Brannin McBee (Core Weave) on Greening the Grid, the Texas Meltdown, and Bitcoin Mining (EP.183)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Release Date: 02/22/2021
Weekly Roundup 12/27/24 (Tether x Rumble, quantum threat, End of year predictions) (EP.587)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Matt and Nic are back for an end of year episode. In this episode: Tether invests $775m in Rumble Who are the Rumble shareholders in Trump's admin? Microstrategy seeks approval for more Bitcoin buying We review the quantum risk to Bitcoin Matt and Nic's predictions for 2025 Sponsor notes: Coin Metrics, In Coin Metrics State of the Network Issue 291, we revisit major stories that shaped the digital asset industry in 2024 with a data-driven lens
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Janusz and Red (Bitcoin Layers) on Bitcoin Season 2 (EP.586)
On The Brink with Castle Island
and from join the show. In this episode: Innovation on Bitcoin, previously and now Technology vs consumer adoption The future of BTC use cases More about
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Weekly Roundup 12/20/24 (No SBR?, Prometheum, Crenshaw) (EP.585)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode: Nic comes out against the SBR on Bloomberg More Prometheum nonsense MicroStrategy an additional 15,350 BTC for roughly $1.5 billion, bringing the company's total holdings to 439,000 BTC. Microstrategy was also to the Nasdaq 100 this week, which will lead to the stock's inclusion in several large ETFs including Invesco's QQQ. Anchorage Digital has New York BitLicense approval, enabling them to offer digital asset custody and trading services to more customers in the state such as RIAs and other...
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Alex Lin (Reforge) on On-chain Innovation & Consumer Use Cases (EP.584)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Wyatt sits down with . In this episode: Alex’s interdisciplinary road into crypto Innovation in blockchain infrastructure Crypto-powered consumer applications Learn more about a blockchain and frontier tech investment firm.
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Rodrigo Seira (Cooley) and Ron Hammond (Blockchain Association) on Digital Asset Policy in 2025 (EP.583)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Rodrigo Seira, Special Counsel at and Ron Hammond, Director of Government Relations at join the show. In this episode we discuss: The 2024 election and the impact of the crypto vote. Executive branch actions to keep an eye on in 2025. Potential SEC related actions that would impact the digital asset market. The future of Staff Accounting Bulletin 121. Where digital asset legislation fits into the 2025 legislative priorities. Stablecoin legislation. Market structure legislation. To learn more about Cooley visit: To learn more about The Blockchain Association visit:
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Weekly Roundup 12/13/24 (French Hill, Circle x Binance, more OCP2.0) (EP582)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode: French Hill wins the nomination to chair the House Financial Services Committee Riot Platforms, a bitcoin mining company, the intention to raise $500 million via a convertible note offering. The proceeds will be used to acquire additional bitcoins, and for general corporate purposes. MicroStrategy another 21,550 bitcoin for roughly $2.1 billion. Circle and Binance a partnership with the goal of expanding the reach of Circle's USDC stablecoin across Binance's trading, saving, and payments platforms....
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Matthew Le Merle and Mitch Mechigian (Blockchain Coinvestors) on Predictions for 2025 (EP.581)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Matthew Le Merle and Mitch Mechigian of Blockchain Coinvestors return to the show. In this episode we run through the Blockchain Coinvestors 2025 Predictions for the digital asset industry. To learn more about Blockchain Coinvestors visit their . To view the full Blockchain Coinvestors 2025 Predictions webinar visit this .
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Weekly Roundup 12/06/24 (Bitcoin $100k, Atkins for SEC, more OCP2.0) (EP. 580)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode: Bitcoin finally hits $100k Our reflections on 100k BTC Declaring victory Machinsky pleads guilty Rep French Hill pledges to investigate Operation Choke Point Trump nominates Paul Atkins for SEC Chair Hawk Tuah memecoin fiasco Sponsor notes: Coin Metrics State of the Network: Contextualizing staking yields, inflation, and network economics on Ethereum & Solana
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Lorien Gabel (Figment) on the Latest Developments in the Staking Market (EP.579)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Lorien Gabel, the founder and CEO of joins the show. In this episode we discuss: The latest developments at Figment. Post-election impact on the general crypto markets and the staking category. How Figment is approaching the institutional staking market opportunity. Staking in the context of investment products. Evolving ecosystems like Eigen Layer, Babylon and Bitcoin Layers 2s. The stablecoin market. To learn more about Figment visit
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Weekly Roundup 11/28/24 (OFAC loses vs Tornado, Cantor owns some Tether, More OCP2.0, Who we’re thankful for) (EP.578)
On The Brink with Castle Island
Matt and Nic are back for another Thanksgiving episode of OTB. In this episode: Fire departments love thanksgiving Who we’re thankful for Eggnog is underrated Justin Sun puts $30m into World Liberty Financial Marc Andreessen appears on Joe Rogan and covers OCP 2.0 Why were non crypto tech peopled shocked by Choke Point revelations? Trump is looking to shift power from the SEC to the CFTC An appeals court rules that OFAC exceeded its authority by sanctioning Tornado Cash Cantor owns a 5% ownership stake in Tether that they acquired at a $12b valuation How prudent is the establishment of a...
info_outlineCore Weave chief strategy officer and former energy trader Brannin McBee joins the show to talk about the grid meltdown in Texas and the impact of renewables on the grid. In this episode:
- Brannin's history in energy trading and energy analytics
- How his firm survived a 95% collapse in the price of natural gas – and how that presaged his work in the crypto space
- How Brannin's firm Core Weave alternates between mining ETH and monetizing GPUs through high-performance compute
- How wholesale power trading works – and how it provides valuable informational signals to the grid
- How the US grid is arranged – and how the energy mix has changed in the last decade
- How coal has been marginalized in the last decade through natural gas and renewables
- Why energy is not globally fungible
- Why forecasting wind is so difficult – and how that complicates including wind into the grid
- How renewables trade off reliability against carbon impact
- How increasing the share of wind and solar destabilizing the grid
- Why increasing units of wind requires new units of gas on the grid
- The confluence of causes behind the Texas grid failure last week
- How Core Weave selected their location on the grid – and how they took political risk into account
- How much energy Bitcoin consumes – and where that stands relative to the energy consumption of the US
- How flaring natural gas to mine Bitcoin works – and whether it's economical
- Does Bitcoin work as a load balancer for grids?
- Can you compare Bitcoin's footprint to that of entire countries?