THE MINING POD: Block’s Proto ASIC With Max Guise
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 30 December 2024
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For today’s show, we speak with Max Guise about Block’s ASIC miner, and we even get a sneak peak of the new miner!
Welcome back to The Mining Pod! Max Guise, a team member from Block’s Proto division, joins to talk about the company’s new ASIC chip. A veteran of Block, Guise has worked on everything from the Proto mining ASIC, to Square’s point-of-sale, and its hardware wallet Bitkey. During the discussion, Guise gives us a brief history of Proto’s origins, discusses the challenges of designing (and manufacturing and marketing!) a bitcoin mining ASIC, provides a timeline for the Proto ASIC rollout, and even graces us with a demo of the chip!
Timestamps:
00:00 Start
03:21 Max bio
03:56 Working at Square & CashApp
04:58 Building the point of sale product
06:20 Building hardware
09:48 Genesis of Proto
12:33 Open development
13:37 The team
14:59 What is Proto
16:59 Selling chips
19:56 Closed sourced firmware
21:38 Lifecycle examination
23:32 Market strategy
24:33 Financing
25:05 Hashrate as payment
26:16 Deployment
28:29 When new rig?
28:59 Ecosystem of products
30:13 Other components
30:58 Working with competing miners
Published twice weekly, "The Mining 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!
👉Enjoying the show? Check out our newsletter at miningpod.blockspace.media!
👉 Check out Bitcoin Season 2 and The Gwart Show!
Follow our hosts on Twitter: @wsfoxley, @cbspears, @AsILayHodling, @MatthewKimmell
-
Thank you to our sponsor, CleanSpark, America’s Bitcoin miner!
"The Mining Pod" is produced by Sunnyside Honey Inc. with Senior Producer Damien Somerset.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Audible brings your wildest adventures to life, delivering heart-pounding thrills at the touch |
| 0:05.8 | of a button. |
| 0:07.0 | Take Richard Osmond's The Thursday Murder Club, where four retirees turned amateur sleuths |
| 0:11.8 | solve crimes in the most unexpected ways, brilliantly performed by Leslie Manville. |
| 0:17.1 | Ready to unleash your adventure aside, from pulse racing suspense to epic quests, from supernatural |
| 0:22.6 | chills to far-off romances, every story comes alive through world-class narration. |
| 0:28.5 | Explore exclusive audible originals, chart-topping new releases, and unforgettable bestsellers |
| 0:34.4 | that transport you from the very first word, because the next great |
| 0:38.2 | adventure is just a listener way. Start your free 30-day trial at audible.com slash |
| 0:43.9 | Wondery, UK. That's audible.com slash Wondery UK. |
| 0:49.8 | Hey, welcome back to the Mining Pod. On today's show, we are joined by Max guys of the Proto team. |
| 0:55.4 | This is a division of Block focusing on their new Proto ASIC. Max has been a long time Bitcoiner |
| 1:02.6 | over at Block. He's worked on Cash App. He's worked on BitKee. He's focused on the Proto ASIC. |
| 1:07.5 | Thank you to Max for joining the show. In this show, we talk about their new ESIC chip. We actually |
| 1:11.8 | got a sneak peek of it for the first time ever outside the laboratory, which was awesome. |
| 1:16.6 | We also talked about the different form factors that they're expecting to roll out based on this chip |
| 1:22.1 | and their aspirations for bringing a new ASIC to market in 2025. Thank you again to the proto team for making this happen. |
| 1:29.4 | And a quick shout out to our sponsors, |
| 1:31.2 | which you'll hear from in just a moment before we get into the conversation. |
| 1:35.1 | Are you retail or institutional investor interested in Bitcoin mining companies? |
| 1:38.6 | The Miner Mag brings you free data and analysis from all major NASDAQ listed Bitcoin mining operations |
| 1:43.4 | to know who stands out. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from CoinDesk, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of CoinDesk and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.