THE MINING POD: ASIC Border Seizures, Tencent’s BTC Mining Exposure, Miners Double Down on AI

The CBP is seizing ASIC miners at the border, and Chinese tech giant Tencent adds to its bitcoin mining exposure. You're listening to The Mining Pod. Subscribe to the newsletter, trusted by over 8,000 Bitcoiners: https://newsletter.blockspacemedia.com Welcome back to The Mining Pod! For this week’s news roundup, Colin and Matt talk about the big story Blockspace broke this week: the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency is seizing Antminer ASICs at ports of entry, and it’s also started to detain MicroBT and Canaan units. Plus, the $500 billion Chinese tech giant Tencent ups its stake in newly-christened public bitcoin miner Cango to 15.6%. They also touch on Bit Digital’s WhiteFiber AI rebrand, and why Riot’s newest board member signals that it’s getting increasingly serious about an AI pivot. The duo also welcomes Luxor Director of Energy Trading Haley Thomson to discuss what the AI boom means for Texas power prices. And for this week’s cry corner: bitcoin obituaries are dead – all hail number go up. Notes: • CBP Seizes Mining Equipment • Texas Energy Market Changes • Tencent Invests in Kango • Data Center Power Demands • Mining Hardware Challenges • Energy Market Evolution Timestamps 00:00 Start 01:20 Difficulty report 04:33 CBP crackdown on ASICs 12:08 Tencent owns 15% of Cango 18:05 Haley Thomson, Dir of Energy Trading @ Luxor 30:52 Bit Digital rebrands AI/HPC as WhiteFiber 32:24 Riot appoints Jamie Leverton to board among AI/HPC 👉 CleanSpark (CLSK), America’s Bitcoin Miner! Cleanspark develops infrastructure for Bitcoin, an essential tool for financial independence and inclusion. Learn more by visiting https://www.cleanspark.com/! 👉 Digital Shovel, All Things Crypto Mining! Are you a Crypto miner looking to expand your operations leading into this next Bull Market? Digital Shovel is a leading manufacturer of modular mining pods, as well as PDUs & Switchgears. Industry leading prices starting at $69,000/MW for a complete datacenter, including Smart PDUs and switchgear. For more information, visit www.DigitalShovel.com 👉 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! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.