Bitcoin Conference Debrief - Heat Punks, Community Hubs, and Education

This year, the Bitcoin conference hit the road, bringing the largest gathering of sound money sovereigns to Nashville after several consecutive years in Miami, Florida. I was fortunate to be one of the 20,000+ attendees, along with my brother and closest friend. Throughout the week, I wore a variety of different “hats”, aiming to network, learn, and build relationships across several efforts. Here are my takeaways:

Overview

• Hash rate heating made a big appearance.
• Bitcoin community hubs continue to showcase high signal and value proposition.
• Nation-state adoption is coming.

Heat-Reuse Products on Display

The highlight of my week was connecting with many amazing bitcoiners advancing heating solutions powered by bitcoin mining. This new industry is growing with rapid innovation. In the expo hall alone, I found four companies working on products explicitly designed for bitcoin mining waste heat reuse.

Heat Core, a company formed under MicroBT, showcased one of their new bitcoin mining boilers, which employ hydro-cooled ASICs to deliver hot water for heating applications. These systems are used by MARA for their district heating project in Finland. Canaan also released a bitcoin mining boiler in addition to a new version of their space heater, the Nano 3. Green Hash had a similar system on display, using hydro miners with brazed plate heat exchangers to deliver heat to the intended use case, combined with an integrated liquid-to-air radiator (dry cooler) for rejecting excess heat. The included radiator is a nice touch, ensuring the water loop returning to the miners remains at the optimal temperature for machine cooling, even if not enough heat was pulled out of the system for reuse.

Fog Hashing, an immersion cooling infrastructure manufacturer, also had their systems on display. They offer solutions across a range of scales, from home mining and heat reuse to full-size, mega-miner heat rejection. Immersion tanks can also serve as bitcoin mining boilers, where the entire ASIC machine is submerged in non-conductive oil instead of targeting water cooling of the computer chips alone.

There was also a product from Superheat on display that I hadn’t seen before. This system takes the form factor of a traditional home water heater, with a bitcoin miner at the bottom that supplies heat energy to the tank. I wasn’t able to gather much info on the engineering of the system, so I’ll be sure to follow their progress in more detail.

Heat Punk Hashers

In addition to all the bitcoin heating products on display at the conference, this trip served as a reunion and get-together for various plebs who are laser-focused on the bitcoin heating industry. It’s been a great experience learning about miner-powered heating systems over the past six months. Through my research, I’ve connected with several innovators in the space.

We discussed our recent efforts, innovations, learnings, and most importantly, the challenges to overcome as we push innovation forward for this new method of residential and commercial heating. One of the challenges that stood out to me was tradesman education, maintenance, and repair. For integrated and high-performance bitcoin heating systems to manifest, plumbers, HVAC techs, and electricians need to be educated about the new solutions that they can offer and service. Conversely, those of us dedicated to pushing the ASIC heat reuse industry forward must learn from these tradesmen and understand how their expertise can help guide product, business, and system design.

Control is another challenge. Unlike traditional heating systems that thermostatically turn on and off to supply required heat to an intended application, bitcoin miners aren’t designed to cycle in a “bang-bang” manner. Instead, they like to run at steady state, with a constant stream of electricity to convert into heat energy. This introduces new complexities for controlled heating solutions. The two main ways of delivering optimal heat energy to a use case involve clocking down miner power to precisely meet the heat demand, or by running the miner at full power (more heat than needed) and dynamically controlling how much of the heat is reused or rejected to meet the demand. Both of these methods are more complex than on-off control, prompting further development for integrated heating solutions.

Bitcoin Citadels Are The Place To Be

Outside of the main conference, there were many side events hosted throughout the week. My personal favorites were put on by Bitcoin Park, Nashville’s physical bitcoin community hub. The park is based on a membership structure and offers a place to work, collaborate, educate, and host events for bitcoin and bitcoin-adjacent content. It’s become one of the highest signal communities in the world for bitcoiners. The members and hosts are astounding. I highly encourage you to check it out.

I’m a strong believer in physical bitcoin community hubs as a place to learn, educate, collaborate, and build together. That’s the beauty of bitcoin. We may all be focused on different projects and companies, but our mission is united. Having a place to call home base goes a long way and benefits both the members and community alike.

As you may know, I’m working to help build our very own bitcoin community hub in Denver, CO, called The Space, and I cannot wait for the building to be open. We’ve got an amazing team hustling to bring this thing to life from the ground up, and we’re very close. The Space will be the premier place for bitcoiners on the Rocky Mountain front range.

Politicians on Stage

This year’s conference featured former President Donald Trump as a keynote speaker. It’s the first time a President of the United States has attended the annual bitcoin gathering. RFK Jr., another candidate for the 2024 election, was also in attendance, along with 10 US Senators from across the nation. Bitcoin is gaining attention on the political stage. I’m convinced that support will be a necessary party platform for elections to come. Not doing so will simply be too damaging.

These next 18 months are going to be wild. Buckle up!

The conference was electric and the days were packed. If we didn’t get the chance to connect, or you’re just seeing my stuff and wanting to chat, please reach out! Next year, the conference will be held in Las Vegas. There’s no doubt, I’ll be there.