Waste Not, Want Not: Using Stranded Energy for Mining + HPC | Bitcoin 2026

Great to be here. Thank you for everybody in the in the audience. We're almost at the end of this uh three-day marathon. Um so, thanks for sticking with us. Um my name is Jesse. I work at Black Split Consulting. Uh we help uh Bitcoin miners, public miners with uh public relations and communications. Uh we have three great uh panelists here to my left. So, we're going to start with um with a round of introductions. Um, tell us a little bit more about who you are, um, what your work is, and, uh, a fun fact about yourself. >> My name is HT or hot tarantula. I've been mining Bitcoin since 2017. I got in a fight with Duke Energy about grid power and costs. Told him to fuck off and went off grid and ain't been stopped since. started building decentralized distributed power generation infrastructure and told them that if they ever want me to stop, they're going to have to put a bullet in my brain. We're the last line of defense when it comes to Bitcoin mining. And if they ever wanted to stop, they're going to have to go to the ends of the earth to make it happen. We're the ones that are going to keep you all going. That's what and who we are. >> Thank you. >> Hey everybody, my name is Matthew AG. I'm uh the founder of O21 Solutions based in Houston, Texas. And uh we help corporations uh specifically oil and gas businesses adopt and integrate Bitcoin into their operations. Uh fun fact is, you know, I enjoy uh off-grid camping for weeks at a time in my camper trailer. So yeah, me and the family and the kids. >> My name is Joe Dylan. I'm the leader of Adicon Energy. Uh we're a power and energy infrastructure development firm uh with a focus on large flexible loads. So I've been in the energy industry for about 30 years on three continents. And when I discovered Bitcoin I guess for the second time in about 2019 2018 it was clear to me that it's the best geographically agnostic large flexible load on the planet. It's like finding the missing capacitor for a circuit board. So, we've uh build power plants, buy power plants, develop energy campuses, and uh really work on integrating mining at the base layer of of the electrical infrastructure. To HT's point, it's a different approach, but it it gets real hard to rip out once you get it put in. So, >> u thank you. Thank you for that. Um I I just wanted to start before we get into into this conversation um just kind of defining what what do we mean by stranded energy. Um we we understand the Bitcoin mining specifically is what kind of brought stranded energy back into the conversation and finding um better ways of monetizing energy that wasn't um wasn't available before. Uh but how do you guys think about stranded energy just if you had to give a a definition? Well, when I think of stranded energy, I think about obviously I'd look to oil and gas because of the abundance in regards to waste there in abandoned wells, flares, and other things related to that industry. But there's also biomass. There's also overbuilt hydro um renewable things that could do supplemental work. Um, so there's a lot of different forms of wasted energy, but as Joe said here, Bitcoin being the most mobile responsive industrial load ever created and being able to be plugged into an instant marketplace gives us the ability to create a digital pipeline. And with that, what we have is economic activity anywhere in the world instantaneously, which is something we've never seen before. >> Yeah, I'll just add to that. I mean, I think of wasted energy very simply as energy that's produced. it's already being produced. There's capex. There's work being uh put out to make or create >> transmission. >> There's no transmission. Um and it's just underutilized, right? It's energy that exists that's available and paid for that's underutilized. And so a popular example is, you know, out in West Texas in the Perian, there's a lot of oil production, but there's a lot of stuff that comes out of the ground with the oil. Um and natural gas is one of those NGL's, but there's no takeaway capacity for the natural gas. There's no pipeline capacity. And so it's produced but it has to be flared because there's no takeaway capacity. That's one example. HT mentioned overbuilt renewables. So like the UK last year curtailed something like 10 terowatt hours worth of electricity and that problem grows as variable renewable penetration grows in the grid. So that's another example. Um so yeah that's that's wasted energy to me. So I think our view on this when we look at a system like a grid historically you have producers but really only one buyer. So if that producer had can generate more electrons but the market price won't clear at a price that is profitable for them to do so they're just stuck by adding a large flexible load with a global customer the Bitcoin network and to some extent maybe in the future AI compute networks etc. But currently that's the most liquid global market you can plug in directly to. So now instead of having just one captive customer, you have multiple customers and the economics of that transform both the lifespan and efficiency of those generation assets. Their capacity use goes up, >> their O andM costs go down, >> their profitability increases. There's economic incentive across the board even when it comes to ecological benefits because now uh places like oil and gas wells that may have had infrastructure that was failing before becomes economically viable to be maintained long term which prevents fug fugitive emissions and other things like uh petroleum products leaking into the environment and causing more damage than they would otherwise. >> Yeah. And just for some g- whiz numbers here like how big is the flare gas problem in the world? I mean, we we flare as as the human society between 15 and 30 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas. That's more than the continent of Africa uses in a year. And >> power the Bitcoin network 10 times. >> Yeah. So, it's a it's a big global problem. Uh but it's a distributed problem. Um and it has its own challenges to monetize, but um you know that those molecules are valuable. They could be used for productive work, but they're not being used today. And every molecule that we can use um is energy that we don't have to supply for for future demand growth. >> And you're you're talking about specifically um flaring the gas, meaning the gas is actually burnt. But we know u it is also very common, especially in other countries, but I believe also here in the US, people just release it into the environment and uh you know to the point that people often criticize Bitcoin for its environmental impact, Bitcoin is actually uh increasingly absorbing that. Uh, is that is that right, Hudo? >> Um, that is 100% correct. Actually, the ESG metrics that Bitcoin brings to the table are so vast that the guys who drool over carbon credits should be wetting their pants to get in line for this stuff and deploy it. >> It's like criticizing the mop when the milk's on the floor. >> Thank you. >> Um, so Joe, you you you talked about you briefly touched on AIHPC. So I think at this point, you know, Bitcoin mining utilizing flared gas uh as as a use case is uh is beginning to mature. Um but of course, AIHPC is u is very very new. Um and uh I'm just wondering if you can uh let talk a little bit about the relationship between Bitcoin mining and AIHPC in the context of stranded energy. um and how one differs from the other one, whether the flexible nature of one versus the other has has any impact or maybe you had. >> Well, so I actually um am currently building a hybrid compute system through my company Sovereign Hybrid Compute, which deploys Bitcoin mining along with HPC and LPC in a hybrid model. And because Bitcoin mining is instantaneous base load, global market, whereas AI and LPC and other forms of compute require a client base, a company that wants to deploy HPC into the field needs to have a large massive client funnel. They need to have a wellestablished base, a massive nationalizer syndicated reputation, and an ability to drive customer flow to that product that they're trying to deliver to the market that they're selling through the creation of this energy source. Now, conversely to that, if you don't have any drive for that, you'll fail. Whereas, Bitcoin itself will continue to support the base load and structure of that infrastructure indefinitely as long as that market exists. And as far as I can tell, the Bitcoin global network and market ain't going anywhere anytime soon. And so, as we see today AI and LBC, HBC going out into the oil field and like pushing boundaries, that very well could just be a bubble or more. I mean, we don't know. It's very new. But what we do know for sure is Bitcoin as it stands being decentralized and distributed as we create energy in a more decentralized and distributed fashion and it being able to supply us with that instantaneous global market. It is and always will be the best opportunity and option for me to deploy in a standard energy format situation unless I already have a mega market global entity driving my HPC market. So I agree with agree hodddle I think on the kind of the systemwide on this grid system side when we're talking about stranded energy in these two different loads they're both use electrons as the input and have compute as the output but the way they perform on the electric grid are very very different okay so so bitcoin mining is highly controllable and it's interruptible so what that means is you can send it signals and say okay I want to I want want to mine 10. I want to mine nine. I want to mine six and a half. I want to mine 10. And it'll and it'll just go the mining a the AI load. And so that means your power shape looks like however you want it to look. You have positive control over it. >> That's important. >> It is. So for the AI side, this load is driven by the jobs it's getting, right? Customer demand. >> What you'll have is you have you don't know what your load is going to be second to second. And a lot of these AI facilities, we've been there's been a lot of battery work being done the last year or two because you disrupt you have it's called voltage disruption where you your voltage is so you can desynchronize yourself from the grid without a battery there because the the load shape is very unpredictable >> phase synchronization. >> Yeah. So one more note now I'll pass to Matt here. So what that means is there are applications that only mining makes sense at and there are applications where you can combine those two loads in order to present a shaped load to the grid or to a power plant. So I think there's there's synergies there but there's also going to be situations where certain profiles of generation are only going to be good for one or the other. >> Yeah, there's no cookie cutter when it comes to stranded energy. >> Yeah, I fully agree. Um, and the other point I'll make is that energy and Bitcoin are both global and the problem of wasted energy is global. And in the United States, um, well, what I would say is where the investment is for AI isn't necessarily where the energy is and where the energy is being produced. And so I think one of the things that will happen is um the remote uh mining operations that are chasing the wasted energy will push more globally as maybe um hyperscalers and mega cap corporations go in and monetize areas like the perian that exist today that have a lot of resource. They're essentially developing new cities right with uh power, water, sanitation, housing and all this other stuff. and developing a city essentially is different than chasing um very remote kind of wasted stranded energy. And I think that's going to be a use case globally that we'll see in Argentina or the Middle East or Africa with distribution infrastructure. >> Welcome to predict. The world is a market. Everything is a market. Get a 100% cash back up to $100 on your first predict bet if it loses. predict where everything is a market. >> And Matt, given your um your background, you work uh you worked and still work with oil and gas companies and are a Bitcoiner uh yourself. Um I'm curious if you can if you can um explain um how you think uh some of these companies think in terms of uh uh first of all Bitcoin uh Bitcoin mining but also stranded gas um and stranded energy in general. Uh my understanding is that they they don't seem to be paying as much attention to all of this. Um but perhaps things are changing. Uh what's what's going on in those in those rooms? >> Yeah. So I mean my my background is working with large corporations. Um and so the audience that I'm talking to and targeting is is maybe different and it's a there's a diverse community of operators in oil and gas. It's a very vast differentiated community, but I'm talking to people in meeting meeting rooms uh in corporate HQ middle managers executives. And while I would love to talk about uh fiat debt slavery and in the Fed and all of that stuff, it's not necessarily relevant to their day job. Like they're like, "Uh, sir, this is a Wendy's." you know, it's it's kind of like that. So, um, what they care about is that Bitcoin can solve a problem that they have that they're responsible for. They have a mandate. They have incentives from their employment. Um, and they're losing money either on wasted gas or they need to mitigate the emissions in their portfolio. And Bitcoin is a tool. It's it's an appliance where you put in electricity and you create money. It's it's a appliance for energy efficiency and emissions mitigation. And as long as you can speak to that, right? Would you like to turn your negatively gas negatively priced natural gas negative $25 per MCF into $10 per MCF? >> $35 an inc or if you're lucky $35 per MCF, then they're interested in that because it solves a problem and it makes them money. >> Um, yeah, we we talked about uh, you know, the monetization and the economic side of things. We talked about the environmental side of things, but there's also another aspect that I think is uh, kind of interesting. Maybe this is something you can talk about holo but I'm sure you have thoughts as well which is the the local communities and how u stranded energy can have positive uh a positive impact on uh on local communities re revitalizing them um and and further build out uh infrastructure. So what's your experience? You have boots on the ground. Uh yeah. So in regards to building decentralized distributed Bitcoin mining operations and power generation, we're bringing this into the last mile or better known as rural communities. We're giving new economic activity which is taxable revenue for municipalities, helps schools and you know the local activity. And the other thing that it does is it creates jobs. jobs that offer people the ability for personal growth and improvement and in a free and open- source world as like Bitcoin operates in. You know, if you want to come out into the field and learn Bitcoin, all you have to do is go self-educate. And if you want to participate in the energy industry, there's trades that you can get into and you can easily become involved with this from a boots on the ground level and work your way up with infinite impossibility. If you're willing to continue to look at yourself every day and find out in which different way do I need to make improvements so that I can create more efficiencies for myself in the field and take my team further. If you're willing to start at that level and understand, you know, what's happening there, everything else in your community around you is going to improve as well. And so where we see these operations deployed, we see incentivizations for education. We see more economic activity in regards to municipalities and taxation. We see cleaned up energy infrastructure. We see um also education going to um locals when it comes to what's happening in regards to economic activity around them as well. Because when people hear about a data center out in the middle of nowhere and they come to find out that it's actually a Bitcoin mining operation, there's a little bit of talk in the town. And then what happens next is, you know, some people might go down the rabbit hole and decide they actually want to protect themselves when it comes to, you know, their sovereignty, wealth, and freedom through space and time. It does a lot more than just like taking energy and everything else at a local level. It's huge. So, so typically the where every power plant is located in America, it's the largest employer in the county. um the one the project we have recently completed up in North Dakota, it's the largest employer in the state. So when you start thinking about the negative externalities of if that plant is marginal on its economics but critical both to keep the grid resilient, reliable and safe but also for the entire town. Oh, >> it changes the whole story. So instead of losing 400 jobs, maybe you add 50, which is 10% employment increase >> to that. In Sweetwater, I put out two Rousabout crews within the last 12 months. >> Yep. Exactly. So I'm an energy maximalist. I think the more megawws that are produced globally, the better the human condition. And that has been true through history and we've been decarbonizing it through history. So that's just what we're going to do. We're going to build some more megawws. >> Can confirm. U and Joe, um I was wondering if you could talk talk a little bit more about the relationship with the grid specifically. You talked about it already a little bit before um you know while Hodo is is taking a very different approach which is very isolation um intentionally um but being plugged to the grid obviously has great benefits. We talked about the flexibility, but uh yeah, talk a little bit about that. >> Yeah, one of the biggest problems and I'm I'm sure a lot of people are seeing in the news every day where, oh, the grid's tight or we don't have enough lines or we can't get the power to where we need to get it to. There's a pretty complicated market structure that exists in the US and in a couple other countries as well where you yes the electrons are being bought and sold over the lines but also things like the capacity on the lines is being bought and sold and the right or ability to turn generation on or off is being bought and sold. All of those have market prices all of which most miners we think participate somewhat inefficiently in that market but a lot of them do. You hear a lot of talk about demand response programs, but really if you pull the mining all the way up to the generation node and combine them, you can now participate in the markets for the generators as well as the markets for the consumers. And our view is that by 2030 or 2032, up to about half the revenue from mining is going to come from grid stability operations to help keep the lights on. We're running a couple studies right now with some of our curtailment data to define exactly how much we save the average rateayer by having mining colloccated at a generation facility. So I'll pause there. >> Um yeah and back to that kind of relationship between isolated energy and and attached to the grid. Uh I know although you have uh uh you have this this specific approach you know we we often refer to Bitcoin as fuck you money. Uh you could almost think about fuck you energy. Well, it's like if you're gonna have fuck you money, you need fuck you power and I'm the guy that's gonna give it to you. >> So, you're you're you're kind of going for the sovereignty route when it comes to the the power, the energy, of course, the money and as well with the um with the data. So, the data center infrastructure in itself. Can you can you tell us a little bit more about that sort of vertical integration of sovereignty so to speak? >> Yeah, so it essentially is operating behind the meter here. So purchase the rights to your gas, own your power generation, and deploy your own infrastructure top down. Everything from the molecules in the ground to the AS6 that you're configuring the pools on. Vertically integrating like that and being able to handle your own power generation gives you the ability to operate and control your cost long term. And when somebody wants you to curtail or turn off for any reason, you can tell them to take a long walk off a short fucking pier because we don't turn off here. >> What what uh what can you guys u tell us about the the differences at the buildout level? Um so when uh building out a site uh specifically with the intention of uh capturing the stranded energy versus uh you know being uh a more traditional site and being attached to the grid and all that. >> So for stranded energy when you deploy you want to be nimble when it comes to oil and gas. A lot of people don't understand gas wells decline. There is an initial production for about 12 to 36 months depending on you know the the perian bakan or you know shallow deep horizontal the well structure and everything else. Geology reports dictate all these things after the holes board into the ground. But the thing about that is it only goes one direction and that's down. And if you want to be successful with mining Bitcoin off-rid and decentralizing your power and expanding, you have to be able to build your operations so that they can scale down and be redeployed elsewhere to other locations around you where there continues to be more stranded energy. because of the nature of the gas well itself, it's not going to continue to give you enough energy to support that operation indefinitely. So the difference like with a large facility like a grid operation it's going to need like a pipeline consistent generation constant uptime whereas off-grid mining can maintain the same level of uptime as long as it's able to be redeployed in a nimble manner because essentially longterm we have to understand how the nature of the geology and the gas works and the physics of you know the oil and gas well and if you're educated on this situation and you know you can deploy and be successful with it. But if you're not, well, you'll try and deploy a gridized fucking plant on a gas well that's going to beat your brakes off you. Yeah. I think what Huttle's doing is he's harvesting molecules, right? And that looks like farming where you have to move out and move around and and change your position. What I'm speaking of on the grid side is effectively we're harvesting dark fiber dark capacity in the existing grid to help monetize after the molecules have been collected. So typically what you see is especially at like a grid co at a generation collocation your sizing is going to be one to two zeros more than what what HTS are um because that's all all that molecule power has been already concentrated into the into the factory electron factory. Pros and cons though, I'd say that my systems are a lot more resilient. >> I would agree, but the the counter to that is adding Bitcoin to the generation makes the grid itself more resilient. >> That's great. >> Almost more like a public good than a sovereignty play there. >> Sovereignty is just as good for the public, sir. >> I don't disagree. >> Yeah. And I I just wanted to add because uh flare gas is interesting. is a big problem uh as we as we talked about but you know the energy system is so vast and complex and that's just one use case within the upstream oil and gas even within the upstream uh where you produce you extract and produce uh energy uh Alberta oil sands um off offshore rigs um the midstream you've got compressor stations around the world moving gas there's generation at compressor stations uh manufacturing facilities uh that refine gasoline diesel jet fuel or make prochemicals there's co-generation on site that's not being utilized. Uh LG facilities, there's nine export terminals being built on the Gulf Coast right now. Um dealing with natural gas and LG. So I think there's a lot of untapped opportunity in the oil and gas value chain to deploy small modular uh Bitcoin systems that can extract and monetize energy that's otherwise wasted. >> Oh yeah, agree. And very quickly before we then wrap up with the final question, uh something I was just thinking about uh has the um the emergence of systems such as Starlink, so more modern systems of uh connection, internet connection, uh is that kind of a positive influence on the on the stranded energy trend? I'm assuming I'm assuming the answer is yes. >> Oh, absolutely. I mean, well, I mean, even before Starlink in 2017, before it was like available any all over, I was deploying on cellular modem and building my own mesh networks. So, I mean, when you're building a digital pipeline, if you want to ask me if adding a satellite dish is uh going to help, what's what do you think the answer is? >> Yeah, that that is not yet the case with the HPC though, where you you do require a lot of bandwidth. Well, see, that's the other thing. You have to take into consideration the bandwidth requirements for your data center. So, if you're going to do HPC or LPC, you may need to be close to a fiber connection or have an enterprisegrade satellite system setup so that you can move 100 100 gigabytes per second or more and be able to support the actual infrastructure that you're looking to deploy and provide to others. >> I think at an absolute level, Jesse, more data pipes is good. like all of our facilities you typically utilize a Starlink connection as well as one or more uh landline connections. So it it has been accretive to pretty much all all data deployments I would say across the across the configuration stack. >> Yeah, the the energy is in different places difficult places right and the ability to communicate remotely easily low barrier to entry just removes another barrier that uh that prevents people from monetizing these assets. Well said. >> All right. Um I wanted to give you guys um just a chance a final final question just to give a give us um your thoughts on u the future the next few years. Uh what do those look like uh um in regards to stranded energy uh both Bitcoin mining AIHPC sites. Um this is your opportunity to make a prediction about what's what's going to happen. Well, if I was to say anything in regards to predictions, I'd tell the young men and women out there in the rural communities to start educating themselves on network engineering, power, three-phase power distribution, HVAC, and building construction because the future is coming, right? and the fact that what we're doing with decentralized distributed power and Bitcoin responsive load, you're going to have an opportunity to participate and either you're going to step up to the plate and do it or you're going to get left behind. The choice is yours. So, I won't leave you with a prediction. I'll leave you with the hope is that uh you know, we have resilient money like we have freedom money now and we need resilient energy and we need more energy to support economic growth and living standards. And so I think Bitcoin is the tool that will enable a resilient global energy system long term. >> Resilient money in a resilient energy was much more elegant than what we said before. >> I was going to say there isn't actually such thing as stranded energy anymore after guys like us came into the game. Stranded energy just doesn't exist anymore. I'm sorry. It It's not a thing anymore. I'm declaring that now. >> I'm aligned. The the this commodity super cycles star is going to be the electron. We have the tools to take advantage of that as a as a country as a as a globe. Um we are really short on the talent and the time. >> I need hands in the field. >> Yeah. >> Awesome. On that note, uh I would like to thank the the panelists for this uh very interesting conversation. Uh thank you everybody for coming here. Please give it up. Every year this community comes together to celebrate, to debate, to build what comes next. And every year the stage gets bigger. Sound money center stage. So where do you go to celebrate the next chapter in Bitcoin history? You come home. Nashville July 2027.