THE MINING POD: The Impact of Trump’s Tariffs on BTC Miners and the Evolution of Mining Containers w/ Scot Johnson
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Scot Johnson joins us at Consensus 2025 to discuss how miners are adapting to Trump’s tariffs and forthcoming innovations in the bitcoin mining container landscape.
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Welcome back to The Mining Pod! Today, Scot Johnson from Digital Shovel joins us from Toronto during Consensus 2025. Digital Shovel manufactures Bitcoin mining containers and electrical infrastructure in Canada. He discusses the impact of Trump's 10% tariffs on bitcoin mining infrastructure, Digital Shovel’s plans to open US assembly operations, the company’s upcoming gen 3 container design, and their new Blue Ax home miner.
# Notes:
- Digital Shovel makes vertically integrated mining containers
- 10% tariff from US to Canada affecting business
- Electrical infrastructure was majority of 2023 sales
- Blue Ax home miner launching at $99
- 7.2 TH/s pro version coming July 1st
- Newfoundland has 1.9¢/kWh Canadian power
Timestamps:
00:00 Start
02:14 What is Digital Shovel?
02:42 General compute infrastructure
03:52 Competing with bigger manufacturers
05:23 AI hardware
06:12 Made in North America
07:51 Adapting to tariffs
08:46 Modular vs permanent buildings
09:50 Example of AI & minings build
12:42 Who's buying?
14:36 Texas market
16:10 New Canadian government
17:28 Tariffs are taxes on business
19:38 Container design changes
21:12 Air vs liquid cooling
21:31 New chip cooling designs
23:33 BluAX
27:27 Canadian facts
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Transcript
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| 0:55.8 | For now, let's get right into it. |
| 1:02.9 | Hey, welcome back to the mining pod. We are live in downtown Toronto, which is kind of fun for consensus 2025. We get the digital shovel team with us. Scott, welcome to the show. |
| 1:08.8 | Pleasure to be here. It's super fun to see you, I. I know. Like, I'm in your territory. Like, literally, |
| 1:14.4 | you guys are based in Toronto. And then you guys booked out this spot downtown, which looks |
| 1:20.2 | sick, actually bringing Bitcoin mining to people front and center in the cities. So, like, |
| 1:24.9 | what started this? What kicked off this idea to bring Bitcoin mining to downtown |
| 1:28.6 | Toronto? I mean, we're in our backyard. I mean, we always bring a lot of equipment to shows |
| 1:32.8 | when we do exhibits. But at Toronto Blockchain Week, there's going to be a lot of events and a lot of |
| 1:38.4 | people, but trying to filter out the miners and not just have a bunch of traffic was important |
| 1:42.3 | for us. So doing a side event allowed us to promote that and ensure that the people that |
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