a long time coming to put it out.
- [60:01]
A
Yeah, I'm. I think you're right to point out. It's interesting that they're doing this with Kanan. I think maybe that speaks to you. It might be a little bit easier to work with one of the smaller guys because, you know, they. They really, really want to increase their market share and they're maybe a little more collaborative. But I do just.
- [60:15]
B
Yeah.
- [60:15]
C
McCree does not seem like a very collaborative person.
- [60:18]
B
Yeah.
- [60:18]
A
You know, and I just want to zoom in on that point one more time. I bet we will see more of these types of deals over the next year. You're going to probably see more bespoke deals between the OEMs and the Bitcoin miners who are purchasing their equipment, maybe trying to build some custom stuff. But I think we can leave it there and then get back to the conference circuit.
- [60:40]
C
But we're going to go back to the conference, make sure the wheels stay on the bus, and make sure that we capture all of the viral moments which are yet to happen today. Otherwise, you can catch me on the Bitcoin magazine live stream at 3pm PST when I'm on the main stage hosting a panel. Otherwise, this show is brought to you by CleanSpark, NASDAQ. Tigger Clsk, thank you very much for watching Blockspace live Monday, Wednesday, Friday at noon Eastern. We will catch you later.