Why This Oil Company Buys Bitcoin Miners for $30 w/ Brad Cuddy
About this episode
Jesse interviews Brad Cuddy about Cholla Inc.'s innovative approach to Bitcoin mining using low-cost ASICs and flexible energy strategies.
🔗 Brad Cuddy: Website: https://chollainc.com/energy X (Twitter): https://x.com/_BradCuddy_ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradleycuddy/ In this episode of HashrateUp, Jesse sits down with Brad Cuddy, Director of Energy Operations at Cholla Inc., to unpack the "ASIC retirement home" strategy: buying S19 J Pros for $30 a unit and making them profitable on ultra-cheap Texas power. Brad explains how Cholla, a three-generation oil & gas exploration company, turned its mining arm into an R&D lab for the wider industry: flexible-load curtailment in ERCOT's energy-only market, early bets on hydro and immersion cooling, and breaking even by mining only when power is cheap. The conversation then widens into the structural shift reshaping mining: pubcos liquidating fleets, megawatts and ASICs being lost to the AI pivot, and what that means for US hashrate. Whether you run flexible load, hunt for low-cost ASICs, or want to understand where Bitcoin mining goes as AI swallows power capacity, this one is packed with ground-level insight from someone operating at the source. TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Intro & the $30 ASIC tweet 1:30 What Cholla Inc. actually does 5:00…
People in this episode
Host: Jesse
Guest: Brad Cuddy
Topics covered
- Bitcoin mining
- energy operations
- ASIC retirement
- flexible load
- low-cost ASICs
- power capacity
- AI impact on mining
Keywords
- Bitcoin mining
- Cholla Inc.
- ASIC retirement
- flexible load
- Texas power
- energy operations
- S19 J Pros
- demand-response
- AI in mining
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Cholla Inc., ERCOT
Products: S19 J Pros, Whatsminer, demand-response software stack
Places: Texas, US
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