Latest / The Paul Barron Crypto Show / Nvidia Tariffs vs Bitcoin Mining + Ethereum's GPU Killer!🔥Hut 8's Sue Ennis INTERVIEW
Transcript
- 0:06Speaker 1: In Nvidia in the news today. Of course, we're breaking
- 0:08Speaker 1: this down for you guys and how this may affect
- 0:10Speaker 1: bitcoin mining and all kinds of mining in the industry.
- 0:13Speaker 1: My name is Paul Berre. Welcome back in the tech path.
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- 0:50Speaker 1: We've got a special guest that is going to be
- 0:51Speaker 1: joining us here in a minute and you guys, Lover
- 0:55Speaker 1: Sue coming in from eight. But before we get started,
- 0:57Speaker 1: I want to show you guys something here. Of course,
- 0:59Speaker 1: you have Jim Kramer hitting up on in Vidia, saying
- 1:02Speaker 1: Nvidia has become a meme stock and it has to
- 1:05Speaker 1: be cut back now. Of course, what we've seen right
- 1:07Speaker 1: now is the response to the on again, off again
- 1:11Speaker 1: tariff scenario. What we can sell, what Invidia can sell
- 1:14Speaker 1: to the Chinese, and what they can't. This, of course
- 1:17Speaker 1: has caused quite a bit of a rubbervan effect on
- 1:19Speaker 1: in Vidia the stock. But you know the interesting thing here,
- 1:23Speaker 1: remember they also make GPUs for mining, and that is
- 1:27Speaker 1: a very important fact. I want to go to this
- 1:28Speaker 1: first clip because this will get into where are we
- 1:32Speaker 1: take a look?
- 1:33Speaker 3: So, yeah, SHARE's down about three and a half percent
- 1:35Speaker 3: right now. This is after a eight K filing heard
- 1:38Speaker 3: from the US government last week saying they need a
- 1:41Speaker 3: license to sell H twenty chips to China. That is
- 1:45Speaker 3: not happening now, or at least they need a licensing
- 1:47Speaker 3: process for it. And now in Vidia says they expect
- 1:49Speaker 3: to take a five and a half billion dollar charge.
- 1:52Speaker 3: You see shares moving down three and a half percent now.
- 1:54Speaker 4: Melissa an analyst estimate that it could cost them twelve
- 1:57Speaker 4: to fourteen billion dollars overall. It's going to motivate Chinese
- 2:00Speaker 4: companies to move even more quickly in developing alternatives for
- 2:04Speaker 4: these induide chips.
- 2:05Speaker 5: We are now heading into the eye of the storm.
- 2:08Speaker 5: This is going to be a storm that lasts three
- 2:11Speaker 5: maybe six months. The next few quarters you're going to
- 2:13Speaker 5: have to throw out.
- 2:14Speaker 1: You have to hope for a deal and some show
- 2:17Speaker 1: negotiations with China.
- 2:18Speaker 5: If you've seen a dystase in its cores, then the
- 2:21Speaker 5: whole thesis and then it's essentially games at match.
- 2:24Speaker 2: There's one ship in the world that's fuel an AI revolution.
- 2:27Speaker 2: It's in Vidia, all right.
- 2:29Speaker 1: So I want to bring on Sue us coming in
- 2:30Speaker 1: from HUT eight. She has joined us many times before
- 2:34Speaker 1: talking about this very topic. How are you, Sue.
- 2:37Speaker 2: I'm good and great to be back. Lots to cover.
- 2:40Speaker 2: It's been a wild couple weeks in the market.
- 2:42Speaker 1: No doubt, So Sue. A couple of points I want
- 2:44Speaker 1: to hit on first, because I think this does affect
- 2:47Speaker 1: mining in general, just because in Vidia being one of
- 2:50Speaker 1: the purveyors of the chips that pretty much run this industry.
- 2:53Speaker 1: You look at their revenue by region, and I'll zoom
- 2:56Speaker 1: in on this right here so you can kind of see,
- 2:58Speaker 1: but that right there is January most of which is
- 3:03Speaker 1: US and US friendly territories. Then you get into Taiwan,
- 3:07Speaker 1: which is that blue section, and then the green section
- 3:10Speaker 1: right there is China. That's in Vidia's chip sales and
- 3:13Speaker 1: revenue by region. Do you think this is going to
- 3:16Speaker 1: have any effect on the crypto mining and AI evolution,
- 3:22Speaker 1: especially around the data centers here in the United States,
- 3:25Speaker 1: or do you think in Vidia is just going to
- 3:27Speaker 1: double down and try to drive more revenue there.
- 3:29Speaker 2: I think in Nvidia is going to double down and
- 3:31Speaker 2: going to continue to drive revenues. So now, in terms
- 3:34Speaker 2: of the AI and data center space, the miners that
- 3:36Speaker 2: are making that pivot, conversations have continued as planned. CAPEX
- 3:41Speaker 2: plans are continuing, or the conversations we're having with hyperskillers
- 3:44Speaker 2: in terms of CAPEX they're planning on spending on infrastructure
- 3:47Speaker 2: in order to support the servers that they are ordering
- 3:50Speaker 2: from overseas or from Nvidia have not assuaged at all.
- 3:55Speaker 2: So we I mean, on our position as we would
- 3:58Speaker 2: say that this is definitely a case of the media
- 4:00Speaker 2: overblowing and creating quite a bit of fud because the
- 4:04Speaker 2: numbers and the conversations and the contracts that we're looking
- 4:06Speaker 2: at certainly have not changed. I think if you also
- 4:08Speaker 2: look at some of the numbers, for example, that Morgan
- 4:10Speaker 2: Stanley has come out with, so they are so forecasting
- 4:13Speaker 2: a forty two gigawat dearth between power that is required
- 4:20Speaker 2: and power that is available right now in the market,
- 4:22Speaker 2: and a large part of that is with respect to
- 4:25Speaker 2: and around demand for AI training data centers. I heard
- 4:29Speaker 2: a stat the other day that there's something like three
- 4:31Speaker 2: or four gigawatts of chips alone that need to be
- 4:34Speaker 2: plugged in within the next eighteen months. So, you know,
- 4:38Speaker 2: is in Nvidia in a hard place. I think the
- 4:40Speaker 2: media would make it seem that way, But in terms
- 4:42Speaker 2: of the guys who are actually ordering the chips, ordering
- 4:44Speaker 2: the servers, and you know, requiring power and infrastructure, those
- 4:48Speaker 2: conversations have not changed.
- 4:49Speaker 1: If things got really dire for in Nvidia and you
- 4:52Speaker 1: look at their supply chain, you look at the potential
- 4:56Speaker 1: of them reinvesting here in the United States in terms
- 4:59Speaker 1: of chip manufacturer, and then the potential run rate for
- 5:03Speaker 1: sales because they would be selling to companies like how
- 5:05Speaker 1: to eight and many other minds along with the AI
- 5:08Speaker 1: data centers that are growing out there. And I want
- 5:10Speaker 1: to talk to you guys about to you about that,
- 5:12Speaker 1: because I know you have some news on that. But
- 5:14Speaker 1: do you think there's enough market position right now for
- 5:18Speaker 1: Nvidia to still hold a commanding lead globally as the
- 5:23Speaker 1: number one AI company?
- 5:26Speaker 2: I would say definitely. I mean, even if you look
- 5:28Speaker 2: like we said at the chart you just showed, China
- 5:31Speaker 2: showed about thirteen percent. Again, what we're seeing here in
- 5:36Speaker 2: terms of just figures alone and demand alone in just
- 5:39Speaker 2: the US. We now have a crypto in AISAR. We
- 5:42Speaker 2: have explicit executive orders coming out of the Administration that
- 5:47Speaker 2: are focused on increasing the availability of power so that
- 5:51Speaker 2: the US can become leaders in the AI space. I
- 5:55Speaker 2: think we've seen time and time again that when the
- 5:57Speaker 2: US decides they're going to do something, they're going to
- 5:59Speaker 2: go and do it. And so I think that this
- 6:02Speaker 2: this change and pivot in the administration and focus on
- 6:06Speaker 2: AI and the US being leaders in this space, I
- 6:08Speaker 2: think is going to be very bullish for Nvidia. They
- 6:11Speaker 2: also just announced that they're setting up shop a manufacturing
- 6:14Speaker 2: plant here in the US as well. So yeah, I
- 6:18Speaker 2: think this idea of you know, China getting in the
- 6:22Speaker 2: way of their trajectory and momentum, I think is definitely overblown.
- 6:25Speaker 1: Okay, all right, so I know you guys are building
- 6:28Speaker 1: more facilities and you're leaning in a little bit on AI,
- 6:32Speaker 1: but obviously hut eate's still a bitcoin. Before we jump
- 6:35Speaker 1: to that side, I want to you know, hit on
- 6:36Speaker 1: the news. They came out a couple of week weeks ago,
- 6:39Speaker 1: and that of course was HUT eight and Eric Trump
- 6:42Speaker 1: launching American bitcoins. So this is going to be a
- 6:44Speaker 1: new standard in bitcoin mining. Tell me what this deal
- 6:47Speaker 1: consisted of first, How does this work with HUT eight
- 6:51Speaker 1: and with what the Trump family is trying to do
- 6:54Speaker 1: in the crypto industry.
- 6:56Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, So this was a pivotal evolution in our
- 7:00Speaker 2: platform strategy. And so by carving out our mining business
- 7:04Speaker 2: into a standalone entity, we effectively aligned each segment of
- 7:08Speaker 2: our business with its respective cost of capital. So how
- 7:12Speaker 2: to think about it is High eight parent company is
- 7:14Speaker 2: going to be focused purely on energy and infrastructure, and
- 7:18Speaker 2: some of that infrastructure may be bitcoin mining. And we
- 7:20Speaker 2: now have the holy grail of a situation, aka, we
- 7:23Speaker 2: have an off taker of demand. Some of that maybe
- 7:26Speaker 2: AI and uh AI training data centers, some of that
- 7:31Speaker 2: infrastructure one day, maybe green hydrogen because our whole thesis,
- 7:34Speaker 2: our whole raison detra is that energy is scarce and
- 7:37Speaker 2: that the use case of the electron will continue to evolve,
- 7:40Speaker 2: and we use bitcoin mining to capture cheap megawatse at
- 7:44Speaker 2: scale and then find the next highest use case for
- 7:46Speaker 2: that electron. So when we find a site where the
- 7:49Speaker 2: power is cheap and we think there's a ton of opportunity,
- 7:51Speaker 2: but right now the best use case is just bitcoin mining.
- 7:54Speaker 2: We've got that client, American Bitcoin, who will come in,
- 7:56Speaker 2: bring their servers, and then we effectively have a hosting
- 7:59Speaker 2: contract with So it was really about smart risk segmentation
- 8:03Speaker 2: for us, because the cost of capital if you're trying
- 8:05Speaker 2: to grow the world's leading energy and infrastructure business, that's
- 8:09Speaker 2: a much different cost of capital. That's a much different
- 8:11Speaker 2: investor wele and risk appetite versus a mining business. So
- 8:17Speaker 2: American Bitcoin is going to be a subsidiary of HUT eight.
- 8:19Speaker 2: We own eighty percent of it. Eric Trump and his
- 8:23Speaker 2: family and Sorry ADC, a company that they started, owns
- 8:26Speaker 2: twenty percent. And you know, we are insanely excited about
- 8:31Speaker 2: what this means for not only HUT eight but also
- 8:34Speaker 2: American Bitcoins. So Eric and his family, bring evangelism, the brand,
- 8:42Speaker 2: additional capital connections that you know, perhaps we don't already have,
- 8:45Speaker 2: and you know, we're really excited to be partnered with
- 8:48Speaker 2: an administration that's incredibly bullish on this industry.
- 8:51Speaker 1: You know, here's Asher, he's kind of hitting on the
- 8:54Speaker 1: future of bitcoin mining US here. And you guys, of course,
- 8:56Speaker 1: have really got some pretty interesting sites. What is this
- 8:59Speaker 1: site right here that I'm looking at. Yeah, so's sustainable.
- 9:03Speaker 2: Yes, I believe you're looking at Vega and that is
- 9:07Speaker 2: the site where we are standing up direct liquid to
- 9:09Speaker 2: chip cooling and innovating on the traditional form factor of
- 9:12Speaker 2: bitcoin mining. So we're going from the traditional form factor
- 9:16Speaker 2: in bitcoin mining is like a shoe box and a
- 9:19Speaker 2: bunch of chicken wire, and we are confectively designing a
- 9:22Speaker 2: U form traditional data center factor with direct liquid to
- 9:25Speaker 2: chip cooling that we designed ourselves at four two thousand
- 9:29Speaker 2: per megawat because the other sort of piece of warehout eight.
- 9:32Speaker 2: Outside of just building one of the world's largest energy
- 9:34Speaker 2: infrastructure operators, the other place where we are competing is
- 9:38Speaker 2: on innovation because the data center space has not had
- 9:41Speaker 2: to innovate for over twenty years. And I'm talking bitcoin mining,
- 9:43Speaker 2: we're talking traditional data centers, and so one of the
- 9:46Speaker 2: first areas where we found an opportunity to disrupt was
- 9:49Speaker 2: direct liquid to chip cooling. The future of chips, whether
- 9:52Speaker 2: it's AI H one hundreds, whether it's you know, ACI
- 9:55Speaker 2: chips is cooling, and so we're pretty we're pretty excited
- 9:59Speaker 2: to take that sort of elon musk SpaceX two thousand
- 10:03Speaker 2: and five first Principles approach that he took to rocket disruption.
- 10:07Speaker 2: We're going to be taken data center space and we've
- 10:09Speaker 2: got a cool Yeah, we're pretty excited about it. So
- 10:12Speaker 2: that's that's one of our innovation.
- 10:14Speaker 1: I got to get in and set down with Asher,
- 10:17Speaker 1: I think because this would be I think a really
- 10:19Speaker 1: good conversation. You guys are right here in Miami, so
- 10:22Speaker 1: it'd be an easy trip down to see him. Let's
- 10:25Speaker 1: get into another point that's happening right now. When you
- 10:28Speaker 1: look at the growth of the sector from a crypto
- 10:31Speaker 1: side of things, and you consider both GPU and VPU
- 10:36Speaker 1: operations and what that might look like. I want to
- 10:38Speaker 1: play a clip for you because there is a problem
- 10:41Speaker 1: that seems to be brewing right now within the ethereum
- 10:44Speaker 1: ecosystem that I think maybe could be solved by what
- 10:48Speaker 1: is happening in the mining area as well. Let me
- 10:50Speaker 1: play this for you.
- 10:51Speaker 6: Here we are in twenty twenty five. We need to
- 10:54Speaker 6: accelerate the competation with some extra hardware. One is GPU's
- 10:58Speaker 6: and finally we have a six that as specialized for
- 11:01Speaker 6: a particular problem. Our GPU solution achieved zero point five
- 11:04Speaker 6: seconds CPUs for this type of problem took tens of minutes.
- 11:08Speaker 7: Last year Justin Drake, he introduced this idea of beamchain.
- 11:12Speaker 7: So the state of the art today, like right now,
- 11:15Speaker 7: that doesn't meet the requirement of under twelve seconds for
- 11:18Speaker 7: the generation time for ethereum blocks. So a couple of
- 11:21Speaker 7: months ago Snarkifi announced that we will have real time
- 11:26Speaker 7: meaning less than twelve seconds block proving by the end
- 11:29Speaker 7: of June.
- 11:30Speaker 2: I'd be very happy to bet someone that before January
- 11:34Speaker 2: of next year that real time proving will be a
- 11:38Speaker 2: practical reality.
- 11:39Speaker 7: Jim, would you take that bet?
- 11:40Speaker 8: No, I would not take that bet. An end user
- 11:42Speaker 8: is not going to have a rack of GPU equipped
- 11:45Speaker 8: servers or something available to them. But if you can
- 11:48Speaker 8: get the entire proof running, you know, real time with
- 11:51Speaker 8: less hardware, and that's really powerful.
- 11:54Speaker 1: So this could change out the infrastructure of what's required,
- 11:57Speaker 1: especially in the Ethereum ecosystem. Do you think there's any
- 12:00Speaker 1: opportunity here for you guys as far as how AID
- 12:03Speaker 1: is concerned.
- 12:04Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, I mean again, we are not we are
- 12:07Speaker 2: compute agnostic. I would say again, energy and infrastructure is
- 12:11Speaker 2: the core of our business. And so is there a
- 12:15Speaker 2: world where perhaps this would be compute that we would
- 12:17Speaker 2: play in. Yeah, absolutely, I think I think the bigger
- 12:19Speaker 2: So what the bigger conversation that is nice to see
- 12:22Speaker 2: about this is Ethereum really has a sort of fallen
- 12:26Speaker 2: behind a little bit, right like in terms of scalability,
- 12:29Speaker 2: in terms of adoption, in terms of costs, you know, Solana,
- 12:34Speaker 2: some of these roll ups have also really sort of
- 12:36Speaker 2: stolen its thunder, and so I think that this would
- 12:39Speaker 2: be pretty meaningful for the adoption of the of the
- 12:42Speaker 2: Ethereum ecosystem for sure, to see some of these developments
- 12:45Speaker 2: happen because they're solving for a real problem that Ethereum
- 12:47Speaker 2: is having right now. Yeah.
- 12:49Speaker 1: Well, I think the key here is they saw this
- 12:53Speaker 1: kind of coming, so the plan was a little bit
- 12:55Speaker 1: in play. It appears that they might have a solution.
- 12:58Speaker 1: Let me play this clip for you.
- 13:00Speaker 5: We have CPUs, we have GPUs. Should there be something
- 13:04Speaker 5: at all for next gen and cryptography? How about we
- 13:06Speaker 5: build this? You know, the reaction was not very positive.
- 13:10Speaker 5: A lot of people told us that we were insane.
- 13:12Speaker 5: We finally did it.
- 13:13Speaker 7: It's the VPU.
- 13:15Speaker 5: How good is this chip? You may be shocked to
- 13:18Speaker 5: find out and video has seventy six times more transistors
- 13:22Speaker 5: than we have. We're kind of like fighting with one
- 13:24Speaker 5: hand time behind our back, one gigahertz versus two gigaherts
- 13:27Speaker 5: because they're on three and aanimeters, so two hands right,
- 13:30Speaker 5: it's over one hundred x disadvantage.
- 13:34Speaker 7: Well we win.
- 13:35Speaker 5: We fucking did this. The MSRP might change as demand grows.
- 13:40Speaker 5: We anticipate that we're going to hear a lot from
- 13:42Speaker 5: people now that you know we're at this stage. We're
- 13:45Speaker 5: going to have a cloud of VPUs. We're going to
- 13:47Speaker 5: mass produce those boxes. We're going to put those boxes
- 13:49Speaker 5: in the data center. We're also going to have a
- 13:51Speaker 5: bunch of partners. We're going to release all of this
- 13:54Speaker 5: this year, and so by the end of the year
- 13:56Speaker 5: you'll see real time ZK processing proofs for the Ethereum eCos.
- 14:00Speaker 7: This is what we're releasing.
- 14:02Speaker 5: This year about ten times the performance in our next
- 14:05Speaker 5: gen at least, We're only going to get better and
- 14:07Speaker 5: better and better by multiple orders of magnitude. And by
- 14:11Speaker 5: the way, this is conservative.
- 14:13Speaker 7: That is our prediction, all right.
- 14:15Speaker 1: That came in from a fabric, which is the VPU
- 14:18Speaker 1: of manufacturer that was essentially propped up by the Ethereum
- 14:21Speaker 1: Foundation and put into a position to solve the problem
- 14:24Speaker 1: that they saw coming down the pipe. To your point,
- 14:26Speaker 1: exactly if you see that kind of implementation, now, granted
- 14:31Speaker 1: they have to be able to manufacture and scale and
- 14:34Speaker 1: then also accelerate on that chart that they were kind
- 14:36Speaker 1: of referencing and bragging about that doesn't exist yet, but
- 14:39Speaker 1: will it. Maybe my question to you is, do you
- 14:43Speaker 1: guys stockpile some VPUs now that we start to see
- 14:46Speaker 1: this for the Ethereum ecosystem? Is that maybe a play
- 14:50Speaker 1: for HUDAE.
- 14:50Speaker 2: Yeah, so, no parent company is going to be just
- 14:53Speaker 2: focused on architecture and energy in order to power the
- 14:57Speaker 2: future of compute. So I think though, when we talked
- 15:00Speaker 2: about some of the innovation that we're focused on, this
- 15:03Speaker 2: is a perfect example of how the use cases for
- 15:05Speaker 2: the electron what compute looks like and the hardware that
- 15:08Speaker 2: it comes in is going to continue to evolve, and
- 15:11Speaker 2: so you want to make sure that you've got the
- 15:12Speaker 2: power and then also flexibility in your infrastructure in order
- 15:15Speaker 2: to support those future those future use cases and evolution
- 15:20Speaker 2: of how the electron is getting used. So that's that's
- 15:22Speaker 2: hut AD's core fork focus. Now, we do have a
- 15:25Speaker 2: business called high Rise dot Ai that is focused that
- 15:29Speaker 2: is like a GPU as a service business. Is there
- 15:31Speaker 2: a world where that business that's focused on actually buying
- 15:34Speaker 2: the servers and compute potentially would they buy some of
- 15:37Speaker 2: these VPUs? Yeah, that's definitely within the realm of possibility.
- 15:40Speaker 2: But how to aid parent code, We're just going to
- 15:41Speaker 2: continue to find ways to power future compute use cases
- 15:45Speaker 2: like the VPUs well.
- 15:46Speaker 1: And I think to your point, the key here is
- 15:48Speaker 1: all going to be power consumption, power management, and it's
- 15:52Speaker 1: going to be the best players out there that have
- 15:53Speaker 1: the cleanest and most sustainable plugging and playing in all
- 15:57Speaker 1: this technology. From what's happening with Nvidia, what could be
- 16:00Speaker 1: happening with fabric to kind of expand the ecosystem for
- 16:03Speaker 1: eight I think to your point, flexibility and scalability is
- 16:06Speaker 1: going to be a key thing for going forward, So
- 16:09Speaker 1: maybe you know how today it could be leading the
- 16:10Speaker 1: way right there. You guys are making a lot of
- 16:12Speaker 1: very interesting moves, So I'm glad we had a chance
- 16:15Speaker 1: to bring you in. If you guys want to follow Sue,
- 16:17Speaker 1: get out there on X. You can get her at
- 16:19Speaker 1: Big Suie right there. She's always fun to follow on X.
- 16:23Speaker 1: You've got some entertaining tweets and always very educational as well.
- 16:27Speaker 1: So Sue, thank you so much for coming in today.
- 16:30Speaker 1: We appreciate it.
- 16:31Speaker 2: Thank you for having me bist.
- 16:33Speaker 1: So yeah, are you guys If you are not in
- 16:35Speaker 1: the Diamond circle, get in right now. It's our own
- 16:37Speaker 1: private group and you can join for free. It's that simple.
- 16:40Speaker 1: It's very easy to do, and it's a personal email.
- 16:43Speaker 7: That goes out to you guys.
- 16:45Speaker 1: We give you kind of an insight, a little bit
- 16:46Speaker 1: more of our research that we do here in the studios,
- 16:49Speaker 1: but also kind of an alignment of my strategies overall,
- 16:52Speaker 1: how I look at the market, what I look at
- 16:54Speaker 1: from both a macro side but also a technology side,
- 16:57Speaker 1: which I think a lot of people don't necessarily take
- 16:59Speaker 1: into consider ration Follow me on X at Paul Baron,
- 17:02Speaker 1: We'll catch you next time, right here on Techpath