Connect with us

Published

on

Bitcoin enthusiasts, miners, and oil & gas execs gathered at a meetup in Houston to talk about the future of bitcoin mining.

HOUSTON – On a residential back street of Houston, in a 150,000 square-foot warehouse safeguarding high-end vintage cars, 200 oil and gas execs and bitcoin miners mingled, drank beer, and talked shop on a recent Wednesday night in August.

These two groups of people may seem as though they are at opposite ends of the professional and social spectrums, but their worlds are colliding – fast. As it turns out, the industries make for compatible bedfellows.

Just take Hayden Griffin Haby III, an oilman turned bitcoiner. The Texas native and father of three has spent 14 years in oil and gas, and he epitomizes what this monthly meetup is all about. 

Haby started as a surface landman where he brokered land contracts, and later, ran his own oil company. But for the last nine months, he’s exclusively been in the business of mining bitcoin.

As Haby describes it, he was “orange pilled” in November 2020 – a term used to describe the process of convincing a fiat-minded person that they are missing out by not investing in bitcoin. A month later, he co-founded Limpia Creek Technologies, which powers bitcoin mining rigs with flared, vented, and stranded natural gas assets.

“When I heard that you could make this much money per MCF (a metric used to measure natural gas), instead of just burning it up into the atmosphere, thanks to the whole ‘bitcoin mining thing,’ I couldn’t look away,” Haby said. “You can’t unsee that.”

When China kicked out all its crypto miners this spring – an exodus which Haby calls the “Chexit” – that poured kerosene on the flames. “This is an opportunity we didn’t think was coming,” he said.

Haby tells CNBC they are already seeing demand rushing to Texas, and he is convinced that the state is poised to capture most of the Chinese hashrate looking for a new home on friendlier shores.

Bitcoin miners care most about finding cheap sources of electricity, so Texas – with its crypto-friendly politicians, deregulated power grid, and crucially, abundance of inexpensive power sources – is a virtually perfect fit. The union becomes even more harmonious when miners connect their rigs to otherwise stranded energy, like natural gas going to waste on oil fields across Texas.

“This is Texas, boys. We got what you need, so come on down,” said Haby. “We are sitting on the energy capital of the world.”

“I think Kevin Costner said it best: ‘If you build it, they will come,'” said Haby.

An underground meetup of bitcoin miners and oil & gas execs was held at a 150,000 square-foot warehouse safeguarding high-end vintage cars.

Mobilizing a movement

Parker Lewis is one of Texas’ de facto bitcoin ambassadors. Everyone knows him. Everyone likes him. And virtually any bitcoiner you ask refers to him as the future mayor of Austin.

Lewis is an executive at Unchained Capital, a bitcoin-native financial services firm. He isn’t in politics – yet — but he is hustling across the state of Texas to spread the good word on the world’s biggest cryptocurrency. In May, the Houston Bitcoin Meetup consisted of only 20 people in a fluorescent-lit conference room in an office. Then Lewis decided to get involved.

“I just knew Houston would be prime to explode because of the energy connection to mining – if we organized a good meetup,” Lewis told CNBC. “It’s also key to Texas being the bitcoin capital of the world.”

His efforts are paying off. Wednesday’s meetup drew more than 200 attendees from across the state of Texas, as well as California, Colorado, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, New York, Australia and the UK.

The buzz was electric on Wednesday night. You had to shout to be heard. And no one in the room mentioned any cryptocurrency beside bitcoin. There was also an unmistakable air of stealth – and FOMO. The people who showed up to this event did so, at least in part, because they didn’t want to get left behind.

Capturing excess and otherwise wasted natural gas from drilling sites and then using that energy to mine bitcoin is still firmly in the category of avant-garde tech.

Haby, who’s affable and an open book on most things, clams up when it comes to sharing the location of his company’s mining sites. “West Texas” is as much as Haby would give CNBC, though if the name “Limpia Creek” is any indication, that would place them 100 miles due north of Big Bend National Park.

His secrecy was par for the course that evening.

Oilmen, turned bitcoin miners, Griffin Haby with Conner Murphree and Jordan Kuntz at one of their bitcoin mining sites in Texas.

Bitcoin miner Alejandro de la Torre was born in Spain, but he’s spent years minting bitcoin all over the world, most recently in China. When Beijing cracked down on all things crypto, De La Torre got a call from his boss at 3 A.M. telling him he had to go to Texas. He was in Austin the next day. 

Since then, he’s been shipping his new-generation mining gear to the U.S. in bulk. 

“It’s all through ships and from the Pacific side,” De La Torre told CNBC. “The port depends on the location of where the rigs will end up.” 

That was as much as De La Torre would divulge, because, as he explains it, any further details about the destination, or the gear itself, could give his competitors an edge.

Bitcoin believers care a lot about privacy, as do the oil and gas guys. Some cited non-disclosure agreements as a reason to speak to CNBC in vague platitudes about business deals. Others were only willing to share their thoughts on the condition of anonymity. And some attendees worried about their job security should their employer find out they were there.

These weren’t tycoons — they were mostly up-and-coming young execs, hungry to get ahead and make a name by taking a gamble on bitcoin mining.

Oil and gas meets bitcoin 

For years, oil and gas companies have struggled with the problem of what to do when they accidentally hit a natural gas formation while drilling for oil. Whereas oil can easily be trucked out to a remote destination, gas delivery requires a pipeline.  

If a drilling site is right next door to a pipeline, they chuck the gas in and take whatever cash the buyer on the other end is willing to pay that day. “There’s no choice. There’s no middle finger. Whatever gas comes out that day has to be sold,” explained Haby.

But if it’s 20 miles from a pipeline, things start to get more complicated. 

More often than not, the gas well won’t be big enough to warrant the time and expense of building an entirely new pipeline. If a driller can’t immediately find a way to sell the stash of natural gas, most look to dispose of it on site.

One method is to vent it, which releases methane directly into the air – a poor choice for the environment, as its greenhouse effects are shown to be much stronger than carbon dioxide. A more environmentally friendly option is to flare it, which means actually lighting the gas on fire. 

“Chemistry is amazing,” explained Adam Ortolf, who heads up business development in the U.S. for Upstream Data, a company that manufactures and supplies portable mining solutions for oil and gas facilities. 

“When CH4, or methane, combusts, the only exhaust is CO2 and H2O vapor. That’s literally the same thing that comes out of my mouth when I exhale,” continued Ortolf.

But Ortolf points out, flares are only 75 to 90% efficient. “Even with a flare, some of the methane is being vented without being combusted,” he said.

This is when on-site bitcoin mining can prove to be especially impactful.

When the methane is run into an engine or generator, 100% of the methane is combusted and none of it leaks or vents into the air, according to Ortolf. 

“But nobody will run it through a generator unless they can make money, because generators cost money to acquire and maintain,” he said. “So unless it’s economically sustainable, producers won’t internally combust the gas.”

A panel of bitcoin miners and oil & gas execs share what it’s like to mine bitcoin in Texas.

Bitcoin makes it economically sustainable for oil and gas companies to combust their methane rather than externally combust it with a flare. 

“There is no such thing as stranded gas anymore,” said Haby.

But Ortolf has taken years to convince people that parking a trailer full of ASICs on an oil and gas field is a smart and financially sound idea.

“In 2018, I got laughed out of the room when I talked about mining bitcoin on flared gas,” said Ortolf. “The concept of bringing hydrocarbons to market without a counterparty was laughable.”

Fast forward three years, and business at Upstream, a company founded by lead engineer Steve Barbour, is booming. It now works with 140 bitcoin mines across North America.

“This is the best gift the oil and gas industry could’ve gotten,” said Ortolf. “They were leaving a lot of hydrocarbons on the table, but now, they’re no longer limited by geography to sell energy.” 

It is also helping to curtail the overall carbon footprint of some of these oil and gas sites. Recent production stats show that in the U.S. alone about 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas is wasted on a daily basis. And these are just the reported numbers, so the actual figures are likely higher.

Meanwhile, bitcoin miners get what they want most: cheap electricity. 

Voting out the haters

The thing about all these grand visions for bitcoin mining – to stay the course, it requires some manpower on Capitol Hill to safeguard its plan to scale. And right now, politicians in Washington are scrambling to figure out what and how to regulate cryptocurrencies and all the ancillary services that make up the wider ecosystem for digital currencies. 

That’s why another big topic of conversation at the Houston Bitcoin Meeting was political activism.

“Who knows a staffer or a representative?” one member of the crowd posed to the group. At least half a dozen people raised their hands and one stepped up to confirm they would reach out to their contact in Senator Cruz’s office.

There was a sense of momentum in the audience. Several people made the point that the bitcoin contingent across the country had paralyzed a $1 trillion rubber-stamped, bipartisan bill, no small feat for a voting bloc which hitherto hadn’t been viewed as much of a threat on the Hill.

But it’s not just about being on the defensive for these tens of millions of voters and bitcoin faithful. They’re going on the offensive by working to install like-minded people into office so that they can do something “before they do it to us,” as one member of the audience said to the group. They’re also teaching veteran lawmakers about bitcoin, as many representatives don’t understand it.

“We need to target anyone who is anti-bitcoin. There are 45 million of us in America, and we are not silent,” said this same attendee.

Continue Reading

Environment

Tesla (TSLA) introduces new direct discount in China at critical time

Published

on

By

Tesla (TSLA) introduces new direct discount in China at critical time

Tesla (TSLA) has introduced a new direct discount for the Model Y in China as the latest of a series of incentives to boost demand during this critical end-of-quarter push.

The automaker regularly offers discounts at the end of every quarter, but the incentives to boost demand have been the most wide-ranging ever this quarter.

Over the last month, we have been documenting the many sale incentives and discounts that Tesla has put in place to ensure it creates the demand for a record quarter.

Tesla aims to deliver a record number of more than 515,000 vehicles in Q4 in order for its sales not to be down for the whole year. That’s ~30,000 more vehicles than Tesla’s last record quarter, which was Q4 2023.

In Europe, the incentives include a year of free Supercharging and heavy discounts on inventory vehicles.

In the US, there are also good inventory discounts, 3 months of free Supercharger and Full Self-Driving subscription, FSD transfer, and more.

More recently, Tesla also slashed the lease price of the base Model Y and even offered discounted home charging under Tesla Electric for those taking delivery of new vehicles.

And everywhere, Tesla is heavily subsidizing loans with lower interest rates. That has been the main incentive in China, Tesla’s biggest market, until now.

Tesla’s New Discount in China

Today, Tesla announced that it is offering a ¥10,000, the equivalent of $1,380 USD, discount on the final payment for new Model Y vehicles:

The new discount can be combined with Tesla’s subsidized 0% interest financing, which has been Tesla’s main incentive in China all year.

Electrek’s Take

Based on insurance data, Tesla is tracking ahead of last year’s deliveries in China, but it is going to need to beat its last record by a significant margin to make sure not to be down for the whole year.

Model Y is Tesla’s most popular vehicle, but Tesla is also going against the expectation of the design refresh coming early next year, which can negatively affect demand.

This discount is likely to combat that and maintain Tesla’s current good momentum in China.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Continue Reading

Environment

Update: Hyundai and Kia are now recalling more than 200K EVs

Published

on

By

Update: Hyundai and Kia are now recalling more than 200K EVs

We now have more details on the massive recall, which just keeps growing. Hyundai and now Kia are recalling more than 208,000 electric vehicles in Canada and the US to fix a problem with the loss of driving power, which can increase the risk of a crash.

For the second time this year, the automakers are recalling huge swathes of EVs and other “electrified” vehicles in North America, citing concerns about a loss of driving power, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said on Friday.

In the US, Hyundai is recalling 145,235 EVs, including the 2022 through 2024 Ioniq 5, the 2023 through 2025 Ioniq 6, GV60 and GV70, and the 2023 and 2024 G80. In Canada, Hyundai is recalling 34,529 vehicles that were produced between March and November of this year, according to Automotive News Canada.

As for Kia, the recall includes close to 63,000 Kia EV 6 vehicles from 2022 through 2024 in the US, but the company has yet to offer details on its Canada recall.

Kia-EV-sales-goal
Kia EV6 (Source: Kia)

It looks like the issue stems from “the integrated charging control units in these vehicles, which may become damaged and fail to charge the 12-volt battery. This malfunction could lead to a complete loss of drive power, posing safety risks for drivers,” the NHTSA stated.

Back in March, Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis issued a similar recall for 147,110 electric vehicles – that recall centered, again, around damaged integrated charging control units failing to charge the battery.

The South Korea automaker has said that all owners of affected vehicles will be notified by letter mail on the next steps to take. This will involve bringing your vehicle to one of the company’s dealers to inspect and replace the charging unit and its fuse if necessary, along with performing a software update for the charging units.

2025-Hyundai-IONIQ-5-prices
2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 (Source: Hyundai)

Importantly, no crashes, injuries, fatalities, or fires due to this issue have been reported in the US or Canada, Hyundai reported.


If you’re an electric vehicle owner, charge up your car at home with rooftop solar panels. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing on solar, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. They have hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them. 

Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisers to help you every step of the way. Get started here.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Continue Reading

Environment

Curious Tesla vehicles under covers raises some questions

Published

on

By

Curious Tesla vehicles under covers raises some questions

A group of Tesla vehicles spotted under covers at the automaker’s test track at the Fremont factory is raising some questions.

Tesla has a very small test track on the ground of its first factory, Tesla Fremont, in California.

Now and again, people fly drones over the factory and catch glimpses of new cars being tested. Youtuber ‘Met God in Wilderness’ is one of those drone pilots who regularly fly over the factory and while he didn’t catch vehicle being tested, he did catch some curious vehicles under covers next to the track:

The vehicles are all covered, and therefore, it’s hard to tell exactly what they are, but the different shapes are intriguing and raise some questions.

It looks like three, maybe four, different kinds of vehicles:

We know that Tesla is working on three new specific vehicles: a Model Y design refresh, and two new cheaper models based on Model 3 and Model Y.

All three vehicles are expected to be unveiled early next year.

Electrek’s Take

At the risk of stating the obvious, getting much information from vehicles hidden under cover can be hard. It’s even possible that some of those have shape camouflage, which is sometimes used by automakers – although I don’t remember Tesla ever using that.

So here are my best guesses. Take them for what they are: guesses.

The most interesting ones to me are the first two on the left in the picture above. The last vehicle on the left looks like it could be a smaller Model 3.:

The next one could be its Model Y counterpart:

I also wouldn’t be surprised if a Model Y Juniper, the upcoming refresh, is under one of those covers, but we already had good looks at this one.

What about you? What do you think about these Tesla vehicles? Let us know in the comment section below.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Continue Reading

Trending