Starcloud, an Nvidia-backed orbital information middle startup, stated it’ll begin mining Bitcoin from house later this 12 months when its second spacecraft is launched, positioning it to turn out to be the primary firm to mine Bitcoin off Earth.
Starcloud “would be the first to mine Bitcoin in house,” the startup’s CEO, Philip Johnston, posted to X on Saturday after revealing its Bitcoin mining ambitions in house in an interview with HyperChange on Thursday.
Within the interview, Johnston stated operating Bitcoin application-specific built-in circuit (ASIC) miners can be “some of the compelling use circumstances” of house compute as a consequence of it being considerably cheaper than GPUs.
“GPUs are about 30 instances costlier per kilowatt or per watt than ASICs,” Johnston stated. “A 1-kilowatt B200 chip, it may cost a little $30,000. A 1-kilowatt ASIC is like $1,000.”
Clip on Bitcoin mining pic.twitter.com/WXlp1BMya1
— Philip Johnston (@PhilipJohnston) March 8, 2026
Within the X submit, Johnston stated Bitcoin mining in house will turn out to be a “large trade” as a consequence of how way more economical it’s than mining the cryptocurrency on Earth.
“Bitcoin mining consumes about 20 GW of energy repeatedly. It is unnecessary to do that on Earth, and in the long run state, all of this will probably be carried out in house.”
Starcloud was based in early 2024 to construct information facilities in house as an answer to deal with rising vitality wants for AI. In November, it launched a satellite tv for pc with an NVIDIA H100 into orbit, marking the primary time a GPU that highly effective has ever operated in house.
Its information facilities, which comprise round 88,000 satellites, are primarily powered by photo voltaic vitality.
Sending Bitcoin to Mars
Whereas Johnston’s Starcloud envisions mining Bitcoin in house, tech entrepreneurs Jose E. Puente and Carlos Puente final 12 months got here up with an answer to ship it throughout planets.
In September, Puente informed Cointelegraph that it’s theoretically potential to ship Bitcoin to Mars in as quick as three minutes by leveraging an optical hyperlink from NASA or Starlink and a brand new interplanetary timestamping system.
Whereas somebody would must be there to obtain it, the Bitcoin transaction would transfer by means of house stations — reminiscent of antennas and satellites — or perhaps a relay across the Moon earlier than reaching Mars.
They, nonetheless, stated that mining Bitcoin on Mars wouldn’t be possible because of the latency between the 2 planets.
Associated: Bitcoin drops 2% as oil costs surge on vitality scarcity fears
Bitcoin mining profitability margins have thinned over the previous few months, notably as a consequence of Bitcoin’s (BTC) value falling almost 48% from its $126,080 excessive on Oct. 6.
Nonetheless, the Bitcoin mining problem has fallen 7% from a report 155.9 trillion items in November to 145 trillion, giving miners some much-needed respiration room for now.
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