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‘We’ll be the first to mine Bitcoin in space’ says Nvidia-backed startup —Starcloud will fire up its ASICs after its second spacecraft reaches orbit later this year Almost constant solar energy plus ASIC price per KW are the most compelling aspects of the plan. An Nvidia-backed startup plans to establish a Bitcoin mining operation in space before the year is out. Starcloud will fire up its cryptocurrency mining ASICs after its second spacecraft reaches orbit later this year. “We’ll be the first to mine Bitcoin in space,” claimed Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston in a recent interview with Documenting Bitcoin. Starcloud was founded in 2024 with the headlining goal of moving data centers to space. “As launch costs fall, data centers in space will leverage continuous solar energy and radiative cooling, rapidly scaling to gigawatts while avoiding permitting constraints on Earth,” reads its mission statement. The firm spells out its proposition in far greater detail in a white paper on its website, highlighting the appeal of training AI in space. However, the ample supply of solar energy is also great for cryptomining. So, when Starcloud-2 reaches orbit, it will be tasked with raising some crypto-cash. In the embedded interview segment, Johnston said: “We’ll have some Bitcoin mining ASICs on the second spacecraft launching later this year.” At the time of writing 1BTC is worth roughly $86,000, quite a way down from highs several months ago. Starcloud-2 is just the second of four currently planned satellite launches from the startup. It is framed as the company's first commercial mission, and like the prior satellite, will feature a GPU cluster. Interestingly, the official Starcloud-2 project page doesn’t mention Bitcoin mining or ASICs, so Johnston’s reveal is quite eyebrow-raising. Moreover, for something that seems a bit like an afterthought, “Potentially it [Bitcoin mining] is one of the most compelling use cases of space compute,” the Starcloud CEO told Documenting Bitcoin. Johnson provided some financial insight into why there is now a Bitcoin side gig or pivot being considered. He cited the lower costs of ASICs vs. GPUs: they are about 30x cheaper than GPUs per kilowatt, he told the host. A specific example given was a 1KW Nvidia B200 chip at $30,000 vs. a 1KW ASIC at $1,000. Solving the energy supply situation in space for GPUs, or for ASICs, isn’t relevant to the business, said Johnson. We wonder what Nvidia will think about that. While the availability of near-uninterrupted solar power is a big attraction of space-based compute, there are downsides. For example, satellites aren’t easy to service, and convection cooling doesn’t work in a vacuum. Commercial space-based data centers are so new that some of the problems and solutions will only become entirely clear after pioneering deployments like the Starcloud-2. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason. - PEnns Because we don't have enough garbage satellites polluting the already crowded orbits.Reply What happens to Jen's And Star Cloud (amazing names...) satellites when the next Crypto crash arrives as usual? Let's hope those newbies don't start the Kepler Effect. - ezst036 How much more bitcoin is left to mine anyways? If its unlimited then its only a matter of time before the currency supply overcomes the currency demand and then its bitzimbabwecoin.Reply - Tanakoi Reply Orbits are "crowded" like Antarctica is overpopulated with people. I don't believe people understand exactly how much volume there is in space.PEnns said:Because we don't have enough garbage satellites polluting the already crowded orbits. As for the "Kepler Effect" crowd that keeps popping up, I won't debunk that silliness again -- I'll just note this satellite isn't going into LEO, but a sun-sychronous orbit. - beyondlogic funny thing about space plenty of it and last i checked bit coin doesn't have physical mass those lovely satellites though will fall out of orbit or screw up that's a hell of a repair job for some theoretical bit coinReply - Tanakoi Reply Voyager II is still 30% functional after 50 years. Even if these satellites only average a lifespan of 6-7 years, I think they'll pay for themselves in energy cost savings alone.beyondlogic said:funny thing about space plenty of it and last i checked bit coin doesn't have physical mass those lovely satellites though will fall out of orbit or screw up that's a hell of a repair job for some theoretical bit coin - Fomdoo Crypto currency hasn't done a thing to make itself legitimate currency. But I'm sure this will completely work out.Reply - Eximo Reply Voyagers are powered by RTG and intended to be chucked into deep space.Tanakoi said:Voyager II is still 30% functional after 50 years. Even if these satellites only average a lifespan of 6-7 years, I think they'll pay for themselves in energy cost savings alone. Would really need to know the build cost, launch cost, and hash rate to even guess at an ROI, and then compare it to just putting solar panels and a battery on a ground based solution. Clearly they think so, but BTC could go up or down while that thing is in orbit...But they could also just be doing this for publicity and getting investors. - beyondlogic ReplyTanakoi said:Voyager II is still 30% functional after 50 years. Even if these satellites only average a lifespan of 6-7 years, I think they'll pay for themselves in energy cost savings alone. yep good piece of tech back when they knew how to build stuff. whats going up now probly will last not even 6-7 years
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