Specialist
Divisional head at Hut 8 Mining Corp
Agenda
- M&A, including consolidation and long-term outlook
- Current regulatory backdrop and outlook
- Jurisdictional transfer of bitcoin mining locations, discussing cost implication
- Future growth areas and innovation in bitcoin mining
Questions
1.
How can you see M&A evolving in the mining space, to pick up from the first part of the Interview [see Bitcoin Mining – Part 1 – Mining Mechanics Deep Dive & Unit Economics]?
2.
You mentioned 16 new publicly traded miners came to market. How many miners can you publicly trade at the moment?
3.
Do you know how many miners are privately owned vs publicly traded? You said maybe 21 publicly traded.
4.
Can you see more private mines looking to list or vice versa?
5.
You mentioned miners had built business models based on margins that aren’t there anymore and they’re taking out loans. Where were these miners mainly getting capital from? What kind of institutions?
6.
Do you think sometimes the volatility of bitcoin was overlooked when miners were looking at these loans and considering acquiring more money?
7.
What can miners do when eventually reward for bitcoin reaches zero? Obviously, there’s a limited supply. What are their incentives to keep mining or using? What will they do with all of this equipment after that point?
8.
What’s the difference between looking at buying the machines and buying the entire miner’s operation and buying that company?
9.
What do you think there’s an investment preference towards in the market?
10.
Who are the targets vs acquirers, discussing publicly traded miners or large ones you could see looking to acquire or being bought out?
11.
Do you think some acquirers might be waiting for overleveraged miners to fall, so their work equipment or operations through repo are much cheaper?
12.
What percentage of miners were maybe being overly laissez-faire in the bull market with spending?
13.
What typical multiples could be paid or what are they trending towards if someone was looking to buy someone else out?
14.
How have you seen free cash flows changing for miners?
15.
How is miner debt viewed in the market while bitcoin’s having weak performance?
16.
Do you think bitcoin could trade at the current suppressed price for over three years or longer?
17.
How can you see regulation evolving in the bitcoin mining space?
18.
What’s your general feel for the relocation of miners out of China and more into the west, with Austin, Texas seeming the go-to destination? Is there a risk of too much centralisation to the US?
19.
21% of bitcoin’s hash rate is still coming out of China after the country banned bitcoin mining completely. Can you see that hash rate decreasing further or will it stay around 21%?
20.
Do you think there are any other strong alternatives in Asia for China-based miners?
21.
How easy is it to transfer mining equipment from one location to another? You mentioned when the bitcoin ban came in in China, a lot of ex-hash rate came online in Kazakhstan.
22.
What is the cost difference in transferring or shipping equipment somewhere, or is it easier just to sell that equipment and repurchase it in a different region?
23.
What can be improved on within the bitcoin mining space?
24.
Is it possible to work out a fair price for a bitcoin?
25.
Could miners potentially be storing or holding their bitcoin in dark wallets? Will they be able to sell that at a different price to its current market price if they needed to?
26.
In our previous Interview you touched on Ethereum and the pivot from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. What will happen here as that change occurs?
27.
What would happen to Ethereum miners if it did switch to proof-of-stake from proof-of-work? Do any bitcoin miners have exposure there?
28.
Is there anything we haven’t touched on that you’d like to highlight or give some thoughts on?