Why Tether Mines Bitcoin

Tether has quietly become the largest bitcoin miners in the world, and Elektron manages 50 EH/s of the stablecoin issuer’s fleet.

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Welcome back to The Blockspace Podcast! Today, Rapha Zagury, CEO of Elektron, joins us to talk about the company’s management of Tether's massive 50 EH/s bitcoin mining portfolio. Rapha breaks down Elektron and Tether’s partnership, the incipient market bifurcation between AI/HPC and Bitcoin mining, and why he believes progress is directly correlated with energy use. We dive into the legal origins of Elektron, the company’s global footprint across 32 sites, and the future of mining as Tether and Elektron double down on hashrate while the rest of the industry eyes AI.

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Notes:

* Tether runs 50 EH/s with Elektron

* Greenfield sites trading at $1/MW amid AI boom

* Elektron manages ~200,000 ASICs globally

* Operations span 32 sites across 5 countries

* AI and BTC Mining bifurcation expected in 6 to 12 months

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

05:31 BTC market crash

07:59 Who is Rapha?

11:16 What is Elektron?

14:46 Swan & Tether legal struggle

18:00 Asset light build out plan

23:20 Business setup

25:05 Why mine?

33:18 Hashrate geographic distribution

38:54 Bad places to mine BTC?

40:50 AI & HPC

48:56 3.8% staff costs

52:11 Hashrate growth

57:28 There's ALWAYS stranded energy

59:44 Elektron IPO?

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