STARTUP TEASES BITCOIN MINING IN SPACE
US startup Starcloud says it plans to launch a dedicated bitcoin mining rig into orbit later this year, potentially becoming the first company to mine bitcoin in space.
The announcement came from Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston during an appearance on the HyperChange YouTube channel.
Johnston said the company is currently focused on building its orbital data center constellation but confirmed that bitcoin mining hardware is also part of its near term plans.
“There’s also bitcoin mining,” Johnston said. “We’ll have some bitcoin mining ASICs on the second spacecraft launching later this year.”
The move follows Starcloud’s successful test of running an Nvidia H100 GPU in orbit, demonstrating that high performance compute infrastructure can operate in space.
Johnston says the long term vision centers on energy.
Orbital data centers and mining rigs could tap continuous solar power in space, potentially providing a cheaper and more scalable energy source than what is available on Earth.
Compared with enterprise AI hardware like Nvidia GPUs, which can cost $30,000 or more, bitcoin mining machines are relatively inexpensive, typically ranging from $600 to a few thousand dollars.
“The cat is out of the bag,” Johnston said on X. “Starcloud will be the first to mine bitcoin in space.”
He added that the opportunity could be massive, noting that bitcoin mining currently consumes roughly 20 GW of power globally and arguing that in the long run, a significant portion of that compute could move off planet.
