Bob Burnett on AI and Bitcoin Mining

Bob Burnett was CTO of Gateway before starting Barefoot Mining in 2017, and now chairs the Ocean mining pool. He sorts miners into rabbits, horses and elephants, and argues the elephants' rush into AI hosting is trimming fat that never belonged: public miners have fallen from roughly 38% to 28% of hash rate, and he expects global hash rate to stay flat to down for up to two years. He explains why mining is a commodity business that sells block space, why off grid power beats an on grid contract, and why five pools building 80% of block templates is the risk Ocean and DATUM were built to fix. It closes on Core and Knots, what the BIP-110 fork revealed about consensus, and why Wall Street and nation states will have a voice.

Chapters

00:00 - Bob Burnett: Barefoot Mining, Ocean and The Bitcoin Boomers 03:52 - Rabbits, horses and elephants: the three classes of miner 07:07 - Why the public miners pivoted to AI, and why that is healthy 10:40 - Worst hashprice ever, and what AI pays for power 18:07 - Hash rate is falling: is Bitcoin's security at risk 23:24 - Used rigs at dimes on the dollar, and the next mining chips 31:00 - Wild vs captured: why the future of mining is off grid 38:09 - All of Bitcoin mining is a $10 billion business 40:32 - Miners or hashers: five pools build 80% of blocks 46:03 - FPPS vs TIDES: the hidden cost of steady payouts 51:24 - Stratum V2 vs DATUM, and hundreds of templates on Ocean 56:12 - Bitcoin Core, Knots and why process matters 1:03:21 - What the BIP-110 fork taught Bitcoin about consensus 1:10:15 - The tenth man, and Ocean parting ways with Luke Dashjr 1:14:48 - The Bitcoin Boomers, and why boomers aren't the problem