Starcloud, an Nvidia-backed orbital information heart startup, stated it should begin mining Bitcoin from area later this yr when its second spacecraft is launched, positioning it to grow to be the primary firm to mine Bitcoin off Earth.
Starcloud “would be the first to mine Bitcoin in area,” the startup’s CEO, Philip Johnston, posted to X on Saturday after revealing its Bitcoin mining ambitions in area in an interview with HyperChange on Thursday.
Within the interview, Johnston stated operating Bitcoin application-specific built-in circuit (ASIC) miners could be “one of the crucial compelling use instances” of area compute attributable to it being considerably cheaper than GPUs.
“GPUs are about 30 instances costlier per kilowatt or per watt than ASICs,” Johnston stated. “A 1-kilowatt B200 chip, it may cost $30,000. A 1-kilowatt ASIC is like $1,000.”
Clip on Bitcoin mining pic.twitter.com/WXlp1BMya1
— Philip Johnston (@PhilipJohnston) March 8, 2026
Within the X submit, Johnston stated Bitcoin mining in area will grow to be a “large business” attributable to how rather more economical it’s than mining the cryptocurrency on Earth.
“Bitcoin mining consumes about 20 GW of energy repeatedly. It is mindless to do that on Earth, and in the long run state, all of this will probably be executed in area.”
Starcloud was based in early 2024 to construct information facilities in area as an answer to deal with rising vitality wants for AI. In November, it launched a satellite tv for pc with an NVIDIA H100 into orbit, marking the primary time a GPU that highly effective has ever operated in area.
Its information facilities, which comprise round 88,000 satellites, are primarily powered by photo voltaic vitality.
Sending Bitcoin to Mars
Whereas Johnston’s Starcloud envisions mining Bitcoin in area, tech entrepreneurs Jose E. Puente and Carlos Puente final yr got here up with an answer to ship it throughout planets.
In September, Puente advised Cointelegraph that it’s theoretically potential to ship Bitcoin to Mars in as quick as three minutes by leveraging an optical hyperlink from NASA or Starlink and a brand new interplanetary timestamping system.
Whereas somebody would must be there to obtain it, the Bitcoin transaction would transfer via area stations — akin to antennas and satellites — or perhaps a relay across the Moon earlier than reaching Mars.
They, nevertheless, stated that mining Bitcoin on Mars wouldn’t be possible because of the latency between the 2 planets.
Associated: Bitcoin drops 2% as oil costs surge on vitality scarcity fears
Bitcoin mining profitability margins have thinned over the previous few months, notably attributable to Bitcoin’s (BTC) worth falling almost 48% from its $126,080 excessive on Oct. 6.
Nonetheless, the Bitcoin mining issue has fallen 7% from a report 155.9 trillion items in November to 145 trillion, giving miners some much-needed respiration room for now.
Journal: The talk over Bitcoin’s four-year cycle is over: Benjamin Cowen
