James McGinniss (David Energy) on Mining as a Load Resource (EP.262)

We sit down with James McGinniss, CEO and Cofounder of David Energy to talk about Bitcoin’s role in the energy transition and how Bitcoin mining is a useful source of flexible load for increasingly renewable grids. In this episode: 

  • The fundamental change happening in the US grid today
  • What distributed energy resources are and why they are important
  • Why DERs are catching on in California
  • Why bitcoin allows load to move to supply
  • Why better metering improves the prospects for demand response
  • How demand response works nationwide
  • Why there’s a fundamental tradeoff between uptime and power prices
  • Why Bitcoin is the best demand response resource
  • The prospects for other location agnostic load resources
  • Do better batteries obsolete Bitcoin mining as a grid balancer?
  • How David Energy is working with Bitcoin miners
  • Why Bitcoin miners should trade mining uptime for cheaper power
  • Are grid operators designing programs for bitcoin miners?
  • Why there’s a longer tail of energy assets that miners should take advantage of

Sponsor notes: 

  • This episode supported by Public.com. Start investing with as little as $1 and get a free slice of stock up to $50 when you join Public.com today. Visit public.com/onthebrink to download the app and sign up.
  • This episode is brought to you by Withum, a top 25 accounting firm with a cutting-edge Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology practice. To learn more, visit  withum.com/crypto.

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