Tom French

Bob Burnett, Tom French and Callum Wheeler on Mining at the Edge of the Grid | 50 Days for Freedom

- Bob Burnett, newly appointed chairman of Ocean, laid out a taxonomy of miners: rabbits (1–2% of hash, home operators), wild horses (self-powered, roughly 2% currently, targeting ~33% for decentralization), and captive elephants (industrial, grid-dependent, shrinking as public miners pivot to AI). - Bitcoin mining cannot stabilize global grids at macro scale; the network consumes 160 terawatt-hours annually against 30,000 globally (0.5% of world electricity). Local and regional cooperation is possible, but claims of grid stabilization overstate the industry's impact. - Ocean's Datum protocol allows miners to construct their own block templates and decide transaction inclusion criteria, enabling sovereignty over mining operations and reducing dependence on pool operators. - RenewaBlox and Barefoot Mining deploy stranded energy (wind, hydro, natural gas) to operate off-grid, with RenewaBlox also pioneering renewable peaker plants that pair anaerobic digestion with Bitcoin mining as demand response. - ASIC hardware remains concentrated; entry costs ($25–30 million) and wafer access (TSMC/Samsung) create barriers. Separation of chip design from system integration could unlock distributed applications like heat reuse and household mining. - Solar efficiency gains via perovskite tandem layers (targeting five to six stacked layers, adding ~10% per layer) and AI acceleration of energy infrastructure could enable sovereign household-level mining within decades.