Can We Mine Bitcoin In Space With Solar Panels?
To investors,
One of the beautiful things about the internet is that you can meet anyone. People from different walks of life with different life experiences come together to discuss ideas and events on platforms like Twitter/X. Given the size of my audience on that platform, you can imagine the plethora of people who reach out with various ideas or proposals.
More than 90% of the ideas are not interesting. This could be for a variety of reasons, but I pass on hundreds, if not thousands, of ideas sent to me each year.
But every once in a while someone sends me an idea that catches my attention. Recently, an anonymous account sent me the idea of mining bitcoin in outer space using satellites and solar panels. I was surprised I had never heard this idea before.
Here is a rendering of what orbital solar farms would look like:
After going back and forth with the anonymous account, I was able to convince the individual to agree to two things — first, he approved me sharing the idea more broadly, and second, the individual created a personal account under his real name so you can follow him (his name is Nick Moran and you can follow him here).
Here is the original message that Nick sent me about his idea:
I want to get a BIG idea out to the world now that we can dream big again without retaliation from government overreach. Now that Elon Musk is in charge of making the government more efficient, I think this big idea has a good chance of becoming reality more than in any other time in history.
Elon mentioned recently that the sun is the most abundant energy available to us in the solar system. How do we harness that energy with peak efficiency in a way that benefits everybody on Earth? How can we do this without sacrificing landmasses that are better used for farmland and/or housing?
I will explain.
Bitcoin mining is the only technology on Earth that monetizes stranded energy. Bitcoin mining simply takes stranded sources of energy and effectively turns it into digital gold (aka bitcoin) that can be transferred via an internet connection.
THE BIG IDEA: The Department of Government Efficiency creates the largest orbital solar farm in space and attaches bitcoin miners to it. This can work because bitcoin mining is location agnostic.
It is 100% possible to harness the power of the sun from space, away from Earth. The big problem is we can’t transmit that energy back to Earth via transmission lines, until now….
Bitcoin miners attached to this orbital solar farm in space, with satellite internet via Starlink, we can monetize this stranded solar energy into Bitcoin and send that Bitcoin back to Earth.
The idea is to create revenue via bitcoin mining with orbital solar power in space without having to sacrifice landmasses on earth that can be utilized for better things.
An orbital solar farm in space with bitcoin miners attached to it, out of the view of the naked eye from Earth, would not be controversial under the Trump administration. The revenue from this endeavor would go to the Department of Government Efficiency. The “DOGE” can use this revenue for a wide variety of purposes that benefit US citizens and bring down inflation.
For example, contributing this revenue to the citizens to pay a portion of their electricity bills, thus bringing down inflationary pressures & reducing the cost of living (I’m open to better alternatives too).
I am 100% open to the idea of finding unproductive land masses on Earth to execute this idea as well. It’s just not as big of an idea.
I would love to create a think tank around this big idea to find out the initial cost vs revenue generated to see if this big idea has legs. Twitter is the world’s largest think tank with a lot of brilliant minds using it. It is a sanctuary for free speech and ideas created by citizens, for the citizens and protected by Elon Musk’s commitment to free speech. We should all utilize it accordingly.
As I mentioned, I had never thought about this before, nor have I heard anyone else talking about the idea. Good ideas can come from anyone…including anonymous accounts on Twitter/X.
So here is my ask to all of you — what do you think about the idea? Do you think it could work? What are the big obstacles to make it a reality? Are there companies that have existing technology to create an experimental orbital solar farm with bitcoin miners attached?
There are hundreds of thousands of people subscribed to this daily letter. Most of you are financial investors, but I am betting we have plenty of engineers or other relevant occupations. Who knows, maybe we even have an astronaut or two subscribed?!
I would love to crowdsource information about this idea. Send me your feedback, your additional ideas, and anyone Nick and I should talk with. If the idea seems viable, I will keep everyone updated. If the idea is deemed not viable, I will let everyone know what we discovered.
I believe this group is unstoppable when we focus on a big idea. Let’s see what happens.
Hope you all have a great Christmas and holidays. I will return to writing later this week.
-Anthony Pompliano
Founder & CEO, Professional Capital Management
Phil Rosen & Anthony Pompliano The Fed & Bitcoin
Phil Rosen, the Co-Founder of Opening Bell Daily, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss bitcoin, federal reserve, housing regulations, home affordability, why the market is telling the fed what to do, and why you need to become an investor.
Enjoy!
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Finally had time to do this math problem:
Miners:
For this randomly decided to use 16 ASIC miners, Model: Bitmain antminer S19 Pro which would get us around 110 TH/s, around 3250 Watts needed per miner. So that is around 52,000Wper day.
- Assuming we will use starlink to connect to our mining pools and etc, plus other things to make the satellite stay in space and not become a fancy fireworks, lets set aside 1000W for all of that
Total W needed: 53K W
Power:
According to NASA, the average solar irradiance in space aka solar constant is around 11,360 W/m²
High grade space solar panels has about 30% efficiency
Effective Power Generation per m²: 1,360 W/m² × 30% = 408 W/m²
Calculating our total area needed to power our rigs: 53,000 W ÷ 408 W/m² ≈ 129.9 m²
On average solar panel mass is 1kg per m²
Calculating our mass for solar panel: 129.9 m² × 1 kg/m² = 129.9 kg
Satellite Mass Estimation
ASIC MINER: 13.2 KG per miner X 16 miners =129.9 kg
Solar Panels Mass: 129.9 kg
Estimated mass for other structures, thermal management and power regulation, Starlink comms: 600 kg ( very rough estimate, which is close to SpaceX Starlink satellites )
129.9 kg + 129.9 kg + 600 kg = 941 kg
Launch Cost
SpaceX Rideshare program
Cost per kg: estimated $5,000/KG
Total Launch cost 941 kg satellite at $5,000/kg is $4,705,000
BTC Mined per Day (used chatgpt for this part)
Hash rate: 16 miners × 110 TH/s = 1.76 PH/s = 1,760 TH/s
Network Metrics (based on real-time data):
Network Hashrate: 836.81 EH/s (836,810,000 TH/s)
Block Reward: 3.125 BTC
Blocks per Day: 144
More math. Shared network hashrate calc
1,760TH / 836,810,000 TH/s = 0.000002103(0.0002103%)
Daily BTC Mined per day
450BTC/day×0.000002103=0.00094635BTC/day
now w/pool fees assuming its at 2%
0.00094635BTC/day×(1−0.02)=0.00092742BTC/day
With BTC at 100K
0.00092742BTC/day×100,000$/BTC= $92.742/day
Rough estimate cost of $4.7 mill, without labor and miners bought. Or solar panel.
Profit per day $92.7 which is around 34k a year profit.
Other factors to consider: thermal management, structural integrity, data transmission, gov regulations and maintenance
What if instead if sending our own satellite, what if we just attached miners to the ISS or something, help NASA do NASA things since space is cool.
Anyways follow me ya nerds
https://x.com/ABwasabi
Reference:
https://www.coinwarz.com/mining/bitcoin/calculator
https://www.spacex.com/rideshare/
https://www.solar.com/learn/space-based-solar-vs-conventional-solar-how-are-they-different/#:~:text=The%20silicon%20cells%20that%20are,in%20the%20International%20Space%20Station.
https://www.kompulsa.com/bitcoin-miner-power-consumption-much-energy-bitcoin-miners-consume/#:~:text=Antminer%20S19%20Power%20Consumption%20%E2%80%93%20Energy,Terahash%20at%20the%20same%20temperature.
https://www.alternative-energy-tutorials.com/solar-power/solar-irradiance.html#:~:text=According%20to%20NASA%2C%20the%20average,(that%20is%201.37%20kilowatts).
The idea is interesting. As someone else mentioned, heat dissipation will be a major issue. Mining generates a lot of heat, and with no atmosphere, you can’t rely on convection to provide cooling as you would on Earth. I wonder if the moon might be a viable option—you could use the moon as a giant heatsink. But your rig would only be active 50% of the time unless you also provide batteries to keep it running in darkness.