Bitcoin miners at Donald Trump’s closed-door event say he thinks bitcoin can help win AI arms race

Published

1 year ago

June 13, 2024

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Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago on June 5, 2024 in West Palm Beach, Florida. Now that his criminal trial in New York has wrapped up, the former president has scheduled a number of fundraising events around the country to aid his presidential bid. (Photo by Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images)

Eva Marie Uzcategui | Getty Images

This past Tuesday night in Palm Beach, Florida, about a dozen bitcoin mining executives and experts sat down with former president Donald Trump for an hour and a half in a small tea room at the Mar-a-Lago Club. As a steady drizzle fell outside, they sipped from Trump-branded water bottles and tried to sell him on the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

The meeting marked the first time the former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee — recently convicted of 34 felonies in New York — had taken a meeting with the technologists securing the $1.3 trillion bitcoin network.

The intimate gathering brought together a coalition of some of the biggest private and public American miners in the business, including representatives from Riot Platforms, Marathon Digital Holdings, Terawulf, CleanSpark, Core Scientific, Arkon Energy, Cholla Energy and Exacore.

CNBC spoke to half the miners who attended the closed door session on Tuesday, including the CEO of Riot Platforms. Jason Les told CNBC that one of the group’s top talking points was the fact that the U.S. is number one in a lot of things, and it should be number one at bitcoin, especially as the world’s top coin touches new all-time price highs this year. Bitcoin is up 160% to around $67,000 since June 2023.

Senator Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) — who is the ranking member on the Senate’s Banking Committee and Finance Subcommittee, as well as a vocal proponent of the digital asset industry broadly, and bitcoin mining in particular — was also there to help guide what participants described as a free-flowing and wide-ranging discussion on bitcoin, energy, job creation and the push to beat China in the artificial intelligence arms race.

Many agreed that the former president was collaborative, had well-informed questions and seemed genuinely interested in how bitcoin miners could help solve America’s energy deficit problem.

BTC Inc. CEO David Bailey, who organized the mining sit-down with Trump, says that the meeting is part of a larger push to support the former president’s bid to return to the White House.

“Our industry intends to make bitcoin and crypto a defining issue for the 2024 election,” Bailey said of the effort. “As an industry we are committed to raising over $100 million and turning out more than 5,000,000 voters for the Trump reelection effort.”

Less than four hours after Trump’s roundtable wrapped, the former president took to social media to extol the virtues of the bitcoin mining business.

“Bitcoin mining may be our last line of defense against a CBDC,” Trump posted shortly before midnight on Tuesday.

“Biden’s hatred of Bitcoin only helps China, Russia, and the Radical Communist Left. We want all the remaining Bitcoin to be MADE IN THE USA!!! It will help us be ENERGY DOMINANT!!!”

Venture capitalist hope to raise $12 million for Trump campaign

Bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies are created through a process known as proof-of-work, in which miners around the world run high-powered computers that collectively validate transactions and simultaneously create new tokens.

The process requires heaps of electricity, leading miners to seek out the cheapest sources of power. Many have begun to set up shop in the U.S. in the last few years, much to the chagrin of a mix of mostly Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

“It’s such an easy issue for politicians,” in part because there is “no major ask that we have to change the rules or anything else,” Les, who runs a bitcoin mining company with a market cap of about $3 billion, told CNBC.

“We just want to be treated like everyone else,” Les added, noting that more than one in four people in the U.S. now owns bitcoin, according to a survey recently conducted by bitcoin financial services firm Unchained.

Bitcoin that’s “made in America”

For months, Trump — who recently launched his latest non-fungible token collection on the solana blockchain in April — has been making increasingly bullish comments on crypto.

He is now accepting digital currency donations and has pledged to defend the rights of those who choose to self-custody their coins, meaning that they don’t rely on a centralized entity like Coinbase to hold their tokens and instead, do it themselves in personal crypto wallets, which are sometimes outside the reach of the Internal Revenue Service. Trump also vowed at the Libertarian National Convention in Washington in May to keep Sen. Warren and “her goons” away from bitcoin holders.

In early June in San Francisco, technologists, crypto executives, and venture capitalists paid up to $300,000 per ticket to join a Trump fundraiser that ultimately raised more than $12 million.

And then on Tuesday, Trump declared that all future bitcoin will be minted in the U.S., should he return to the White House.

Geoff Kendrick, who heads up digital assets research at Standard Chartered, recently wrote that he expects bitcoin to reach the $100,000 price threshold as the U.S. approaches the November presidential election and $150,000 by the end of the year if Trump wins.

Tuesday night at Mar-a-Lago

It was a no comms and no photographer policy at the mining roundtable on Tuesday.

Attendees, who had an expansive view over thunderstorms on the Atlantic coast that night, forfeited their smartphones to a Radio Frequency Identification pouch that blocked incoming and outgoing signals. As participants lost their sense of time, they convened under a large chandelier listening to the former president actively engage on the nuances of America’s energy deficit, bitcoin mining, and AI — without the aid of a teleprompter — for the duration of the conversation.

“He just really knew his stuff,” said Browder of Marathon.

“We were very impressed by how in the weeds he was on some pretty dense topics when you’re talking about artificial intelligence, data centers, energy buildout, and transmission,” continued Browder, who added that it was the first time bitcoin miners have formally met with the former president to discuss the industry.

CNBC spoke to half a dozen miners who were at the meeting, all of whom converged on the same conclusion; that Trump understood how bitcoin mining complements some of the bigger macro challenges that the U.S. has as a country, most notably the imminent need for the rapid buildout of energy production and transmission infrastructure amid the booming interest in generative AI technologies.

NYSE's Martin: Can't argue with success of Bitcoin ETFs and liquidity it's brought to markets

Schultz of the NASDAQ-traded mining firm CleanSpark said Trump came in, sat down, and got right down to business after grabbing a Diet Coke and a cookie from the four-plate spread of macadamia, chocolate chip, and oatmeal varieties adorning the table.

Trump “actually believes that bitcoin provides value,” said CleanSpark’s executive chairman. “I went there feeling like this is going to be a campaign rally; a highly politicized campaign rally.”

“It was anything but a fundraiser pitch,” continued Schultz.

Exacore president Chris Cook echoed that takeaway, telling CNBC that Trump was “very knowledgeable on the subject” of bitcoin mining and that he understood the significance of the job creation that could come from supporting big data mining in the U.S.

“We’re able to train people that have been displaced from industries that may have evolved or no longer exist — and train them to operate and work in a bitcoin mine,” said Cook. “The coal industry, for example. There’s not nearly as many jobs there anymore, and we can teach them to operate a bitcoin mine.”

Amanda Fabiano, a veteran of the mining industry who is on the board of a publicly traded mining firm and the founder of Fabiano Consulting, came away with a similar impression. She says that the former president seemed especially interested in hearing more about the substantial job creation that the mining industry generates in remote parts of the country in sectors ranging from technology to construction, as well as the financial incentive it provides for the buildout of infrastructure to harness the power of stranded renewable energy sources.

Marathon’s Browder says that a lot of the places where they mine bitcoin are in rural areas of the United States that have been left behind, whether it was a town once known for its coal plants, or factories that have shuttered altogether.

“We’ve come in and revitalized those areas, and I think that resonates very well with former President Trump, his team, and obviously, a lot of voters in rural America that support him,” said Browder.

Exacore’s Cook says the kind of job creation they’re talking about extends well beyond staffing a mine. The mining industry justifies the economic investment to create new power generation infrastructure, which then creates the need for thousands of new roles to make that buildout happen.

“That’s where you’ve got all these ancillary jobs; it’s not just the bitcoin mining directly,” said Cook.

“I think we can about double the amount of power generation in the U.S., which would, by my estimate, add two to three percent to GDP and create close to a million jobs,” continued Cook.

“He’s been speaking more about energy independence, jobs, and technology,” Marathon Digital’s Browder said of Trump. “I think it’s the broader context of what’s happening around the world with the power competition between the U.S. and China.”

Across the U.S. are untapped and stranded sources of renewable energy. In West Texas, for example, there is an idyllic overlap of sun quality and wind speed. But a lot of that renewable energy is concentrated in remote parts of the state, and without a financial incentive, there is little reason to build out renewable infrastructure to harness this energy.

Enter bitcoin miners.

Some have opted to build mining sites where wind and solar are abundant and the transmission system is constrained, meaning that power wants to flow down the line, but the lines are full. These mines act like a large power station but in reverse. The mines will absorb abundant renewable energy at times when supply outpaces demand, thereby monetizing these assets when there are no other buyers. And on the flip side, the mines will incrementally ramp down their energy intake, as demand on the grid rises.

Adding bitcoin miners to the portfolio of energy buyers has helped to improve the core economics of renewable power production. Providing demand to these semi-stranded assets essentially makes renewables economically viable when they might not be otherwise.

Schultz noted, however, that Trump isn’t a huge fan of wind energy, because it’s too expensive to build, maintain, and dispose of when the components go bad, so he doesn’t see it as a long-term solution, but he is apparently a fan of renewables otherwise.

“It’s a race against the rest of the world building this infrastructure, so we don’t want the United States to be left behind in this regard,” added Riot’s Les.

Tech for Trump: Silicon Valley investors turn against Biden

AI meets bitcoin mining

Demand for AI compute and infrastructure surged after OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT in November 2022, setting off a rush of investment in AI models and startups.

Data centers alone could use up to 9% of the country’s power by the end of the decade, according to the Electric Power Research Institute. That’s more than double today’s demand across the U.S today.

“When you talk about the grid and energy production, a lot of the conversation was around AI and the amount of energy that’s going to be needed there,” said Marathon’s Browder.

Exacore’s Cook noted that Trump “was very much aware of how much energy AI needs.”

Bitcoin miners do two things especially well.

When miners partner with utility companies, they turn off their data centers almost instantly when there is too much power demand and give energy back. This helps to stabilize the grid, and miners are then compensated for curtailing their consumption.

In some cases, bitcoin miners also make it more cost effective to build the infrastructure necessary to bring renewables onto the grid.

Both those things are important when it comes to building out energy infrastructure across the country.

“These are synergies that I think the Trump administration understands very well in this context of, we need more energy, and there’s a grid power competition between the U.S. and China,” said Marathon’s Browder.

“Those are the high level pieces that I think the Trump administration are thinking about and developing policies around,” added Browder. “They’re very forward thinking.”

In the closed-door meeting, Trump also spoke about the fact that fossil fuels are likely to make a comeback as they are in several other countries, due to the demand for increased energy capacity for data centers around the world.

Tapping into nuclear energy is seen by many as a cleaner alternative and the answer to meeting these ballooning power demands.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have invested in nuclear plants in recent years, as has Sam Altman, who is best known for being the CEO of his $80 billion start-up OpenAI. Altman told CNBC last year that he’s a big believer in nuclear when it comes to serving the needs of AI workloads. He’s also backed two different nuclear power start-ups, one of which just listed on the New York Stock Exchange in May.

“I don’t see a way for us to get there without nuclear,” Altman said. “I mean, maybe we could get there just with solar and storage. But from my vantage point, I feel like this is the most likely and the best way to get there.”

TeraWulf powers its mining sites with nuclear energy, and is looking to get into machine learning.

The company’s chief strategy officer, Kerri Langlais, tells CNBC that whether it’s bitcoin mining or AI, the reliance solely on intermittent renewables, whether it be solar or wind, which are fluctuating, is not going to be enough to support the tremendous projections for the amount of energy that is going to be required to support build out over the next five to ten years.

“We definitely talked about nuclear,” Langlais said of the sit-down with Trump.

“We need to think about that in the context of how we’re operating, how the grid is operating, the role that bitcoin mining plays in that, because we can provide a pretty valuable service to the grid in that sort of fluctuating supply environment.”

— CNBC’s Brian Schwartz contributed to this report.

Environment

A cold gold rush? The race for the Arctic’s critical minerals is heating up

Published

4 hours ago

November 20, 2025

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A cold gold rush? The race for the Arctic's critical minerals is heating up

Traditional painted houses overlooking sea ice in the Old Nuuk district near the Sermitsiaq mountain in Nuuk, Greenland, on Thursday, April 3, 2025.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

A global scramble to exploit the Arctic’s untapped resources appears to be kicking into overdrive.

In a push to break China’s mineral dominance, countries around the world are increasingly turning to the thawing and sparsely populated northern polar region, seeking to seize its raw materials and benefit from new commercial trade routes.

U.S. President Donald Trump, for example, has repeatedly underscored the importance of Greenland, a vast Arctic territory, calling U.S. ownership of the island an “absolute necessity” for economic and national security reasons.

Canada has recently sought to ramp up Arctic investment as part of a push designed to unlock its resource potential, particularly amid strained diplomatic ties with the U.S.

Russia, which has a sprawling Arctic coastline, has long recognized the region as a strategic priority. Indeed, President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday lauded the construction of a new nuclear-powered icebreaker ship to navigate Arctic waters, saying “it’s important to consistently strengthen Russia’s position” in the region.

“The Arctic is seen as a source of a lot of different raw materials, not only oil and gas, but a lot of strategic materials and rare earths,” Marc Lanteigne, associate professor at the Arctic University of Norway in Tromso, told CNBC by telephone.

“Greenland, right now, is a repository of a lot of base metals, precious metals, gem stones, rare earths, uranium … it’s all there. The problem is that up until recently, it was seen as completely unviable to actually mine them,” Lanteigne said.

“But with climate change and the ability to navigate the Arctic Ocean much more frequently, especially during the summer months, Greenland is starting to be looked at much more carefully as a potential alternative source for a lot of these strategic materials to China.”

Greenland has been transformed by the climate crisis. A major analysis of historic satellite images, published last year by researchers at the U.K.’s University of Leeds, showed parts of the autonomous Danish territory’s ice sheet and glaciers have been replaced by wetlands, areas of shrub and barren rock.

For mining companies, the major ice loss has inadvertently made some of the island’s strategic minerals more accessible.

Tony Sage, CEO of Critical Metals, which is developing one of the world’s largest rare earth assets in southern Greenland, said there has been a notable upswing in investor interest in Greenland in recent months, particularly since Trump returned to office and raised the prospect of seizing control of the territory.

“I remember in his first term, in around 2018 and 2019, he made a big song and dance about the strategic value of rare earths in Greenland, so even back then,” Sage told CNBC by telephone.

Perception vs. reality

Alongside Critical Metals, mining and exploration company Amaroq is also working to exploit some of Greenland’s resources. Amaroq CEO Eldur Olafsson said the firm’s recent discovery of high-grade rare earths in southern Greenland “means a lot to us.”

The project, which will take several years to develop, marked the firm’s first foray into the rare earths space as it expands its interests beyond gold and other strategic minerals.

Just one week after unveiling its rare earths discovery, the company on Nov. 11 confirmed commercial levels of germanium and gallium at its west Greenland hub, a development that Olafsson said could prove to be even more strategically significant.

“The germanium, gallium piece is, in my opinion, much bigger news than people understand,” Olafsson told CNBC by video call.

This aerial view shows icebergs floating in the waters beaten down by the sun with buildings in the background off Nuuk, Greenland, on March 11, 2025, on the day of Greenland, the autonomous Danish territory, legislative elections.

Odd Andersen | Afp | Getty Images

Germanium and gallium are essential components to a wide range of goods, from electric vehicles to semiconductors and military applications.

China, which is the primary global producer of these metals, imposed initial export controls on germanium and gallium in 2023, before singling out the U.S. with an outright ban late last year in response to curbs imposed on its chip sector by Washington. Beijing has since suspended its ban of gallium and germanium exports to the U.S., although the metals remain subject to restrictive measures.

“That is a mineral that the U.S. and the European Union need now. The rare earths are being processed by Lynas and MP Materials. That is something that you can access, I wouldn’t say easier, but you can access it … Germanium and gallium, if you don’t have them then that is a massive problem,” Olafsson said.

“We now have a short-term solution in mining terms to mine zinc, lead, silver and germanium and gallium, while we are then developing exporting the rare earths as well.”

Olafsson said it was important for the company to generate cashflow through its portfolio of gold and other strategic metals while it seeks to deliver on its rare earths potential, noting that the rare earths market is still relatively small.

Asked whether the race for the Arctic’s resources could be compared to a gold rush, Lanteigne said: “This is where perception and reality tend to kick in.”

He added: “There has been a lot of discussion about a rush to develop mineral resources in Greenland, for example, but I can say having been there quite a few times that if you are going to set up a mine then you need to bring in literally everything.”

Even in ideal conditions, Lanteigne said logistical challenges, such as Greenland’s harsh climate and remote landscape, means it could take 15 to 20 years before companies start to turn a serious profit.

Arctic Sweden

It’s not just Greenland. The scramble for the Arctic’s minerals includes some of the northernmost areas of Sweden, too.

State-owned mining firm LKAB is currently racing to develop one of Europe’s largest known deposits of rare earths. The discovery of the so-called Per Geijer deposit, which was announced in 2023, sits in close proximity to the firm’s massive iron ore mine in the Arctic city of Kiruna.

Rain falls as a general view taken on August 21, 2025 shows the LKAB iron ore mine and a sign bearing the company’s logo in Kiruna, northern Sweden.

Jonathan Nackstrand | Afp | Getty Images

Niklas Johansson, senior vice president public affairs and external relations at LKAB, said the company is currently in discussion with European lawmakers to ensure that it will be economically viable to develop its resources.

“We’ve already got the material up to the ground. That’s all been paid for by the iron ore. Still, it’s not a given that this is a business case. It looks like it is for us at the moment, but it’s not something that you’d say, ‘oh it’s a no brainer, just run for it,'” Johansson told CNBC by telephone.

“I also tell them that if it looks like this for us, who has most of the infrastructure and everything in place, how do you think it will look for others in Europe?”

Environment

Mercedes takes out the trash as German city deploys 18 electric garbage trucks

Published

11 hours ago

November 19, 2025

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Mercedes takes out the trash as German city deploys 18 electric garbage trucks

Karlsruhe waste disposal agency deploys 18 Mercedes-Benz eEconic electric trucks

The German city of Karlsruhe is setting an example for sustainability in waste management by deploying a fleet of 18 Mercedes-Benz eEconic electric garbage trucks that are helping make the streets cleaner, quieter, and a lot less stinky.

Since the end of September, the city of Karlsruhe has been relying on Mercedes’ fully electric waste collection vehicles throughout, with none of the area-specific restrictions or limited rollout strategies for one or two trucks at a time that typically accompany stories like these. Instead, the city is using the Mercedes eEconics for the same stuff they’d use the diesel versions for: residual waste disposal, paper collection, and bulky waste collection.

Normal garbage duty, in other words. And, in such daily use, they do a great job. The trucks cover an average route distance of around 80 km (about 50 miles) on 112 kWh battery packs (usable capacity is ~97 kWh) which can be reliably completed in single-shift operation without intermediate charging — thanks, in part, to Mercedes’ efficient electric motors and regenerative braking that shines in the trucks’ typical stop-and-go duty cycles.

More than a single shift, in fact. The fleet managers report that after “a good 80 kilometers with around 60 stops on its daily route,” energy consumption was only around 35% of the battery capacity, meaning the charge level dropped from 100% to 65% and 64% respectively.

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At the same time, CO₂ emissions are significantly reduced: depending on the area of application, each eEconic can save between 150 and 170 tons of CO₂ per year. This results in a total potential annual saving of around 1,200 tons of CO₂ emissions.

The purchase of the electric vehicles was funded by the Federal Ministry of Transport (BMV) as part of the guideline on the promotion of light and heavy commercial vehicles with alternative, climate-friendly drives and the associated refueling and charging infrastructure (KsNI). The funding guideline was coordinated by NOW GmbH, and applications were approved by the Federal Office for Logistics and Mobility.

Electrek’s Take

Look, you know me. There is absolutely ZERO chance that I’ll be able to remain objective about anything that’s putting down more than four thousand lb-ft of torque. Make that thing quieter, cleaner, and generally better for me and my community, and there’s even less of a chance of me saying anything critical about it.

Here’s hoping more cities go electric rather sooner than later.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Daimler Truck.

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Electreon snaps up InductEV’s wireless charging tech in new MoU

Published

11 hours ago

November 19, 2025

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Electreon snaps up InductEV’s wireless charging tech in new MoU

Electreon just took a big step toward expanding wireless EV charging. The Israel-based company signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to acquire the assets of InductEV, a Pennsylvania-based firm known for its ultra-fast, high-power static wireless charging systems used by heavy-duty electric transit and freight fleets.

If the deal closes after due diligence and regulatory approvals, the combined company would bring together Electreon’s dynamic wireless charging tech – the kind that can charge vehicles while they drive – with InductEV’s high-power stationary systems. That would create one of the most complete wireless charging portfolios on the market, covering everything from passenger EVs to vans, buses, heavy-duty trucks, and even autonomous vehicles.

Electreon and InductEV together hold around 400 granted and pending patents, and have a lot of field experience across their respective projects. Electreon says that pairing its manufacturing capabilities and global footprint with InductEV’s ultra-fast tech will help streamline and speed up fleet electrification.

Both companies already work with major vehicle OEMs, which Electreon asserts will make integrating wireless charging into future vehicle platforms easier.

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Electreon CEO Oren Ezer said the deal would combine the two companies into “a truly global powerhouse for wireless EV charging.” He added that “the decision by InductEV’s shareholders to invest in Electreon is a tremendous vote of confidence in our shared vision.”

InductEV CEO John F. Rizzo said, “Together, we’re combining world-class innovation with real-world experience to deliver even greater value to our North American and European customers and accelerate the shift to wireless power for sustainable commercial transportation.”

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