Summary
- Starcloud, backed by Nvidia, said it plans to begin Bitcoin mining in space after the launch of its second spacecraft this year.
- Starcloud said ASICs have far lower cost per unit of power than GPUs, arguing that in the long run Bitcoin mining in space could be more economical.
- While Bitcoin has fallen about 48% from its peak, mining difficulty has declined about 7%, partially easing the burden on mining companies.
Forecast Trend Report by Period
Starcloud, a space data-center startup backed by Nvidia, said it plans to begin mining Bitcoin in space after launching a satellite this year.
According to Cointelegraph on the 9th (local time), Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston said, "We plan to start mining Bitcoin on the second spacecraft to be launched this year, and we will be the first company to mine Bitcoin in space."
In an interview, Johnston explained that using application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) purpose-built for Bitcoin mining in a space computing environment could be a highly promising case. He said, "Graphics processing units (GPUs) cost about 30 times more per watt than ASICs," adding, "If a 1-kilowatt-class GPU chip costs about $30,000, an ASIC with the same power draw is about $1,000."
He also argued that "since Bitcoin mining is an industry that continuously consumes about 20 gigawatts (GW) of electricity, in the long run it may be more economical to mine in space than on the ground."
Starcloud is a company founded in early 2024 with the goal of building space-based data centers to address the problem of rising power demand from artificial intelligence (AI) data centers. In November last year, it placed a satellite equipped with Nvidia H100 GPUs into orbit, creating the first case of high-performance GPUs operating in space.
The company envisions building a space data-center network consisting of about 88,000 satellites, with solar power expected to be the main energy source.
Meanwhile, tech entrepreneurs Jose E. Puente and Carlos Puente last year also proposed the concept of transmitting Bitcoin over an interplanetary network. They explained that, in theory, using optical communication links and a satellite relay network could deliver Bitcoin transactions from Earth to Mars in about three minutes. However, the pair assessed that mining Bitcoin directly on Mars would be impractical due to interplanetary communication latency.
Recently, Bitcoin mining profitability has deteriorated as prices have fallen. Bitcoin is down about 48% from the peak of roughly $126,080 recorded last October. Mining difficulty, however, has eased about 7% to around 145 trillion recently from 155.9 trillion recorded last November, partly reducing the burden on miners.
Suehyeon Lee
shlee@bloomingbit.ioI'm reporter Suehyeon Lee, your Web3 Moderator.
