THE MINING POD: ERCOT’s 266 GW Surge, IREN’s $2.3B Raise, GPUs > ASICs, Whatsminer M70

This week in bitcoin mining news, ERCOT sees a 266 GW of interconnection requests in 2026, IREN closed a $2.3 billion convertible note offering, and GPUs are leaving ASICs in the dust. Subscribe to the Blockspace newsletter for market-making news as it hits the wire! Welcome back to The Mining Pod! Today, Ethan Vera, COO of Luxor, joins us as we dive into MicroBT’s Whatsminer M70 launching into a challenging ASIC market, IREN’s $2.3 billion convertible note offering, the precarious state of hashprice, Luxor’s new GPU hardware sales business, the staggering 270% leap in ERCOT interconnection requests, and the controversial Cat bitcoin fork proposal aimed at filtering ordinals / inscriptions. Subscribe to the newsletter! https://newsletter.blockspacemedia.com **Notes:** - Hash price is below $40 per second - Three negative difficulty adjustments - Ercot requests leaped 270% in 2025 - 73% of requests from data centers - IREN raised $2.3B in convertible notes - M70 efficiency: 12.5 J/TH 00:00 Start 02:35 Difficulty Report by Luxor 07:26 IREN note 10:44 M70 launch 20:02 Luxor launches GPU trading 27:12 ERCOT LL requests up 270% in 2025 34:10 Cry Corner: another filter fork proposal 👉CleanSpark, America's Bitcoin Miner! CleanSpark (Nasdaq: CLSK) is a market-leading data center developer with a proven track record of success. We own a portfolio of power, land, and data centers across the United States powered by globally competitive energy prices. Sitting at the intersection of Bitcoin, energy, operational excellence and capital stewardship, we optimize our infrastructure to deliver superior returns to our shareholders. Monetizing low-cost, high reliability energy by producing a global emerging critical resource – compute – positions us to prosper in an ever-changing world. 👉 FBOX, Cooling for Bitcoin Mining and the AI Data Center Transformation FBOX is the global leader in cooling system manufacturing, with the #1 shipment volume of bitcoin mining containers worldwide. Not only powering for the strongest hashrate, their technology also helps mining infrastructure transform into AI data centers. Backed by the largest production scale on earth, global deployment capability, and a full range of cooling solutions, they are shaping the future of compute. 👉 Luxor, Leaders In Bitcoin Mining and Compute Power! Get game-changing mining results with Luxor Firmware. Boost hashrate, cut energy costs, protect your hardware, and maximize mining profits with LuxOS. Published twice weekly, "The Mining Pod" interviews the best builders and operators in the Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining landscape. Subscribe to get notifications when we publish interviews on Tuesday and a news show on Friday!