The Bitcoin mining network has reached a historic milestone with one zettahash of computing power (1,000 EH/s, meaning one sextillion computations occur each second to mine Bitcoin) now securing the network, marking another milestone in Bitcoin’s relentless growth.
Meanwhile, the industry is witnessing high-stakes legal battles between Tether and Swan, policy maker scrutiny of Chinese mining giant Bitmain, and controversy over mining pool executive compensation.
Below is an edited transcript of the latest Mining Pod news roundup between hosts, Blockspace Founder Will Foxley and Coinshares Analyst Matt Kimmell, covering the latest developments in Bitcoin mining for both miners and investors.
Listen to the full podcast episode on YouTube by clicking here.
Bitcoin hits the mythical 1 zettahash bitcoin mining milestone
Matt: We’ve crossed a network milestone with one zettahash of hash rate online. The mythical, sought-after zettahash – we can now look forward to the next milestone, which I think is a yottahash.
Looking at the network data from Luxor and Hash Rate Index, the last difficulty adjustment was nearly 5%, at 4.89%. We’re halfway through this difficulty period and the expectation is we’re going to go up an additional 8% – a whopping 8%. That’s one of the largest adjustments in recent memory.
This is happening at a time when Bitcoin price is down from its all-time high at $124,000 last month. The fee market is barren – there’s nothing to talk about there. Hash price is still mid-50s, probably $53 to $56 per petahash per day.
Will: Looking back five years at Bitcoin difficulty adjustments, we had that big upward adjustment beginning in July at 7.96%. Preceding that was a downward adjustment of 7.48%. A lot of these adjustments go back to seasonal volatility, especially in the ERCOT Texas market. There’s so much hashrate in Texas, you’re seeing this physical network intersect with the monetary digital network.
Bitcoin mining stocks catch AI bid
We saw some major breakouts in the market this week. Cipher Mining was up 39% this week to $10.32. Bitfarms broke close to $2 per share after CEO Ben Gagnon announced he was purchasing his own Bit Farms stock – they’re up 62% on the week. IREN also had a really good week, breaking over $30 per share.
The big story is these Bitcoin miners are getting that bid from the HPC scene. This is not going away – it’s only getting stronger. Where a lot of people thought this was going to cool off, we’re interested to see on the ground level how this plays out. What portion of these facilities are going to be Bitcoin mining versus HPC? Are they going to do that hybrid model, or completely scrap and go towards HPC?
Matt: Something helping equities as a whole right now is rate cut expectations. The market’s pricing in three cuts by the end of the year. But the AI/HPC companies are really benefiting, riding the coattails of Oracle’s earnings call this week – Oracle’s up 40%, Larry Ellison just eclipsed Elon as the world’s wealthiest man. Their expectations of revenue coming from AI, specifically OpenAI, in the next couple years has just blown up. The cohort itself is getting a lift.
Will: traditionally we’ve seen a higher multiple for AI and HPC vs Bitcoin mining, but this seems to be changing as more of these deals happen. It’ll be interesting to see how this develops. We’ve also just heard Bitfarms has hired someone to build out their HPC, but we don’t know if they want a tenant yet or they’ll go the neocloud route.
Tether claims victory in UK court battle with Swan
Will: Tether’s high-stakes Bitcoin mining lawsuit against former joint venture partner Swan Bitcoin may finally be coming to a close. According to Law360, Tether claims Swan has conceded that its joint venture has exclusive ownership over intellectual property assets and confidential information developed in 2023 and 2024.
Read more: Tether eyes victory in UK High Court over Swan mining dispute: Law360
The dispute stems from a joint venture between Swan and Tether’s 2040 Energy, where Tether owned an 80% interest and provided $408 million in initial capital, while Swan remained a minority shareholder tasked with business execution. Crucially, Swan did not have any revenue rights from the JV.
Things went public in September 2024 when Swan sued an assembly of contractors and employees from the JV who had reorganized under a new firm called Proton Management. Swan claimed Proton had stolen sensitive business information, including proprietary mining software and intellectual property.
Tether fired back in the UK High Court, suing Swan in January 2025. The stablecoin giant claimed Swan was withholding some $5 million in funds and also sought relief from a California-based lawsuit between Swan and Proton. Since then, Tether and Swan have settled the funds issue out of court, and as part of the concession, Swan will drop its California lawsuit.
Now, Swan has contacted us saying there are inaccuracies in Law360’s reporting, but they haven’t specified what those inaccuracies are. We’re still waiting to see how this fully plays out, but it does look like things might be coming to a close with Tether in the driver’s seat.
GOP lawmaker targets Bitmain, urges Treasury investigation
Matt: In a letter dated September 2nd, Representative Zachary Nunn of Iowa has urged Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to have the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States review Bitmain and Cango’s U.S. operations. Nunn warned that Bitmain’s mining rig production and distribution networks could expose critical energy grid connections and proprietary U.S. data to foreign influence.
Read more: GOP lawmaker seeks Treasury review of Bitmain and Cango: Bloomberg
What’s really interesting is what’s come out in recent court disputes about Bitmain. The share of mining rigs that come from Bitmain that’s part of this monstrous one zettahash is over 50%, I’m pretty confident in saying that. On top of this, we know very little in an official capacity about what Bitmain has done with the excess inventory they generate.
It’s always been thought they’re self-mining with this inventory. What’s come out in some bankruptcy filings and disputes is that they are actually mining with some of this inventory. How much undisclosed hash rate does Bitmain have on the network? It’s got to be enormous.
Will: Canaan is actually doing really well from a Bitcoin mining perspective. They mined 1,400 Bitcoin in Q2 and divested out of a lot of their Chinese assets. They’ve re-denominated all their filings in USD, trying to make the effort of bringing everything over to the U.S. They also had a lot of their management come over from Ant Alpha recently. Bitmain, on the other hand, is still very much a Chinese company.
Ocean Pool executive compensation controversy
Will: Peter Todd, who’s been a guest on this show a few times, did a little digging on Luke Dashjr’s salary at Ocean Mining. He tweeted unconfirmed reports that it’s at $750,000 per year. He goes on to say: “Obviously that’s a hell of an incentive to hype up Knots [a fork of Bitcoin Core] and convince people that Bitcoin is doomed, and explains why they refuse to open source Ocean.”
This one rattled the cages – 70,000 views on Twitter, 545 likes, and so many comments.
If this is true, $750,000 a year salary puts them up with Adam Soltani of Core Scientific and Jason Les of Riot. A lot of people say those people are grossly overpaid, though those people have made billions of dollars of value for shareholders. Bitcoin mining CEOs are already in the conversation of some of the most well-paid positions in all of tech.
For a mining pool CEO to be making that much money would probably be five times my expectation, maybe even six times what I’d expect. Obviously we don’t know if this is real – it was denied by Dashjr and a few other people.
The economics between public mining companies and mining pools are very different. Pools require low headcount. If you modeled out the economics here, that $750,000 would be pretty high. But again, it might not be true.
Shout out to Ocean Pool for continuing to be in the middle of the conversation with their aggressive grassroots tactics. If you don’t have a big marketing budget, the best way to do it is just stoke drama on Twitter.
