Pourquoi les États-Unis doivent mener la course mondiale aux infrastructures numériques | Bitcoin 2026

I am super super excited uh to be joined by these three folks up here. Um well, we'll we'll just get right into it. Some introductions if they're necessary. We're actually joking backstage that Harry might drop in from the ceiling since, you know, this is his stage. You know, this is grand entrance for him, but he was modest enough to walk up with the with with with us uh small folk here. So, uh thank you guys again. uh Lisa Huff, who is for me the first lady of Bitcoin. That that's how I know her. Um we'll start with you for introductions. For those who somehow don't know the three of you, we'll let you kick it off, Lisa, and get right into it. >> Okay, real quick. Thank you so much for coming. I know it's 4:30. You probably want to be anywhere else, but thank you very much. Um let's see. I was a gas trader aundred years ago. I led PG&E, East Coast Trading. We had 4,500 megawatts of generation, whole bunch of other energy assets. I found Bitcoin about 2018. Uh started calling myself an expert in Bitcoin mining in 2020. Totally was not, but started working in Bitcoin and have been here ever since now developing data center sites. >> Go ahead, Harry. >> Uh I'm Harry. I work at CleanSpark. We're a large-scale digital infrastructure developer, large holder of Bitcoin and strong believer in the American backbone for future innovation. I want to pause on some of our introduction and just say that if you asked any of the colony the colonies here in the US whether or not we were too far behind the British to win our independence, they would have said we're too far behind. And so I don't subscribe to the viewpoint that we're too far behind anything. And when strong people have strong wills, they make amazing things happen. >> Hell yeah. >> Go for it, Will. >> I can't get more patriotic than that. But, uh, Will Sue, uh, great to be here. I work at Black Rockck, a large asset manager. Um, I am our head of public energy investing. So, I've been through this journey for almost two decades. used to be uh maybe similar to Lisa, recovering commodities trader, mostly focused on oil and natural gas. Um you know, Black Rockck is on a journey with all of you. We want we've gone from zero dollars in digital assets under management two years ago to $160 billion. And this is not top of the first inning. This is like batting practice, right? So really proud to be here. Uh really look forward to the journey ahead. >> Well, well, let's just jump right into it. So I think the question that a lot of us have been kind of asking on the side and and and in the rooms on the side is you know is this really an an AI discussion? Is it really an HPC discussion or is this a is that the wrapper for capital investment in infrastructure? I'm going to start with Harry. I know you guys are really like lead a lot on infrastructure first and foremost. That's been kind of your ethos at at CleanSpark. So what are your thoughts on that? Is is this a compute discussion or is it an infrastructure battle that we're having? >> Well, I I think that we're having a conversation about the American economy fundamentally and two of the crown jewels of the American economy are one, our capital markets and two, our electric system. When you look at the goods and services that we benefit from every day, energy is one of the key inputs that go into those goods and services. And it's the reason why a deflationary cost curve has been available to us as the innovation edge and frontier has continued to be pushed forward. Whether that's from innovation like the internet or whether that's from innovation like the steam engine, the the energy intensity of the modern life has been part of what gets pushed forward every time that we make that step function improvement. Now why are we able to keep pushing forward? It's because the US capital markets have been able to make entrepreneurs capitalized in such a way that they're able to innovate and push forward to the edge. So, I view that the American energy backbone and the American capital market system as the reason why we've been an innovation leader over the last 150 years. I'd say 250 years, but the first hundred were tricky. And so, ultimately, why are we going to be successful headed into the future? It's because we're going to continue to untether the benefits of both of those tools. And more and more so, those tools have converged over time. >> Yeah, I think I think it's it's it's undeniable. uh plenty of studies been have been done right our economic viability across the globe is tied to energy access and energy abundance right and that comes down to infrastructure investment private public whatever it may be it really boils down to it being that simple Lisa I know you've been involved in some major projects over the last few years uh on the development side I mean what do you think is this an infrastructure first question is it an economic question how how do you come to this question Well, it's hard to come after Harry and answer any question. I think this is about the American family. I think it's about the American dinner table. I want us to be prosperous and I want us to be economically optimistic about our futures and about our children's future. And I think that anyone who stands in the way of infrastructure development is really expressing an absolute hate for their children and their grandchildren. >> We must have energy stability and infrastructure so that our family tables continue to exist in this country. >> Love it. Le let's talk about that investment. Uh absolutely. Clap that up 100%. Well, let's talk about the capital investment side. You mentioned it 0 to $ 160 billion in two years. That's bananas. Uh and you said it's it's batting practice. Love to hear that. What I I mean when we talk about you're, you know, the largest global allocator of capital, you know, it maybe in the history of the world, right? We know that. Uh what makes the US digital infrastructure more investable in other regions in in in the world? I mean, capital finds its most efficient outcomes, right? So, what makes the US more investable right now? We we we're patriotic. We believe in the American dream, but capital markets have rules and they're going to follow that efficiency. How do we what what what makes it investable and how do we maintain that status in the world? It there's so many advantages that it's hard to start, but I just kind of start by visualizing, right? um the degree of advantage that we have in this country from a resource perspective is completely unmatched and I like to visualize things. So the amount of natural gas right now that flows through the country roughly 110 billion cubic feet per day that's enough to fill 9,000 Empire State buildings every single day. So just visualize how much gas that is and how many tens of hundreds and thousands of miles of infrastructure it took over the years to supply that and then understand that that's only 40% of our electricity supply. Right? So this has always been an energy addition not an energy transition not an energy substitution because every single year every single form of energy continues to ramp. Now you asked about why the US is the preeminent place to invest. Well, look, we have the best entrepreneurs. We have the best corporate leaders to actually make these things happen. We have the best below the ground resources, right? I I do think there has been a lot of improvement in terms of permitting reform and allowing things to happen. We got to do a whole lot more, right? Because right now it takes you 10 years to get new grid investments brought online and in China it takes three to six months, right? One of the I'll give you a really interesting data point that I found, right, which is if you look at the hash rate around the world today, I don't think anyone would have thought that Ethiopia of all countries would be in the top 10. They're now 3% of global hash rate. The reason they're doing that is because a 5 gawatt dam was brought online, providing you power at less than 4 cents per kilowatt hour. Right? So, a lot of foreign are coming in to take advantage of that. But that actually reveals a fundamental weakness in not planning the grid correctly. They they built the generation but they didn't build a proper distribution. As a result, you're mining bitcoins. You're the eighth largest hash rate provider in the world, but a lot of folks in the country actually don't have adequate access to cheap electricity and your GDP and people's well-being is lagging behind. So I think it's so important to remember that we are the leaders and we will continue to be the leaders because we have above and below the ground advantages but the way we lose this fight is to lose sight of the advantages we have and serve ourselves our own goals right while while others are catching up and taking advantage of that weakness. So it's so important to continue that investment and that focus on an all of the above solution to energy and energy abundance. >> Go ahead Lisa. Okay. So, I just want to add something. I want to share a little context. Harry and I, we were all just backstage and I said to Harry, you know, this one of these fact, I'm a student of energy history and a fact that I find fascinating is that an energy transition that that word that phrase was first used as we were talking about um the atom and it was, you know, 50 60 years ago that we were having this conversation publicly for the first time and every source of energy that we have ever consumed, people always think, oh, if I add this, if you know, if we move to wind and solar, I'll use less hydrocarbons. But it was really the same conversation with John D. Rockefeller. And I was noting to Harry that, you know, people thought that we'd quit burning all of this wood and we'd have, you know, forests would be prolific and etc. Um but what ended up happening of course is that we took the wood and instead of burning it in our homes because we now had hydrocarbon products um we used it to make barrels. And then Harry said >> so you know th this is so important to know the the long long arc of history as it relates to commerce and energy which is that if you look at the 53 ft trailer that's on all of the trucking lines all across the country. You look at the freight that moves over the railroad. And then you look at the shipping container that sits on the ships that are moving all across the sea. All of those means of of transportation, one they're fungeible with each other. They're the same unit, which is the container that moves across all three. And the width of that container is able to draw its history back to ancient Rome because that is the width of the road such that two horses could pass one another on the roads of Rome. And so the reason that you're able to move goods across every inch of this globe actually starts over 2,000 years ago in a civilization that we have the honor to learn from today still. Uh I just learned that right now. I did not know that. Uh that's fascinating. Uh let's talk about, you know, with those investments. We've got capital's not the problem, right? I think we can agree on that, right? Institutional capital certainly not the problem. What's the what's the disconnect right now between what in what institutional private public investment wants to see happen and what is happening on the ground? Uh I'm going to start with Lisa on that one. What do you think >> that I mean to me the disconnect is somewhat just the narrative that energy usage is bad, right? I I hope that >> so it's a messaging problem. >> I I mean I think it's this overarching uh Elizabeth Warren wants us all to be poor and sitting in the dark. uh we've got to lose that or or we do lose this race with other nations who are building power plants and building AI data centers and who are not afraid of energy and who are not afraid of a family table who are not afraid afraid of people coming out of poverty. >> Anybody else? What what do you think the disconnect is between capital and execution on the ground? >> Um I think there's a there's a few different disconnects. One of them is a fundamental lack of optimism and that I think that if you want to believe that the future can be better than the past, then you have the will and the wherewithal to make the hard investments and choices to action that future. So, you know, I think that somewhere in the last 3 to four years, we broadly woke up to the fact that we're not generating enough electrons in the US. Um, and I think that the reason that we woke up to that is because we didn't realize how important an energy native form of technical innovation was going to be in the form of the large language model and the form of digital intelligence that that could offer to us. Um, and so until we realized that that was really useful and valuable, we sort of thought that well, you know, energy is like a nice to have. But if you look at, you know, what what is the energy actually used for right now? We use way more energy on air conditioning than AI. And you know, my argument is not that we should use less air conditioning. Lord, let me tell you, um, my argument is that we should use probably about as much energy running AI models as we do air conditioning because the productivity gains from being able to work in a temperate environment and the productivity gains that you're able to get from having an intelligent machine available to your fingertips. I view those as as somewhere in the same zip code. And so these energyinttense productivity gains were not something that we had a working language around until very recently at the very broad level. I think Bitcoiners knew this much before sort of the AI natives knew this and that's why we're some of the companies that are best positioned to action this change. But ultimately when the world of atoms collides into the world of bits, you're forced to make very challenging engineering decisions. And so it's not good enough to say we want to generate more. We need to do so in a way that is integrated into our electric system is transmitted and delivered in a way that's useful and is capitalized in a way that produces positive outcomes for the investors who take the bet on this better future than worse past. >> Yeah. I think energy is just a it's not a nice to have. It's a non-negotiable. >> Non-negotiable. More >> will any thoughts? Yeah, I mean echo all of that and I'll repeat my favorite quote on this which is since the beginning of uh since the beginning of time knowledge is power but for the first time power is knowledge in the age of AI and it's just such it just raises the table stake to a completely new level. I don't think this is a disconnect but I think this is a growing risk especially for AI. I think AI has a PR problem and I think unfortunately by association if AI has a PR problem then Bitcoin mining and anything else that's energy intensive has a similar PR problem and the PR problem is at the local communities where you're building out the power and the data centers there's push back right there's push back because the communities don't feel like they're aligned with the economic upside and then they have a lot of perceived economic downside whether it's higher power bills or construction noise or whatnot. So I think the trend that we have seen is a lot of these data centers are now moving to more sparsely populated places. Right? Helios uh by Galaxy is a 3.5 gawatt site being built in Dickens County up in the panhandle of Texas. Population is two people per square mile. Right? Iron in Clear Water that they're converting it's 10 or 20 people per square mile. So I think the way out of that is BYOG. bring your own generation. One of the ways that the Bitcoin mining community, I think, provides that, Scooter, you kind of said earlier on your panel that A6 don't have feelings, so they don't care. It's 90 degrees. You just shut it off. That I think that's a very economically viable way to provide that much needed power. But at the end of the day, there's no substituting your way out of this. the demand is going higher whether it's for Bitcoin mining or for AI or simply for more prochemicals production as the Iran war has taken something like 7% of the world's LG out of service right this is the place to do it we have the resource we have the security we just got to deliver it through the last mile to the customers that are in need >> welcome to predict the world is a market everything is a market every headline moves the line. Every moment is your market. Call the moves. Bet on your instinct, your prediction, your edge. Dual bits. Predict where everything is a market. >> Yeah. You know, I think one of the things that that is is interesting to note, I mean, will you you were talking about it. It it's a must-have backstage. It it can't not happen. What I really really like about all of this transition, the big pivot that we're talking about, it is it is being led by Bitcoiners and Bitcoiners don't like to be told no. They don't like to be told we can't do something. And I think it's going to take that kind of moxy to really do this uh and do it the right way. So I I don't think we could be in a better position domestically for the people that are leading the charge um to say this is an absolute must for the people that are used to making decisions, used to taking risk uh and and used to just willing things to happen. And so I think that is an that is a mentality. It's an ethos that Bitcoin can really bring and Bitcoiners can really really bring to what is what we have to do. have to win. We have to do this. Um let's really talk about I think what what are the stakes um of this whole discussion. I mean this is a microcosm of a discussion of of what really matters and I think what really matters is what's the cost domestically not economically but what is the cost to us as a nation if we don't win this battle? If we don't make this commitment, where are we in 50 years? Where are we in 75 years? Lisa, what do you think? >> Okay, again, I'm going to draw you back to history and I'm going to tell you the story of the big inch pipeline and the big little inch pipeline. You should Google it if you've never heard this story. So this is very similar to what is being uh what was discussed on the panel previously where some equipment is being marked as you know national security imperative equipment in 1941 234 we built pipelines in like record times. They threw all regulation away said we are going to build these pipelines. They originated in Long View, Texas. They went all the way up to a tiny town just outside of Philadelphia. We 80% of the energy that came out of Texas during that time frame went to our allied forces abroad. So yes, I think this is very much a a battle of our own national security. food on tables, diplomacy. Obviously, our military might makes up the third leg of that stool, but it is very much a battle for um peace and prosperity around the world in the way that Big Inch and the Little Big Inch were during World War II. Um or as someone said on stage today, World War 11, not not here at some other conference. >> Different stage. >> Different stage. >> Now, let's acknowledge the rest of history. So we can do this and our might at home on our shores, you know, within our borders, within the United States of America, that is a way for us to export, you know, prosperity, freedom, liberty, property rights abroad. We we can do this. We we are doing this, >> Will, what do you think? >> I mean, I I I didn't know about that, so I'm going to go back and Google that up. And I think that's such a great example. Look, I would just say this, right? Relevant to bitcoins, a hash rate is energy politicized and whoever has the most abundant and affordable power and energy and electricity literally gets to vote the most in the most important monetary network ever created in human history. That's the table stakes for digital assets and bitcoins. And you can expand that sentence however you want to AI and what you control there. Right? If we looked again just within bitcoins, right? The current hash rate is roughly ones at a hash a second. I think that translates roughly to 150 175 terowatt hours. Uh we are on top, right? We're 35 to 40% of that. We came from a very low base just 5 years ago. And it's the ingenuity. A lot of it is development in Texas, but also Georgia, New York, New Hampshire that's taken us to this place. Look at who's in two, three, and four, right? It's China, it's Russia, it's Kazakhstan. You add them up and they're right there on our heels, right? So, it's very important to be able to build that up. I talked about the Ethiopian dam earlier and maybe I'll kind of conclude on this point is that that was a big dam, right? 5 gawatts. 5 gawatts is a lot of power. China is building a hydro dam in Tibet called the Moldog project. It is 60 gigawatts. 60 freaking gigawatts. That's 12 of the Ethiopian dams. That's three of the three gorgeous dams, which is to this point the largest hydro dam in the world. When it comes online in 2030, that's more power than the United States brought on in 2024 and 2025 combined. So we are in the lead but the lead is ever fragile and it's one that we got to constantly reinvest in because AI it's a big zero sum game right you're talking about algorithmic trading you're talking about optimizing ads on Tik Tok these are things that will demand ever more energy and I think it's very important to not lose sight of the fact that while that is the key driver for power energy demand there are other important parts like securing the Bitcoin network like securing food and fertilizers and natural gas and LG and LPG that require power. And that's the table stakes that we have in this very classic susities trap kind of setup, right, between the incumbent superpower that is the US and the clearly rising superpower that is China. >> Yeah. And and will maybe you can check me on this, but I I believe that I read recently that China in the last four years has built and brought on more generation or as much generation than that that we have in the US in our entire history uh of electrification in this country. That is wild. It's crazy. They also have roughly 33 to 35% I believe of generation resource adequacy. They're in reserves. They they're ready to go. Now, obviously, our, you know, environment, uh, that we operate in is very much different than CCP, but we've, we've got to wake up and we've got to go. Uh, there's just really no way around it. Um, we have to make this a national security priority. We have to make this uh, you know, an American family priority. Um, it's just it it's it's non-negotiable. I just keep coming back to that. >> Yeah. I want Harry to I'm sure you want Harry to land our plane. Absolutely. >> But I think if like you take nothing else from this panel, maybe like let's all join forces and shift the narrative, right? AI is good for us. Progress is good for us. It's not going to rob us of jobs. Our kids need to learn how to use it, embrace it um like full throttle. Let's let's go. Let's build great uh innovative opportunities for people that we haven't even ever dreamt possible. >> Yeah. Harry, I'm going to I'm going to let you uh t take it away here, man. I think this is uh this is this is a perfect moment for you, bud. >> So, the the rugged individualist has not been treated well in the press recently. And so on behalf of a a rugged individualist to a room full of rugged individualists, the the answer is not to have high-minded ideas about global national security. The the answer is to go join or start a business, go call a utility and ask them for power to build something that has positive economic output. And so, you know, that's what we, at least on the CleanSpark team, are doing every day, which is we view this as a boots on the ground, hand-to-hand, face-to-face, shoulder-to-shoulder opportunity to take what we believe is a hugely positive economic activity, which is building data centers, mining Bitcoin, working on behalf of the intelligent tokens that are required for the future, and go do it. And so, you know, I don't know that I'm going to convince the US to plug in a ton more power, but I do know that we can go to Sandersville, Georgia, and deliver an outcome. I know that we can go to Celely, Texas. We can source power. We can hire people. We can put our economic capital to work. And we can make change. And so, by taking a m a massively microeconomic approach, we are able to build a huge business. And everybody in this room is able to have a powerful force for change. And so, you know, take it down to the rugged individual level and make that change in every single household, in every single business, and we might actually end up where we're supposed to go. >> Well, I think the way that you just spoke to this room is the way that we have to have leadership in this country, speak to television screens, and let them know this is this is how it's got to be, right? I mean, this is about our freedom and and it's at an individual level. And I think that's part of the messaging issue that we have going on is, you know, companies come in, they want this opportunity, they're not really, they're speaking around the fact that they're just trying to deliver an outcome for theirel, right? As opposed to speaking to, you know, to the people around the kitchen table, speaking to the people that says, "No, this is an American must." So, I I I want to thank you for taking that approach. I want to thank each and every one of you for your time, for your content, for you know what you've given here to the room, for what you've given to this community, uh to the Bitcoin community, to the energy community, to this stage, this event. Uh could not have been more excited. A big round of applause, please, for Lisa Huff, Harry Sudok, Will Sue. Thank you guys very much. 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.