“Once we activate it, we will have higher income”

The Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining industry is no stranger to the transformations that artificial intelligence (AI) is generating in people’s daily lives. The challenge for the sector’s leaders is How to adopt this technology effectively to optimize your operations and maximize profits.

Bitcoin mining requires application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), electrical power, a stable Internet connection, and adequate cooling systems to handle intensive work and high energy consumption.

These tools can provide key support for AI developers to overcome the lack of infrastructure and take advantage of the surplus resources available in some companies in the sector.

Bitcoin mining companies, for their part, could benefit by gaining another source of income and optimizing their processes. But what are the challenges that miners might face when trying to incorporate AI?

This debate reached Mining Disrupt, an industry event taking place in Miami, United States. Participating in the discussion were Teras Kulyk (CEO of Sunnyside Digital), Matt Brown (Core Scientific), Arland Whitfield (CEO of Frontier Mining), Gabriel Ibghy (Hive Digital), Alan Gallo (CEO of JBSIT), Medi Naseri (CEO of Lincoin Mining and LoD), Marko Tarman (CEO of Nice Hash).

These references agree that Bitcoin mining data centers can be adapted to host HPC (High Performance Computing) servers and thus generate additional income through hosting fees and computing services. Such as the case of Hive Blockchain or Bit Digital.

That is, use all the infrastructure, networks, labor and cooling of Bitcoin mining to reconvert them with AI servers. Although it is true that the challenge is great, exhibitors agree that it will bring great benefits to the sector.

In this regard, Kulyk indicated: “For a Bitcoin miner, seeing this opportunity is a good thing to attract more customers to the data centers and thus obtain additional income.”

“What I like most about HPC and AI is the revenue density. 100 megawatts of Bitcoin mining generates $100 million a year, if you could take 10 of those megawatts and put them into HPC, they could generate $100 million on their own. So you can turn $100 million into $190 million.”

Gabriel Ibghy, CEO of Hive Digital.

Whitfield, for his part, mentioned the benefits that the sector will gain from the implementation of AI. “Once we activate it, we will have higher revenues,” he said.

The challenges that the industry faces

Among the challenges facing the industry, exhibitors mentioned the conversion of mining facilities and design networks so that they can support intensive and high-precision workloads.

At this point, it is worth noting that some Bitcoin farms are located with remote areas from large urban centers and low network infrastructure. This is important because data centers need to be close to network nodes and be in specific temperature, humidity and pressure control conditions.

In addition, this conversion can be expensive, depending on the age and condition of the existing installation.

Regarding energy, the CEO of Frontier Mining warned that these AI data centers use large amounts of energy, which may pose a problem for some regions.

For Matt Brown, meanwhile, the additional challenge for the implementation of these centers is training of local workforceAt this point, he mentioned the crucial role of governments lies in providing the necessary tools for citizens to learn about AI.

Finally, Alan Gallo, CEO of JBSIT, said that this transition is getting closer and closer and is here to stay. “More and more companies are getting into it, so why not do the same? So it just makes sense. We will all use AI for something and we definitely need to set up data centers behind it to do it.”