Babylon's 12K BTC, Hut 8's hyperscaler ambitions and CLSK's buyback

Woo! What a week in Bitcoin...

Author

Charlie Spears
December 13, 2024

As the old adage goes, sometimes there are decades where nothing happens, and then there are weeks where decades happen. This week was the latter.

Bitcoin mining companies like Hut 8 are getting in bed with hyperscalers for a billion dollar data center. Chatter on covenant proposals has hit an ear-screeching crescendo (at least on Twitter). And Bitcoin continues to bonk its head on $100K.

Wherever you find yourself in the Bitcoin stack–pleb, miner, anon, Yankee financier, wildcatter, or shadow coder–it’s tough to keep pace with the content. Thank goodness for your good natured journalists at Blockspace! 

News

Bitcoin Staking protocol Babylon opens cap #3 and grows from 23.8k to 34.2k BTC staked, for a total of $3.7 billion bitcoin staked through the protocol. Babylon continues to see significant demand and is growing faster than Microstrategy did since their first bitcoin purchase.

Texas Representative Giovanni Capriglione filed a bill on Thursday to allow the state to custody Bitcoin within the state treasury. “A strategic Bitcoin reserve, investing in Bitcoin would be a win-win for the state.”. While this is just a filing and has yet to be voted into law many believe this is a big step towards a US strategic Bitcoin reserve.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced a quantum computing “breakthrough” that reduces errors while scaling, sparking fears of such computers breaking Bitcoin and crypto security. Bitcoin developer Hunter Beast says “Quantum computers just went from the equivalent of lots of vacuum tubes to a transistor. Just one transistor though.”

Toronto-based Bitcoin miner Hut 8 ($HUT) is going all-in on high-performance computing (HPC), according to documents for a proposed $12 billion build in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. Per the Planning & Zoning Department, Hut 8 seeks to build an initial 300-megawatt (MW) Tier III data center, with the potential to expand to 1,000 MW to house a “hyperscale tenant” using state-of-the-art liquid-cooled GPU servers for AI and ML training activities.

CleanSpark has staked its claim into the new meta, joining 3 other miners to issue future convertible notes for current purchases. But instead of buying Bitcoin, they bought…CLSK! The miner traded down on the news over 3% after market close, however.

Chart of the week

Microstrategy Bitcoin holdings jumped upwards this month. The company now has over 400,000 bitcoins in their corporate treasury.

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