Stories · as read on the Mining station
News Surge: Counting Down to the Halving
The April 1, 2024 episode counted down to the halving, read the ETF supply tally and followed S19 miners heading abroad for cheaper power.
This story is an episode of the Bitcoin Radio podcast.Less than three weeks before the 2024 halving, the Mining Disrupt News Surge for Monday, April 1, 2024 started the clock.
The host had the halving scheduled for April 20 at 10:37 in the morning. There was one more difficulty adjustment to go, a barely noticeable upward tick, with blocks coming in every 9 minutes and 58 seconds on average. Bitcoin was $69,534 that day.
The heart of the show was a tally of the spot ETFs. A post from HODL15Capital counted the flows since the US funds launched on January 10. GBTC had sold 271,000 bitcoin. The new ETFs had bought 475,000. The host's point was that GBTC holders only have so many shares to sell, and that on the 20th the number of new coins mined each day would be cut in half. Not a 10% cut, he said, and not 25%, but 50%. On price, he hedged: "it seems like it can only go one way". Then he added that he did not know.
The halving was also moving machines. Per Bloomberg, more than half a million S19 miners were headed out of the US to Africa and South America for cheaper energy. These were rigs that once cost around $1,500 each and might be worth $350 after the halving. Miners follow the cheapest power, the host said, because a mining site can be packed up and shipped. In his words, "you can't move a gold mine once it's there".
Energy ran through the whole episode. He read a Vox piece saying AI already uses as much energy as a small country, and asked why Bitcoin's critics were not saying the same about AI. He praised Stronghold Digital Mining's Panther Creek Plant in Pennsylvania, which Senate candidate Dave McCormick had visited, for turning mining waste into power. And he showed a Texas solar field wrecked by hail, and asked who pays to fix it.
There was news from the exchanges too. One of two executives detained in Nigeria had escaped custody, and Sam Bankman-Fried had been sentenced to 25 years in prison. The host's advice to the industry: stop playing games, buy Bitcoin or mine it, and chill out.
The episode went out on April 1, 2024, with Bitcoin at $69,534. Today it is $80,839. The halving has come and gone, and the price sits above where it stood that Monday.
Read the full story in the magazine at miningdisrupt.com, and hear more stories like it on Bitcoin Radio.