Mohammed (Mo) Bakhashwain, founder, president, and CEO of Bitzero, joins Remy Blaire to discuss how Bitcoin mining is evolving after the halving, including Bitzero’s focus on low-cost power, sustainability, and expansion into AI infrastructure.
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Remy: After the 2024 halving, Bitcoin mining has cooled off. Last year, we saw a number of North American Bitcoin miners transitioned to AI infrastructure data centers because of smaller mining rewards. Well, despite the AI race and brutal price action, Bitcoin mining is here to stay. And globally, mining picked up in China last year despite a government ban and in various parts of the world that Bitzero is working to make bitcoin mining sustainable. But like other miners, it's also exploring AI and recently announced the purchase of Nvidia chips. Joining us this morning to weigh in is Mohammed Bakhashwain, founder, president and CEO of Bitzero. Mo, Good morning. Thank you so much for joining me. Well, it has been quite the week in the markets, not just in crypto but across all asset classes. So first and foremost tell us why Bitzero is strategically positioned irrespective of market sentiment or crypto or AI.
Mo: Thanks Remi. It's been a turbulent and exciting few days in the market for sure. Bitzero is positioned in a way with its assets because of its low energy cost, execution cost, and its resilience to the market. It differentiates from other miners in terms of cost of mining a Bitcoin, in terms of operational costs, and other factors that allow us to be resilient in turbulent markets. Markets like these are actually healthy. They would, you know, flush out non-sustainable, non-efficient operators. And that a result of that would be that we would mind more Bitcoin, difficulty will decrease, therefore the more efficient more sustainable miners would be profitable as a result of that. More profitable I would say as a result of that. And when it comes to our assets, our main asset is power. And we look to leverage that power that we have in our sites in different manners. As you just mentioned, we've just engaged and acquired some GB300 chips from Nvidia, and we've struck some partnerships in the AI space to leverage our assets in multi-avenues.
Remy: Yeah. And speaking of which, artificial intelligence has been a huge focus this week. So speaking of partnerships, tell us what the partnerships with Hydra as well as CBRE actually bring to the table when it comes to Bitzero.
Mo: So those represent basically Bitzero entering into both verticals. On the AI side, we are looking to deploy our own GPUs, provide our own workloads, and we do that in partnership with Hydra, which would place the compute power. They're one of the largest Nio cloud aggregators. And with CBRE, that allows us to leverage our big loads that are upcoming in the in the coming years to hyperscale tenants to give investors the best of all the all the margins in the AI space, whether it be through our own workloads, which is the higher margin segment of that industry, or the more secure long term investment grade revenues through co-location, and that we are looking to achieve in partnership with CBRE, who had a lot of success securing those long term contracts for other clients. So we're very bullish on both partnerships. And it will allow Bitzero to provide the best of all with its assets, whether it be Bitcoin mining, rolling out our own GPU capacity or securing long term investment grade revenues for investors. So an investor will not have to look anywhere for the upside of all three. And that's where Bitzero is going with its assets. And it's not it's not a pivot. Our assets can provide for all three industries, and they're all placed in cold climates. Sustainable energy between Finland and Norway alone, we have around the gigawatt of growth capacity. And that is ample power to provide for all three avenues that we are looking to deliver value from. And on the Bitcoin mining side. Having this turbulent market will just also allow us to get more for our dollars invested, because those mining equipment, miners, they price on a return on cash on Bitcoin and Bitzero strategy is to not acquire any mining equipment if it does not hit a minimum return on cash invested at the time it's invested. we're also agnostic to Bitcoin price from an investment standpoint when we're acquiring hashrate or mining equipment.
Remy: Yeah. And Mo, before I let you go we have about 60s here. So what it comes to the state of mining, Bitcoin mining in particular in 2026, what is the outlook?
Mo: Well, like I just mentioned, for us it's more of a return on cash business. So if Bitcoin is down, that means that we are buying miners at a lower price with the same return on cash. And once the market turns around, which inevitably will, that means that we will have a much higher return on cash, on money invested today in lower markets. That's just from Bitzero's point of view, and it works because of our low energy price, our sites and our efficient operational costs. All of these allow us to remain resilient while, you know, other miners would have issues in terms of energy price or curtailments that will impact them if prices are this turbulent.
Remy: Well, Mo we will have to leave it there. But thank you so much for joining us. And as always, thank you so much for sharing your insights and your perspective.