Bitcoin Miners: The Modern Day Wildcatters | 2023 Mining Week

Insights Avatar
Bitcoin Miners: The Modern Day Wildcatters | 2023 Mining Week

It’s the foundation of our economy, so the more energy we can consume, the better. We need to be able to consume more energy, and the more efficient we can be with it, the better. Bitcoin miners are really pushing the envelope on efficiency; we’re talking about liquid immersion cooling and all these different technologies that are being pioneered by bitcoin miners. That’s why I think bitcoin miners are the modern-day wildcatters.

You might even call them modern-day wildcatters, or the explorers who search the ends of the earth for untapped oil deposits, said Gideon Powell, the chief executive of Cholla Inc., a Texas-based petrochemical exploration and investment. Thinking about this from a capability standpoint, the compute cowboys are unlocking new power markets for data centers and thinking about the future of industrial manufacturing. It’s all in its infancy, he added.

Bitcoin miners are the modern-day wildcatters, pushing the innovation envelope and pioneering with demand response, cooling tech, power management strategies, and more. They are the ones unlocking new power markets for data centers and thinking about the future of industrial manufacturing.

CoinDesk talked with Powell for their Mining Week series about the three components needed to build data centers, why he’s betting on West Texas as a mining infrastructure hub, and how crypto mining innovations bleed out into the rest of the silicon-based economy.

Powell believes that Bitcoin is a critical pillar for the next phase of human advancement, and that it’s important to have a healthy marketplace of competition. He also discussed the importance of connectivity for data centers, the metaverse and AI as opportunities, and why he set up in Texas.

Bitcoin miners are the wildcatters building the initial stuff for the future of data centers, and they are pushing the absolute boundaries on bleeding-edge tech. They are the ones de-risking other technologies and solving big, complex challenges that the market needs.