Starcloud's Spacebound Bitcoin Mining Venture Hits Reality Check
Starcloud, a company that aims to establish data centers in space, has received nearly half a billion dollars in funding and boasts an over $2 billion valuation. However, its latest venture may be its most ambitious yet: mining Bitcoin in space.
The idea seems counterintuitive, as the cheapest energy for running miners is one of the key aspects of Bitcoin mining. Running ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits) in space would become more expensive due to launch costs, radiating heat, inability to change to alternative forms of energy, and maintenance costs in orbit.
Starcloud's entire business model has been questioned by experts, including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and YouTuber Real Engineering. They argue that it would take tens of thousands of launches to create gigawatts worth of processing power in space, requiring a massive solar array and radiator cluster.
The company has already sent an Nvidia H100 GPU into space but is unable to run it at full power due to overheating issues. Other obstacles facing Starcloud include the high cost of replacement parts and maintenance 500 kilometers away from Earth, as well as GPUs being bombarded by more radiation in orbit than on Earth.