Gideon Powell – the chief executive of Texas-based petroleum company Cholla Inc. – thinks bitcoin miners are revolutionary people that are bringing new levels of innovation to the U.S.

Gideon Powell on What Makes BTC Miners Important

In an interview, he said:

Thinking about this from a capability standpoint, the ‘compute cowboys’ are unlocking new power markets for data centers and thinking about the future of industrial manufacturing. It’s all in its infancy.

Regarding what he means by the term “compute cowboys,” he explained:

The bitcoin mining industry has dozens of legends that need to be told. My dad collected old Texas oil and gas history books and I can’t read those without thinking about how we’re in the middle of a revolution. Bitcoin miners are quite like wildcatters. These people did stuff that no one did before and laid the foundation for modern society. There are similar stories unfolding now about bitcoin mining. Everyone’s depressed about the future, and I think the future is bright. You’ve just got to have the right vision and see people that are doing cool stuff.

Powell also said bitcoin is the next big phase in human development. He commented:

I think it’s a critical pillar. In a way, we don’t have the words yet to describe what a decentralized digital permission-less network is. It’s not just a commodity. It’s not just money, but I do think moving towards a more peer-to-peer system is critical to holding fast to equitable checks and balances across society. Nothing else can really align all these unique incentives. It’s a bedrock which allows people to collaborate across time and space with no one’s permission. Bitcoin just has an ethos of entrepreneurialism… the Frontier Spirit.

Regarding bitcoin maximalism, Powell said:

I think ‘bitcoin maximalist’ means different things to different people. At the most basic, it means someone is committed to bitcoin and won’t pursue other currencies, but I do think it’s important to have a healthy marketplace of competition. There’s been a lot of innovation in other currencies, even if bitcoin is the most robust one and we [at Cholla] want to be involved with that, but I don’t think anybody should have a monopoly on anything.

How AI is so Different

He also discussed the metaverse and AI. He mentioned:

A lot of people talk about bitcoin mining companies pivoting to AI. It’s a very different business, even if the foundations are the same. You need land, you need a lot of power, and you need connectivity. When you’re talking about the metaverse and the amount of compute that’s going to be needed, you need orders of magnitude more power consumption globally. Five to 10 years out, we think West Texas is one of the only places in the world that could handle these gigawatt-plus campuses.

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