61 episodes

The Watts & Blocks Podcast, bridging the gap between the bitcoin mining industry and the energy industry through candid conversations.

Your host, Ben Walsh, has conversations with top industry experts from both the bitcoin mining industry as well as the energy industry to determine how they can be better partners in the future.

Watts & Blocks Podcast Benjamin Walsh

    • Business

The Watts & Blocks Podcast, bridging the gap between the bitcoin mining industry and the energy industry through candid conversations.

Your host, Ben Walsh, has conversations with top industry experts from both the bitcoin mining industry as well as the energy industry to determine how they can be better partners in the future.

    Ep. 56 The Final Episode

    Ep. 56 The Final Episode

    This is the last recorded episode of the Watts & Blocks with Ben Walsh as the host.

    He shares what the next adventure will be and if anyone is interested in picking up the podcast as the new host, reach out!

    Thank you to everyone, fans, followers, guests, sponsors. It has been such a wonderful experience!

    • 4 min
    Ep. 55 Bitcoin Mining with Alternative Fuel with Stronghold Digital Mining

    Ep. 55 Bitcoin Mining with Alternative Fuel with Stronghold Digital Mining

    Hey everyone, welcome to this week’s release of the Watts & Blocks Podcast, powered by Giga Energy.

    This week on the show I had the pleasure of sitting down with Greg Beard the CEO at Stronghold Digital Mining.

    This was another one of those episodes where I have been a huge admirer of the business model of being a truly vertically integrated bitcoin miner and so for me this was a ton of fun to go deeper on how that all works at Stronghold.

    Greg gets really technical on the reclamation process and not only what the benefits are of doing that and how it is allowing the communities to reclaim huge swaths of land but also how the ash is being leveraged for carbon capture projects.

    This is one of those episodes that highlights exactly how bitcoin mining is a bolt on to an existing electrical producer which I am a firm believer that this business model is what the future of bitcoin mining will look like! And so with that, I hope that you enjoy my discussion with Greg Beard!

    You can find more about Stronghold Digital Mining: https://strongholddigitalmining.com/

    You can find more about Stronghold Digital Mining on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stronghold-digital-mining/

    You can find more about Stronghold Digital Mining on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Stronghold_DM

    You can find Stronghold Digital Mining reclamation process video here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/GbgnqqVoVYE

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    This show is managed by Foreman!

    Foreman helps you manage your entire bitcoin mining facility all from 1 dashboard: demand response and power controls to miner mapping and business intelligence.

    This is truly an invaluable tool for miner management as well as managing your curtailment strategy.

    Check them out at Foreman.mn

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    This show is powered by Giga Energy.

    Giga Energy is a vertically integrated bitcoin mining company that manufactures all of the electrical infrastructure needed to start mining bitcoin—whether that is medium voltage switchgear, PDUs, or power cables for your miners, the team at Giga Energy has you covered!

    Reach out to their sales team today for all of your electrical infrastructure needs at sales@gigaenergy.com and use the word Hashrate for the subject of the email to receive 5% off.

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    bitcoin, cryptocurrency, mining, energy consumption, renewable energy, sustainability, power grid, blockchain, technology, innovation, business, finance, investment, climate change, environment, energy efficiency, electricity production, utility companies, power companies, energy industry

    • 54 min
    Ep. 54 Nuclear Bitcoin Mining with Lumerra

    Ep. 54 Nuclear Bitcoin Mining with Lumerra

    Hey everyone, welcome to this week’s release of the Watts & Blocks Podcast, powered by Giga Energy.

    This week on the show I had the pleasure of sitting down with Sean Lawrie, the CSO and Principal at Lumerra. This was an especially fun conversation for me because Sean and I are really passionate about the same topics and both looking for ways to help usher bitcoin mining into utility companies.

    Right out of the gate we get to hear about Sean’s experience working with nuclear power plants explaining that bitcoin mining is a huge opportunity that they need to be evaluating, and we get into all sorts of discussion about how this was received and how different utilities are evaluating this opportunity.

    Sean rounds out the conversation walking us through what his new company is doing and how Lumerra is helping re-shape the training industry for utility companies and why that’s important. Sean and I had a bunch of fun on this episode and I would expect a round 2 in the very near future.

    You can find more about Lumerra on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lumerra/about/

    You can find more about Sean Lawrie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-lawrie-651976/

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    This show is managed by Foreman!

    Foreman helps you manage your entire bitcoin mining facility all from 1 dashboard: demand response and power controls to miner mapping and business intelligence.

    This is truly an invaluable tool for miner management as well as managing your curtailment strategy.

    Check them out at Foreman.mn

    --

    This show is powered by Giga Energy.

    Giga Energy is a vertically integrated bitcoin mining company that manufactures all of the electrical infrastructure needed to start mining bitcoin—whether that is medium voltage switchgear, PDUs, or power cables for your miners, the team at Giga Energy has you covered!

    Reach out to their sales team today for all of your electrical infrastructure needs at sales@gigaenergy.com and use the word Hashrate for the subject of the email to receive 5% off.

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    bitcoin, cryptocurrency, mining, energy consumption, renewable energy, sustainability, power grid, blockchain, technology, innovation, business, finance, investment, climate change, environment, energy efficiency, electricity production, utility companies, power companies, energy industry

    • 57 min
    Ep. 54 Clean, Green Bitcoin Mining Incentives with Clean Incentive

    Ep. 54 Clean, Green Bitcoin Mining Incentives with Clean Incentive

    Hey everyone, welcome to this week’s release of the Watts & Blocks Podcast, powered by Giga Energy.

    This week on the show I had the pleasure of sitting down with Casey Martinez, the Founder & CEO of Clean Incentive. This was an absolute blast for me because I got to learn a ton on this episode. I truly did not have a lot of understanding of Renewable Energy Credits, how they functioned, what purpose they were service, why is there a market for them. We get into another super interesting topic of how the traditional data center industry went through the same smear campaigns that bitcoin mining is currently getting as it relates to its energy use and what did they do to get out from under that. We wrap up with the work Casey is doing with Clean Incentive and how they are using the blockchain to verify energy sources. Like I said, this was incredible for me because I walked away learning a bunch!

    You can find more about Clean Incentive here: https://www.cleanincentive.com/

    You can find more about Clean Incentive on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Clean_Incentive

    You can find more about Clean Incentive on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/clean-incentive/

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    This show is managed by Foreman!

    Foreman helps you manage your entire bitcoin mining facility all from 1 dashboard: demand response and power controls to miner mapping and business intelligence.

    This is truly an invaluable tool for miner management as well as managing your curtailment strategy.

    Check them out at Foreman.mn

    --

    This show is powered by Giga Energy.

    Giga Energy is a vertically integrated bitcoin mining company that manufactures all of the electrical infrastructure needed to start mining bitcoin—whether that is medium voltage switchgear, PDUs, or power cables for your miners, the team at Giga Energy has you covered!

    Reach out to their sales team today for all of your electrical infrastructure needs at sales@gigaenergy.com and use the word Hashrate for the subject of the email to receive 5% off.

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    bitcoin, cryptocurrency, mining, energy consumption, renewable energy, sustainability, power grid, blockchain, technology, innovation, business, finance, investment, climate change, environment, energy efficiency, electricity production, utility companies, power companies, energy industry

    • 52 min
    Ep. 53 Lightning Payments for Utility Companies with Synota

    Ep. 53 Lightning Payments for Utility Companies with Synota

    Hey everyone, welcome to this week’s release of the Watts & Blocks Podcast, powered by Giga Energy.

    This week on the show I had the pleasure of sitting down with Austin Mitchell the CEO and Co-Founder of Synota.

    This show is a slightly unique spin on our usual programming, we do a full deep dive on just Synota because they are the payments infrastructure that is allowing both bitcoin miners and utility companies work together.

    We go deep on what the problem is for utility companies with the cash lag of settling payments as much as 70 days past the consumption time and we talk about how Synota is quickly helping alleviate the collateral requirements for customers which can be up to as much as 3 months worth equaling hundreds of thousands of dollars to sometimes millions.

    Austin is super well spoken and does a great job walking us through the payments infrastructure future for bitcoin miners and utility companies, and at the end he says he hopes we flood his Twitter DM’s so if you have any questions at all go hit him up!

    You can find more about Synota at: https://synota.io/

    You can find more about Synota on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/synota/

    You can find more about Synota on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Synota_

    You can find Austin Mitchell on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aisaacsmitchell

    --

    This show is managed by Foreman!

    Foreman helps you manage your entire bitcoin mining facility all from 1 dashboard: demand response and power controls to miner mapping and business intelligence.

    This is truly an invaluable tool for miner management as well as managing your curtailment strategy.

    Check them out at Foreman.mn

    --

    This show is powered by Giga Energy.

    Giga Energy is a vertically integrated bitcoin mining company that manufactures all of the electrical infrastructure needed to start mining bitcoin—whether that is medium voltage switchgear, PDUs, or power cables for your miners, the team at Giga Energy has you covered!

    Reach out to their sales team today for all of your electrical infrastructure needs at sales@gigaenergy.com and use the word Hashrate for the subject of the email to receive 5% off.

    --

    bitcoin, cryptocurrency, mining, energy consumption, renewable energy, sustainability, power grid, blockchain, technology, innovation, business, finance, investment, climate change, environment, energy efficiency, electricity production, utility companies, power companies, energy industry

    • 54 min
    Ep. 52 Bitcoin Mining as Retirement with Jeff Hotz

    Ep. 52 Bitcoin Mining as Retirement with Jeff Hotz

    Hey everyone, welcome to this week’s release of the Watts & Blocks Podcast, powered by Giga Energy.

    This week on the show I had the pleasure of sitting down with Jeff Hotz, the owner of a 1MW bitcoin mining facility here in the Midwest.

    We get into Jeff’s background running businesses and how this facility is actually Jeff’s retirement plan and how he has right sized everything for that.

    We also talk about the nuances of working with the coop that he is on and what they think of his endeavors.

    This is one of those episodes that is great insight for the folks in the energy industry who want a rock-solid large load customer like Jeff to hear how he takes pride in his operation. It is also inspiring for small time bitcoin miners to hear about scaling up to a large-scale project like Jeff’s.

    You can find more about Jeff on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jchotz

    --

    This show is managed by Foreman!

    Foreman helps you manage your entire bitcoin mining facility all from 1 dashboard: demand response and power controls to miner mapping and business intelligence.

    This is truly an invaluable tool for miner management as well as managing your curtailment strategy.

    Check them out at Foreman.mn

    --

    This show is powered by Giga Energy.

    Giga Energy is a vertically integrated bitcoin mining company that manufactures all of the electrical infrastructure needed to start mining bitcoin—whether that is medium voltage switchgear, PDUs, or power cables for your miners, the team at Giga Energy has you covered!

    Reach out to their sales team today for all of your electrical infrastructure needs at sales@gigaenergy.com and use the word Hashrate for the subject of the email to receive 5% off.

    --

    bitcoin, cryptocurrency, mining, energy consumption, renewable energy, sustainability, power grid, blockchain, technology, innovation, business, finance, investment, climate change, environment, energy efficiency, electricity production, utility companies, power companies, energy industry

    • 1 hr 4 min

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