EntrepreneurCountry Global brings you the Playbook to understand and invest in fast-paced, disruptive businesses who are improving all industries through Ecosystem Economics.
An economic ecosystem is a community of businesses which interact with their environment in order to generate value, both for themselves and for the wider ecosystem.
In EntrepreneurCountry, the world is determined by an understanding of these ecosystems. Specifically, analysing those environments which are being reshaped by Digital Enablers who deploy network-oriented business models, focusing on the extraction and use of data to benefit the ecosystem in which they exist.
On 31 March 2021, EntrepreneurCountry hosted presentations from experts in the Crypto Mining ecosystem.
Zeb Portanova, CEO of GEM Opportunity Zone Fund and President of Yield Scientific.
“I go to work with the Avengers every morning”.
“A handful of YPO folks were doing their own crypto mining in 2017. One of my close friends and partners, Russell Cann, was part of that group. They wanted to hire the most prestigious person and were able to recruit Kevin Turner who was COO at Microsoft. Kevin had worked for Bill Gates for a number of years, as well as Sam Walton at Walmart.
“This got rolled quickly into Core Scientific which is arguably the largest hoster of bitcoin mining units in the world outside of China.
“Today the reward structure is 6.25 bitcoin per block that is placed out on the bitcoin network. 144 blocks a day until there are 21m bitcoin in circulation. Right now we have 19m. As it asymptotically reaches 21m, it will take roughly 120 years to get there given that every four years there is a halving event (from 6.25 to 3.125 in 2024).
“GEM is continuing to invest in crypto mining. Mining units are part of a pool which mine these bitcoin transactions. With bitcoin close to US$60,000, it has been very profitable. We have about 1.5 exahash or 16,000 units working for us or on order.
“I have never seen in financial services industry the impact on renewable energy. Because of the amount of energy usage from bitcoin and bitcoin mining, it is driving renewable energy investments of a magnitude which will change the entire landscape on bitcoin mining. Financial services has never done that before.
“I can see in the next 3,5,7 years 80% or 90% of all bitcoin mining in North America becoming green and renewable with the use of wind, solar and hydroelectric. That is the future. We need cheap energy to run these bitcoin mining units. I see really good solutions coming down the pipe.”
Ralf Kubli, Director at CV VC, is one of the leading lights of Crypto Valley, Switzerland.
“I would like to have many Googles and Amazons, not just one. Bitcoin is the ultimate proof point.
“Bitcoin is an interesting asset class, but it also offers competition to financial institutions.
“The relationships between principals and agents in finance will change under bitcoin. It is a technology which has the capacity to replace governments and markets in financial terms.
“Switzerland has developed a competitive advantage in this market. Legal, tax and innovation all play a role in this development. Ethereum is now based in the country.
“Through a unique constellation of circumstances, Switzerland is the premier place to do business with this ecosystem.
“CV VC has three core activities: early-stage seed investor in the application layer of blockchain, an advisory practice for investment in this space and a co-working business which supports an ecosystem in Switzerland for crypto mining.
“We believe that transacting in bitcoin is a viable alternative to currencies whose management may be not transparent”.
“When you think of the technology around blockchain and bitcoin, comparing it to the web revolution, we didn’t know what to do with that stuff until very recently. We are talking about the complete revamping of how economic interactions are going to work.
Marcus Maute, Managing Partner at Tavis Digital, a leading digital asset management firm.
“I am happy that I am not working at a bank right now.
“Bitcoin is nothing else apart from tokenization of electricity. Tokenisation is the new form of shaping ownership. We are taking this electricity and transferring it into bitcoin.
“What is the answer to the question of the future of crypto mining? We need to frame the problem. Mankind needs more energy as we become more digital. While machines are becoming more efficient, they are likely to require 20% of all power generated globally by 2030.
“The world faces an urgent carbon problem. Microsoft wants to be carbon negative, compensating for all the carbon it has used since 1975. Bitcoin is the most innovative store of value, but it is energy intensive.
“We believe that there are three potential solutions to energy intensity:
“Location: most of the planet is not suitable for HPC data centres, it is too hot. Cooler climates are required, particularly where they also provide a lot of hydroelectricity. Global connectivity is an issue, but it is being solved by the creation of new networks.
“Compensating bitcoin: There is a huge effort to get carbon credits onto the blockchain, making it more transparent. Blockchain is allowing tokenisation via green bitcoin.
“Proof of stake: The new version of blockchain is proof-of-stake. It is far less energy intensive than proof-of-work. It is more resilient and scalable in that it is not concentrated geographically. There has been a mass migration from POW to POS.
“Tavis Digital is a validator not a miner, where we are running this service for Cosmos for example.
“We strongly believe that validation will be the future of asset management, broadening the potential investor segment.”
Ratko Veprek, Senior Product Architect at Digital Asset and Co-Inventor of DAML.
“The more participants there are, the more crypto power there is and the more money that can be made.
“Digital Asset approaches crypto mining from a different angle, specifically, the permission side of blockchain.
“ASX is moving their post-trade system onto Digital Asset and we are also working with Hong Kong and NASDAQ. Digital Asset is backed by Deutsche Borse, ASX and IBM.
“We are focused on managing rights and obligations on digital ledger technology. The mining process is there to sustain blockchains.
“In 2015, we concluded that there was a different angle. We started looking it from the point of view of managing commodities. After all, debt is only the sum of rights and obligations.
“From that, we recognised the need to figure out the perfect system to digitally manage them on a shared ledger. The key to rights and obligations is not simply ownership, backed by terms and conditions. You need to have the entire obligation contained in a contract which allows exchange.
Thinking about exchange, it is true that we still require a trusted intermediary to allow the system to function. This is not the point of blockchain, which is based on disintermediation.
“We created daml as a structured contract language to express and compose rights and obligations. Our protocol is based on atomic transactions, where it all happens, or nothing happens at all.
“This requires infinite horizontal scalability which, in turn, requires network interoperability. We are working to a point where everyone can extend the system without compromising its security.
SPEAKERS
