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.

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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.

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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?

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