Elite Mining's Justin Podhola on Mobile Immersion Mining Trailers

Justin Podhola's company does not put its Bitcoin miners in shipping containers. It puts them in enclosed cargo trailers, the kind construction crews tow behind a truck. Podhola, chief executive of Elite Mining, explained why at Mining Disrupt Miami 2021, recorded July 20 and 21, 2021. Bitcoin was about $32,125 on the first day of that event. Today it is $80,885.

The idea started with a lesson from eastern Washington. In 2016 and 2017, Podhola met with the state's public utility districts about power for mining, and found that support could not be taken for granted. In his words, "not everyone agreed with mining." What mattered most, he told the Miami audience, was being able to run without the risk of being shut down.

So he and a core team of three chose a mobile design built around single-phase immersion cooling. He said it took two and a half years, much of it underfunded and in stealth mode, with repeated failures before the design worked. By the time of the talk the company had 50 team members and a research subsidiary, EMU, working on immersion every day. The team built its own cooling systems instead of buying dry coolers.

The trailers, he said, do not need a driver with a commercial license to move them, and they need no foundation and no pad. That matters to him for emissions as well as cost. As he put it, "concrete is one of the worst offenders of carbon emissions." He also described the units as geothermal in nature, drawing on ground temperatures of roughly 55 to 60 degrees.

The business case is about power contracts. Podhola said five to ten years is about the industry average for a power purchase agreement. When one runs out, or a better offer appears elsewhere, a mobile operator can take its immersion units to the next site instead of paying to move a whole facility.

He closed with three announcements. Elite Mining had partnered with Minerset, with a discount for buyers who go through minerset.com. The headquarters was moving from Washington to Wyoming, for what he called a better political climate. And the company was offering hosting at an all-in cost of 3.97, which he called the best in North America. He also said plainly that the company could not yet build at large scale, and that it was expanding.

Those details are as he gave them in July 2021, and the efficiency claims are the company's own. The full story is on Mining Disrupt at miningdisrupt dot com, and many more like it play around the clock on Bitcoin Radio.