The Blockspace Pod: Hut 8 Eyes 500MW Site, MSCI Keeps MSTR, Florida Revisits a BTC Reserve

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4.7 • 698 Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2026

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For today’s roundup, Hut 8 waits on approval for a 500 MW site in Illinois, MSCI keeps MSTR in indices, and Florida tries again for a strategic bitcoin reserve. Subscribe to the Blockspace newsletter! Welcome back to The Blockspace Podcast! Today, Colin and Charlie give a temperature check on bitcoin mining stats, highlighting stats that show non-monetary transactions currently account for nearly 50% of all Bitcoin transactions. We also dig into Hut 8’s plans for a 500 MW data center in Illinois, the latest hiring spree at Cipher Mining, Riot’s updated compensation plan as they expand into AI, and MSCI’s decision to keep Strategy (MSTR) in its indices. Finally, for this week’s cry corner, Florida’s renewed attempt at a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Subscribe to the newsletter! https://newsletter.blockspacemedia.com Notes: * Runes: 6.1M txs, 42% of volume last month * Hash price: $39/PH/day, fees near zero * Hut 8: 500MW, $4-5B site in Logan County, IL, pending zoning approval * Difficulty: 4 negative adjustments out of last 5 * Riot: Jason Chung in as CFO *Florida makes a second attempt at a strategic bitcoin reserve Timestamps 00:00 Start 02:37 Difficulty Report by Luxor 06:06 Hut 8 new data center 11:15 MSCI decision 13:26 Cipher adds Drew Armstrong, Lee Bratcher 18:07 Riot compensation changes, new CFO 22:33 Cry corner: Are SBRs back? 👉CleanSpark, America's Bitcoin Miner! CleanSpark (Nasdaq: CLSK) is a market-leading data center developer with a proven track record of success. We own a portfolio of power, land, and data centers across the United States powered by globally competitive energy prices. Sitting at the intersection of Bitcoin, energy, operational excellence and capital stewardship, we optimize our infrastructure to deliver superior returns to our shareholders. Monetizing low-cost, high reliability energy by producing a global emerging critical resource – compute – positions us to prosper in an ever-changing world. 👉 FBOX, Cooling for Bitcoin Mining and the AI Data Center Transformation FBOX is the global leader in cooling system manufacturing, with the #1 shipment volume of bitcoin mining containers worldwide. Not only powering for the strongest hashrate, their technology also helps mining infrastructure transform into AI data centers. Backed by the largest production scale on earth, global deployment capability, and a full range of cooling solutions, they are shaping the future of compute. 👉 Luxor, Leaders In Bitcoin Mining and Compute Power! Get game-changing mining results with Luxor Firmware. Boost hashrate, cut energy costs, protect your hardware, and maximize mining profits with LuxOS. Published twice weekly, "The Blockspace Pod" interviews the best builders and operators in the Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining landscape. Subscribe to get notifications when we publish interviews on Tuesday and a news show on Friday!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Bitcoin transactions are where they've been. Transaction fees are nowhere to be seen. You can get a
0:06.3	transaction through right now at one sap per V byte. I haven't mentioned runes or ordnals on this pod in a while,
0:11.2	but I will say this. Even though transactions are down, there were 6.1 million runes transactions
0:17.5	over the past month, which accounted for sit down 42% of all Bitcoin transactions.
0:23.2	Where are you people using Bitcoin? Come on, man. We're at under Sat 1-Sat for B-Bite, and all the
0:29.7	transactions are for a meme coin. Even when it's dead. The ruins and Ordiners ecosystem,
0:34.4	it's accounting for the majority, almost the majority of the transaction
0:37.6	volume, a significant percentage. This is the cost of institutional adoption, right? All of the Bitcoin
0:43.0	trading is moving off-chain onto paper rails. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.
0:49.9	Happy Friday, y'all, and welcome back to the BlockspacePod, brought to you by CleanSpark.
0:54.2	Today's docket is packed with headlines from Bitcoin miners expanding into AI and HPC.
0:59.4	We will lead with a story on Hut 8, looking to build a 500 megawatt data center for anywhere from
1:05.4	$4 to $5 billion in Logan County, Illinois. There are awaiting zoning approval, though, and we should know more about
1:12.3	whether or not they secure that in the coming weeks. Then we follow up with the MSCI news this week of them
1:18.6	deferring on the decision to delist strategy in what could potentially be a tailwind for strategy
1:24.0	and other Bitcoin treasury companies. We move into Cypher mining's new hiring news with bringing on Lee Bratcher and Drew Armstrong.
1:31.4	And for our final story of the day, we talk about riot changing its executive comp packages and also appointing a new CFO.
1:39.2	And for this week's Cry Corner, we touch on Florida's new strategic Bitcoin reserve bill and whether or not
1:44.6	round two will be more successful than round one. You're listening to the Blockspace pod.
1:49.0	Howdy y'all, Charlie here. Watch our new documentary, The Bitcoin Professor, featuring
1:53.6	Starkberg co-founder Ellie Bin Sasson as he and I hit the road to meet with real Bitcoiners
1:59.2	in the American heartland. We visit a Bitcoin mine,
	...

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