Block And Core Scientific Partnership To Decentralize Bitcoin Mining

Block, Inc. and Core Scientific announced an agreement on 10 July 2024 to deploy Block’s new 3-nanometre ASIC mining chips, one of the largest ASIC procurement deals by hashrate. Block’s Proto team, which also developed the Bitkey wallet, is leading the deployment, which is expected to add about 15 exahashes per second to Core Scientific’s operations. Thomas Templeton, Lead of the Proto team, described it as a tailor-made mining solution.

The same week, Bitfarms appointed Ben Gagnon, previously its Chief Mining Officer, as Chief Executive Officer, with plans to expand into energy generation, heat recycling and high-performance computing for AI. Bitcoin Policy UK also released a research paper, Supporting a Sustainable Grid With Bitcoin Mining, on how mining can act as a flexible load in demand response programmes, coinciding with the UK government’s plans for a National Wealth Fund.