Rethinking Bitcoin: A Fireside Chat on Green Mining and the Path to Sustainability | EBC10

[Music] right actually one of the most interesting discussion at the end of the day but thank you so much for being here with us so I um having the pleasure to sit down here with Yanna H who is the president of this video operation at Hive and talking about Green Mining and apus sustainability so if you don't know hi was the first um company crypto Miner to list on uh public markets they are listed in Toronto they are listed on NASDAQ and also in Frankfurt and uh they've always been since the beginning committed to renewable energy so this is what we are going to be talking about and also exploring some of like the challenges as well that that exist in this path to sustainable abity thank you Yanna for being here yeah thank you so much for for having me so the first question is really uh I want to start with something that you said to me when you join uh Hive in 2021 you were really excited about the the the commitment to renewable energy yes so what was about renewable energy they excite you how they use renewable energy and also what is their contribution to addressing climate change yeah thank you uh so it's true when I first joined uh hi uh digital uh back in 2021 I had a very interesting conversation with our chairman Frank Holmes uh where he was uh showing me how hi really was a leader in this space and um our commitment to uh to mine using renewable energy only uh and that mining Bitcoin could be done responsibly H and so that was a big motivator for me to join the team and and uh and U start this journey with hype digital Technologies um and uh I would say that uh it's sometimes been challenging to find new opportunities uh to find new uh places to expand our business uh but in 21 when I joined the company we had one data center in Sweden uh now we have five uh We've expanded into Canada where we have three data centers and we have are still in Iceland uh and we're expanding big time into Paraguay uh where we soon will have a 100 megawatt uh um uh location and I think uh when you hear those locations for the most part most part except from Paraguay you hear that we have um decidedly gone to cold uh climate area areas so this is where we can use the air cooling uh to cool our equipment uh but we also always work with the communities where we are uh because if you're in a cold climate and you have thousands of uh A6 miners you generate a lot of heat and heat in a cold climate area can be a a very valuable resource if it's harvested correctly so we work with the communities to see uh as for example is the case in Quebec where our Mining facility uh one of them is located just right near uh 4,000 square meter big U mining facil um manufacturing plant and and so just by using uh fans we're uh pushing the warm air from our data center and into this manufacturing plant in Quebec and heating that plant all year round recycling the molecules uh being responsible citizens um I'm long- winded but I think one of the most exciting things and most important things uh uh as a Bitcoin miner also is that uh Bitcoin miners are excellent uh an excellent resource to balance the grid yeah because that's what I was going to get to I mean renewable energy is great and we all want to go renewable but they are not so reliable so the the energy the energy G and actually I learned that from you is very is very unstable so you need to be able to kind of like equalize the energy and so what is the role actually a Bitcoin miner in rebalancing this the energy G and how what is h approach to that yeah so in in Sweden we were the First Data Center to um uh participate in this program where we are making basically our entire load available to the the um to the power grid to the power companies uh and so a Bitcoin miner has a very steady load uh we work 24 hours a day seven days a week every day of the year and and we keep a very steady High load and when the grid needs more power uh should it be at 5:55 one afternoon when everyone decides to charge their cars uh put their on their dishwashers and start the coffee machine uh we have uh a unique ability um to be able to power off our computers and share that load with the rest of the grid uh and for example uh AI based data centers would not be able to do that the same way because they have very important workloads that they need to be and customers that would potentially lose their workloads if they were to do that but Bitcoin miners we decide how we want to use our power and and we have this uh uh very powerful ability to to share our resource with the grid and I I can share one example it was about a year and a half ago when there was a major power outage in in Stockholm uh and within 5 Seconds 10 megawatts of our resources had been uh shifted off uh Bitcoin mining and given back to the grid to keep it stable stable within 25 5 Seconds we had powered off basically uh almost our entire load over 20 megab to to keep the the grid stable and and I think it's something that that is uh not very well known no that uh the frequency of the electrical grid has to be stable and as we're talking about bringing more renewable resources into the system uh and as we as a society use more uh electricity for just our every day um habits uh this is incredibly important more and more important every day so the the lesson I think is that Bitcoin mining has a place in our society we need different users and takers um of of our electrical system yeah that's very interesting and also you know now Bitcoin miners they are also playing a key role in uh the the AI space as well because they are I mean Hive is an AI uh data center operator and um AI obviously requires a lot of energy so if you want to you know in this part of sustainability you want to know where this energy is coming from absolutely I think that's critical uh it's it's true uh data centers are at the heart of the green transition and we should all be interested in knowing uh when we turn on Netflix or we decide to use chat GPT uh where is that power coming from uh and um I believe it's the fact for example that if you use zoom uh that uh data center is located in Poland and most likely powered by coal if you use teams it's a Microsoft data center located in Sweden and it's powered by renewable energy so it's um up to us to be also responsible about our use and interested in knowing how uh our everyday lives are affecting sustainability um and and um just now as we're switching Hive is switching big time into AI uh we uh have one tier three data center in uh Stockholm we have another one in Canada and we're actually uh remodeling uh we're building new and remodeling data centers from Bitcoin going to uh be AI supportive data centers but again there nowhere the power how is that power sourc um how how are the you know the the services that you're using the workloads that your company uh are going to be using H where are they sourced from uh and in hive's case this is all also green energy uh we're spending big time in in I think another part of that is uh to to realize how important it is uh we were just recently the management team in in San Jose uh speaking with Nvidia and how much R&D is going into uh making these huge big servers more sustainable more energy efficient and so for companies that are looking to uh increase their uh capacity their workloads uh to think about perhaps Outsourcing uh that capacity to a data center where the Energy Efficiency is is higher rather than every company having their own data center uh look for someone that is doing it uh uh on renewable energy yeah I think that's super important but then you know if we think about sustainability we always I mean we do need to talk about ESG which is now a priority for any industry and it's not just just about environment you know there are other aspect of ESG so tell me how high is U thinking about ESG and how can we assess ESG performance in the contest of green mining yeah good question well I I think just uh first and foremost maybe is that that uh we always work with the communities that we decide to to build our data centers in so uh a lot of the data centers going back to energy though um where we where we Source our energy that was stranded energy it was never used uh it was Hydro energy for the most part that was just not taken care of H and so in fact by by locating our data centers in these areas we are able to bring a revenue stream to the community to the grid provider and to the power producer uh and Sweden like every other country on the planet I would um venture out to say uh needs big time uh Investments and upgrades to the electrical infrastructure so for example to to build out and be able to bring that uh renewable um based electricity down from the north of of uh Sweden down to the South where most of the people are living um uh but but it's true ESG is more than than just uh energy we work uh and sponsor for example in in the community of Bowden where uh weow have a hive hockey arena um uh we make sure that the youth in the city uh gets off the street they have free tickets to go and and um uh attend the the hockey games and uh there are more than 12 kids teams that are um having ice time and and uh access to co in and maybe to wrap things up finally Hive has been very uh focused on our shareholders where we see a lot of our competition uh diluting their stocks issuing more and more shares and that is a strategy that we have uh not uh uh made ours uh we're very frugal about the issuance and and want to make sure that we grow our shareholder value and uh we do that with Bitcoin with our movie into Ai and very exciting times I'm glad that you mentioned that because sustainability is also about sustainable business and I think you know as you grow and develop as a Bitcoin miner I think you need to keep the you know these aspect as well in mind so it's great to see company like Hive you know striving but keeping shareholder at the top of their priority so Yanna thank you so much for joining us and yeah enjoy the conference thank you so much everyone