Three Alaska Native tribes filed a lawsuit to stop a controversial gold mining operation east of Nome. The tribes say a permit just granted by the U.S. Corps of Engineers will allow the destruction of salmon habitat and other important environmental elements in a pristine estuary. The mining process involves extracting ore from material dredged from river and ocean beds.
On the other side of the state, residents of Wrangell are concerned about a gold mine just over the border in Canada. A new report finds heavy metals in groundwater on the Alaska side.
Welcome back to The Mining Pod! Today, Tyler Page (CEO) and Chris Totin (CCO) from Cipher Mining join us to talk about their strategic pivot from pure-play bitcoin mining to hybrid approach with AI/HPC data centers, SoftBank's $50M investment, the ins-and-outs of building HPC data centers, and why they're betting big on the convergence of bitcoin mining and artificial intelligence workloads.
• SoftBank invested $50M in Cipher through private placement
• Barber Lake site: 300MW capacity with substation
• Texas has 397GW generation in queue over 5 years
• Construction workforce growing only 1% annually
Timestamps:
00:00 Start
00:33 Intro Tyler
01:44 Intro Chris
03:55 Access to capital
06:43 Debt financing
10:37 Selling BTC for operations
16:29 Barber Lake update
20:24 Agnostic greenfield site design
25:02 HPC vs mining design challenges
31:49 Stingray
34:32 Finding facility buyers
37:01 Softbank
39:47 Greenfield vs retrofit
45:15 Are all miners flipping to HPC?
48:47 Hybrid sites
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Published twice weekly, "The Mining Pod" interviews the best builders and operators in the Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining landscape. Subscribe to get notifications when we publish interviews on Tuesday and a news show on Friday!
The world will see lower economic growth due to tariffs and tariff uncertainty, according to the OECD. Global economic growth will fall below three percent this year, and the slowdown is expected to be most concentrated in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and China. Also on the program: how steel and aluminum tariffs could drive up grocery prices, and the economic pros and cons of a small-market NBA Finals.
Caleb O. Brown hosted the Cato Daily Podcast for nearly 18 years, producing well over 4000 episodes. He has gone on to head Kentucky’s Bluegrass Institute. This is one among the best episodes produced in his tenure, selected by the host and listeners.
“Denial” is the single word that the Reason Foundation’s Peter Constant uses to describe the attitude many state governments have taken toward pension finance problems.
From the BBC World Service: The global economy is losing steam, according to the OECD, which now forecasts growth to fall to just 2.9% this year and next. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — which represents most of the world’s advanced economies — issued its warning as trade tensions between the U.S. and China continue to grow.
The man arrested in Colorado for an attack on people demonstrating in support of Israeli hostages being held by Hamas is facing a federal hate crime charge and multiple felonies. A second round of talks between Russia and Ukraine did not result in a ceasefire but the two countries did agree to a new prisoner swap. And, following months of political turmoil South Koreans are voting for a new president.
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Today's episode of Up First was edited by Eric Whitney, Ryland Barton, Kevin Drew, Lisa Thomson and Adriana Gallardo. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Zo van Ginhoven and our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
Plus: Lawyers from Meta challenge the European Commission’s crackdown on the company’s social-networking business. And chip giant TSMC forecasts limited impact from tariffs, remaining on track for record earnings. Kate Bullivant hosts.
Britain, alongside other European countries, faces rising threats to its security. But a bold new strategy to bolster its defence forces risks being underfunded. Investors may be losing faith in long-term government bonds as a safe haven (8:42). And why a surprising number of French adults are choosing to be baptised (16:27).