Data center space company Starcloud could start mining Bitcoin from space using its new satellite, the Starcloud-2, as per an X post by CEO Philip Johnston on Saturday.
The update comes as multiple firms move away from Bitcoin mining instead of towards it, as companies now find the data center rush more lucrative, especially after the price of Bitcoin tumbled from its ATH price of roughly $125,000 in October last year, a sign that Starcloud’s announcement is clearly bucking the trend.
Notable instances of firms moving away from Bitcoin mining towards powering data centers include TeraWulf and MARA holdings, both either repurposing existing facilities or investing in new startups.
In an interview, CEO Philip Johnston said the average cost per kilowatt or unit of energy is much higher for data center-based GPUs than ASIC gear, which is used to power Bitcoin mining. Towards the end, he also spoke about how it costs less on average to break even on Bitcoin mining than in data center investments.
What is Starcloud?
Founded in 2024 as a space-focused data center company and based in Redmond, Washington, Starcloud is working towards launching data centers in space, predicting that the cost to launch and maintain them would be much lower than on Earth, due to the access to vast amounts of renewable, low-cost energy. Philip Johnston said last year that energy costs to launch these data centers will be 10x cheaper.
It is backed by tech company NVIDIA, which is heavily investing in data center-ready chips and other infrastructure, earning the majority of its revenues from this segment since 2022. NVIDIA supplies Starcloud with its GPUs for its satellites, saying it would integrate the H100 chip into its satellite Starcloud-1 last year.