Bitcoin mining may be destined for smaller, and better, things.
Industry execs see the industry shifting into smaller operations and the background of everyday life to such an extent that people will forget it is there.
It would be quite the shift for the OG digital asset, which currently relies on industrial-scale complexes spread across the globe to support its operation. Those massive mining facilities have evolved into a hot-button issue across the US as neighbors complain of deafening noise and officials worry about overextended energy grids.
But if Mike Colyer, the CEO of Foundry, is correct, that’ll all change. Foundry helps institutions mine and stake crypto, and has a unique bird’s-eye view of an industry constantly in flux. During a panel at Consensus in Austin, Colyer explained that even as investment dollars pour in, the industry will move away from the mega-mining warehouses that currently dominate headlines.
“You’re looking at between $12 billion and $18 billion that’s going to flow into bitcoin mining over the next cycle,” he said.
“We’re moving away from these large bitcoin mining facilities that have been built over the last four years.” Instead, he said, “you’re going to start seeing these small bitcoin mining facilities popping up all over the place.”
That would represent quite the market shift, which post-halving has left some miners looking to consolidate. Just this week it was reported that Riot Platforms tried to buy rival miner Bitfarms for $950 million.
And it wasn’t the only surprising prediction from the panel for the original crypto. Fred Thiel, Marathon Digital chairman and CEO, said that mining and blockchain tech will increasingly be built into the backbone of new technology. So much so, he argued, that customers won’t even realize it’s there.
"It’s like the internet,” he argued. “People start building applications that add value at the layer above, then eventually the base layer is going to become free.”
As far as the public is concerned, Thiel predicted that “the operation of mining will eventually disappear,” though he was light on specific examples to how that would happen, exactly.
Crypto investors like Mark Cuban have for years compared blockchain tech to the early days of the internet, when many doubted the need for the new tech. But crypto skeptics like author David Gerard argue crypto is not at all the same as the internet, and just repeating “it’s like the internet” does not make it so.
