March 7 · Block Height 833800 · Bitcoin Price $67K

You made it to the end of the week! Today, we’re catching you up on some headlines, best links from this past week and some thoughts on ETHDenver’s Bitcoin scene. (Oh, also a few podcasts on Cathedra Bitcoin’s merger and Marathon’s Inscription service).

Quick hits

Talen Energy Sells Data Center to AWS for $650M; AWS Plans $5.3B Saudi Investment

[PowerMag] Talen Energy sold its Pennsylvania-based Cumulus data center campus to Amazon Web Services for $650 million and will supply AWS with power. AWS also announced a $5.3 billion investment in Saudi Arabia to enhance cloud services in the Middle East.

Bitdeer Unveils 18.1 J/TH Efficient Bitcoin ASIC

[MinerMag] Bitdeer introduced its bitcoin ASIC, SEAL01, with 18.1 J/TH efficiency and 4-nm technology. The company is now taking pre-orders for its units.

Cathedra Bitcoin Merges With Hosting Operation Kungsleden

[The Mining Pod] Canadian-listed Bitcoin miner Cathedra has merged with central USA-based Kungsleden to increase hashrate and diversify revenue sources.

Kimchi Premium Hits 27-Month High at 10.32% for Bitcoin in South Korea

[The Block] South Korea's Bitcoin ‘Kimchi Premium’ soared to a 27-month high of 10.32%, reflecting the country's higher crypto prices due to strict local rules and limited supply. The premium surge suggests increased buying pressure among South Korean investors.

Core Scientific Signs Over $100M Deal with CoreWeave

[Core Sci] Core Scientific will supply up to 16 MW of data center infrastructure to CoreWeave, under a contract potentially exceeding $100 million, for CoreWeave’s GPU business.

Brave Browser Re-Adds Bitcoin Wallet Following Years Hiatus

[Bitcoin Magazine] Brave will add its Bitcoin wallet service back for its 67 million users. It plans on supporting Ordinals and BRC-20 style tokens.

Best links

• Spiderpool comes back to life with 30 EH/s (for a few days)

• Uncovering pool financial flows with Parker Merritt

• Bitcoin jpegs and fee relations with Charlie Spears

• F2Pool misses out on 0.3 BTC due to RBF settings

Chart of the Week

Scrap ETH Denver, BTC Denver is in.

Last week, Denver was overrun with a bunch of token projects for a bunch of chains with a bunch of (claimed) users. 

Yet one difference stood out amidst the sea of bad haircuts and zip-up hoodies: Bitcoin.

Indeed, Denver featured numerous Bitcoin events that were not around last year like an Ordinals cocktail nights, an Ordinals hacker house, and a full-day event, the Bitcoin Renaissance, showcasing different Bitcoin projects. Below, we’ll list some of the projects I’m paying attention to.

BabylonChain

Okay, to be honest, I’m not particularly enthralled with BabylonChain, but they do have a lot of developer talent. BabylonChain is a Proof-of-Stake network built on the Cosmos Tendermint SDK (a popular developer kit) that plans on using anyone’s Bitcoin holdings as the 'stake' for another network. Stakers would then receive yield from Dapps that build on top of BabylonChain. If you’re into risking your Bitcoin, this might be the project for you.

Citrea by Chainway

Citrea is a Zero Knowledge Rollup (ZKR) project for Bitcoin using BitVM (an open-source project from Robin Linus) as the foundation. ZKRs could be a huge boon for Bitcoin, as they would increase transaction throughput with very small trade-offs. (Show with Chainway’s Orkun Kılıç out shortly on The Mining Pod). ZKRs on Bitcoin is certainly something to watch.

Build on Bitcoin (BOB)

BOB might be one of the most hyped projects. It's a mashup of Bitcoin, Ethereum's EVM, merge-mining, and Zero Knowledge tech to allow for composability between Ethereum and Bitcoin. They have a testnet live now on the Ethereum Sepolia network.

Botanix

Botanix is a Bitcoin Layer 2 using an interesting multi-sig federation scheme, somewhat like a more complex and secure Liquid Network. They are focusing on attracting EVM developers to its project to increase applications, like DeFi for Bitcoin. We did a show with them back in December on The Mining Pod, which is a great place to start!

Of course, there are a lot of other great projects in the works! If you think one deserves a mention, hit that reply button!

Blockspace Podcasts

🎙️ The Cathedra Bitcoin Merge

(YouTube) Cathedra Bitcoin and Kungsleden have merged, creating a new mining entity with both self-mining and hosting operations as revenue drivers. We are joined by Drew Armstrong (President Cathedra), Tom Masiero (Founder Kungsleden, Standard Bitcoin) and Marty Bent (Ten31, Cathedra) to discuss the merger of the two companies.

🎙️Marathon Digital’s Slipstream & Layer 2

(YouTube) Julian Duran and Mike Casey of Marathon Digital join the podcast to discuss the launch of Ordinal minting service Slipstream and Layer 2 network Anduro.

Thanks for reading! If you made it all the way to the bottom, reply with a Lightning address and I’ll send 500 sats!