Are Bitcoin L2s and Ordinals Driving Fee Demand?

In a packed week for bitcoin mining news, MARA has dismissed its CTO, BlackRock cooks up a $40 billion data center firm acquisition, and Bitdeer unveils its $2 billion AI ambitions.

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Welcome back to The Mining Pod! This week, Luxor CEO Nick Hansen joins us to talk multi-month hashprice lows (how low do we go?), MARA firing its CTO, Ionic Digital’s Microsoft-linked AI deal, Bitdeer’s gangbusters September and $2B AI plans, and BlackRock taking the lead on a $40B data center company acquisition. Plus, the US government seizes $14.1B (potentially $16.5B total) in bitcoin from an international scam operation.

**Notes:**

• Hash price dropped below $50/PH/day at $47

• Difficulty adjustment down 2.5% after months of increases

• Bitcoin price fell from $125K to $108K post-tariff news

• Marathon quietly cans CTO 

• Bitdeer mined 452 BTC in Sept, up 20.5% month-over-month

• Bitdeer projects $2B annual revenue from AI starting in 2026

• BlackRock leads $40B Aligned Data Centers acquisition

• US seized $14.1B+ Bitcoin from crime syndicate

• PJM needs 43GW battery storage by 2045

• Ionic Digital secured 240MW Microsoft lease, expandable to 1.2GW

Timestamps:

00:00:00:00 Start

00:01:51:00 Difficulty Report by Luxor

00:11:28:10 MARA CTO fired

00:15:40:17 Ionic Digital gets into the AI action

00:18:16:13 PJM needs 43 GW of battery by 2045

00:23:22:16 Bitdeer’s big September

00:27:56:23 BlackRock & Nvidia deal

00:35:03:28 Cry Corner: Uncle Sam gets that bag

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