Blockspace: Datacenter deals, SpaceX IPO, and Saylor didn’t sell

The Bitcoin mining industry is undergoing a seismic pivot toward AI infrastructure, with major miners like Kiel (formerly BitFarms) and Galaxy rebranding and securing high-profile data center deals with AWS and CoreWeave. This shift is driven by collapsing Bitcoin mining profitability, as hash rate prices hit all-time lows and miners liquidate ASICs for GPUs. The market is now pricing in a 'beach ball effect' in Texas, where miners curtail operations during ERCOT’s 4CP season to avoid peak transmission fees, leading to a predictable drop in difficulty and a surge in hash rate once the season ends. Meanwhile, SpaceX is emerging not just as a rocket company but as a data center powerhouse, with Google reportedly signing a $920 million monthly lease for compute at XAI’s Colossus campus in Memphis—potentially enabling SpaceX to recoup its $40 billion in data center investments in just 18 months. This unprecedented revenue stream underscores a new reality: AI infrastructure is the dominant growth engine, and companies that can scale compute faster than competitors—especially Elon Musk’s ventures—are capturing outsized value. The episode also warns of rising protocol risk in the DeFi space, with Zcash’s recent zero-knowledge proof vulnerability exposing the fragility of even the most audited systems, suggesting that high yields on Bitcoin-based DeFi products must now include a significant risk premium.