Epic Mining Revelations That Could Change Everything! 🤯

What to know:

Frank Holmes, a restless financier and head of HIVE Blockchain Technologies, drives his bitcoin-mining caravan ever deeper into Paraguay’s green heart.
Deterred by Ethereum’s shift to Proof-of-Stake, HIVE has unleashed its GPUs upon AI tasks, pivoting toward a new frontier and laughing in the face of old inefficiencies.
The company worships the power of steam and rivers, staking its claim on geothermal and hydro-power, with grand plans to triple its fortress by 2025.
Holmes will appear in Toronto at this year’s Consensus festival (May 14-16), presumably to regale us all with tales of data-crunching heroics.

In his tireless voyage through the financial wilderness, Frank Holmes has tamed gold mining companies, conjured gold royalty firms, and forged gilded offerings for the airline industry — all under the banner of U.S. Global Investors (GROW), which he has guided since (brace yourselves) 1989.

He also steers the ship at HIVE Blockchain Technologies (HIVE), a bitcoin mining enterprise valued around $345 million. This fiery expedition of theirs into Paraguay owes its vigor to a bit of fortune-hunting: HIVE recently acquired mining outposts from Bitfarms, after an earlier dream of launching a spot bitcoin ETF in 2017 ended up as “meh.”

HIVE’s environmental ardor began in Iceland’s bubbling geothermal springs and expanded to Swedish hydro-power near the Arctic Circle, proving that sometimes mining and majestic nature can share a stiff handshake. Now the company proclaims it shall seize approximately 430 megawatts (MW) of power by the third quarter of 2025, intent on lighting up enough homes to host a city’s worth of raucous nighttime revelers.

Holmes shall speak at the BTC & Mining Summit at Consensus 2025, in Toronto on May 14-15.

As that gathering beckons, he shared reflections on how HIVE nests within the wider mining universe, the cunning repurposing of GPUs to chase AI wonders, and the next chapters of this epic tale.

The interview below has been shrunken and scrubbed for brevity, but remains delightfully bold.

CoinDesk: HIVE has been repurposing some of its GPUs for AI. Care to elaborate?

Frank Holmes: Once upon a time, we held 130,000 AMD chips to dig for ether (ETH), claiming around 6% of the planet’s ether mining. It was splendidly profitable…until Poof-of-Stake (excuse me, Proof-of-Stake) stole that party, forcing our chips to find new chores. We replaced heaps of AMD gear with Nvidia, opening a path to AI’s bright horizon.

Comparing an ASIC miner to Nvidia chips is like pitting a donkey cart against a sleek sports car. Unpacking Antminers S21 Pros? Piece of cake. Unleashing Nvidia’s H100? A six-week waltz with delicate circuit labyrinths and occasional brain-bending frustrations. High-performance computing is a lovely labyrinth of cables and daydreams.

For bitcoin mining, you might spend a million dollars per megawatt, but HPC’s thirst for redundancy swells that tenfold. The fancy engineering, the sweaty capital, it all climbs higher than a cat on a tree. Forging HPC demands unwavering energy, while bitcoin mining can handle erratic surges. And so we dance, choosing cost or continuity, forging or yielding power as the mood strikes us. Handy, right?

Does the Trump administration’s tariff strategy affect your endeavors?

We overhear the U.S. murmurings, yes. But we always felt Washington’s regulatory arms might strangle us like an overly affectionate octopus. We tried to remain neutral – not a trivial pursuit. Then Trump swooped in, so we moved our headquarters to the U.S. for brand splendor. No mining stateside…yet. But we keep our eyes open as coyotes watch a henhouse.

But you’ve expanded fiercely in Paraguay?

Ah, Paraguay. Bitfarms drifted into chaos when their CEO departed, while Riot came sniffing for control. Then came a bizarre tariff on bitcoin miners, sure to melt away in time. Bitfarms pivoted to the U.S. We happily grabbed the leftover 80 megawatts, finishing the projects they left behind. Now we nibble on asado while building machines and whistling victorious tunes.

We’re aiming for the biggest growth among bitcoin miners by 2025, without any weird convertible debt sabers. We remain unscathed by that cyclical mania of binge borrowing. Paraguay’s dam, the largest in the Western hemisphere, hums with 14 gigawatts of raw watery might. Instead of letting Brazil filch it, we slide in and harness the beast. Paraguay reaps U.S. dollars, we stay green, and everyone claps. Beautiful symbiosis, no?

Eyeing new horizons elsewhere?

East Africa beckons. Ethiopia, for instance: so much electricity, so few power lines. It’s a pity. But hey, we have big ambitions, from 6 EH/s to 25 EH/s in nine months. Let others worry about intangible trifles; we have grand illusions to chase!

Your verdict on the mining industry’s current state?

The scene is edgy. Many major U.S. companies chase the dream of stacking bitcoin on their balance sheets, imitating Michael Saylor’s style. But for the marvelous cryptosphere to thrive, we need more miners spreading the net far and wide, decentralizing the realm. We might also see some branching into Lightning Network or Ordinals. Dare to be different, eh?

Bitdeer (BTDR) is up to mischief, developing more energy-efficient hardware. It’s reminiscent of gold mining’s own transformation. Once upon a time, gold ETFs split from gold mining stocks. Now good old bullion has soared beyond the S&P 500 this century, but only the premium gold royalty stocks have truly shined. HIVE dabbles in that royalty approach: fewer employees, higher revenues, fewer teary breakdowns.

2025-04-08 17:19

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