On the Mining Disrupt News Update for Friday, August 25, 2023, the host read the network off timechaincalendar.com: blocks arriving every 8 minutes and 50 seconds, 162 blocks in the previous 24 hours, and a price that had slipped. "The blocks are screaming in right now," he said. The price was falling and difficulty was rising, yet the machines were not slowing down.
The episode, dated by its upload, covered three stories: bullish news from the mining sector, a startup turning landfill gas into Bitcoin, and the reasons behind the recent price slump. The host read the price on screen as $26,351. Priority fees were 16 sats per vbyte, with 10 sats per vbyte for transactions that could wait.
Miners Ignore the Dip as Difficulty Hits a New Peak
The rolling hashrate average was 402 exahash per second over 14 days, and the single-day figure was 445, which the host said explained the fast blocks. He read a Cointelegraph headline: Bitcoin difficulty jumped 6% to a new peak as miners ignored the price dip. The story put the adjustment on August 22 at 6.17%, even though the price had dropped 10% the week before.
A rising price and falling difficulty might be expected to pull miners back, he said, but that was not what happened. His reading was that the economy runs on a delay no one fully sees, with too many moving parts for any single fund or group to track.
It just goes to show that there is always a lag in the system.
Mining Disrupt News Update Host · 2:41
Against all that uncertainty, he pointed to the one signal anyone could check: miners kept adding power. "People are still believing 100% fully in the Bitcoin network," he said, and miners were "churning out over 400 exahash, pumping power into the Bitcoin network on a daily basis."
Landfill Gas as a Power Source
The second story came from Decrypt: Nodal Power, a Bitcoin mining startup, had raised $13 million to turn trash into Bitcoin. According to Decrypt, the company's co-founder and COO, Matthew Jones, described mining as a secondary tool, used when selling power to the grid did not pay. Nodal Power ran two mining data centers in the U.S. and planned a third in early 2024; the first and largest, in the southwest, mainly exported electricity to the local utility.
The host then read a post by Daniel Batten, who wrote that landfills are a climate hazard and that power generation is the best use for their gas in most cases, but that 75% of landfills cannot sell to the grid and so must use that power on site. The host suggested miners were the obvious on-site user.
They could show up with their trucks of miners on a cargo cart, unload, set up shop
Mining Disrupt News Update Host · 5:31
He said he did not know the exact process, but with a power source and containerized miners ready to go, he guessed a week of setup at most.
Five Theories for the Sell-Off
The last story was the price drop. The host walked through a post by Jesse Myers on his Substack, Once in a Species, which listed five possible reasons for the sharp sell-off. The first was that it was natural: for two months the price had been stuck between 29K and 31K, long enough for leveraged bets to pile up in both directions. The second was opportunistic liquidation hunting by large market participants. The third was that Bitcoin was the last functioning fire alarm in global markets, which he left aside as more complex. The fourth was big players selling to buy GBTC, which he doubted.
I'm going to skip on to what I think is the most likely reason.
Mining Disrupt News Update Host · 7:29
The fifth was Binance, trying not to collapse like FTX or Terra Luna. Myers framed it as a possible repeat of the FTX implosion, with Binance in FTX's place. The host said he thought all five, and perhaps 20 smaller factors, played a part, but that Binance was a large one. Citing Joe Consorti, he said Binance owned a lot of Bitcoin and was selling it, its own and in all likelihood customers' as well, to stave off failure, which would push the price down. He said the clock seemed to be ticking for Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, and Binance.
He said he did not want ordinary users hurt, even as he wanted the process to run its course.
I want the free market to succeed.
Mining Disrupt News Update Host · 9:11
"And I do want the bad actors to be removed from the system," he added. His hope was that people would be burned minimally or not at all, ideally by having their coins off the exchange already. Binance did not collapse; later in 2023 it settled with U.S. authorities and Zhao stepped down as chief executive.
Bring It Home: The Self-Custody Close
Getting coins off an exchange, the host said, is the number one thing to do after buying Bitcoin. Most people will buy through an exchange, but they do not need to keep their coins there. He compared it to paying for groceries and leaving them at the store.
It's like buying food at a grocery store and then just hoping that they have it when you want to come back and get it.
Mining Disrupt News Update Host · 9:41
"There's no reason for the grocery store to hang on to your food once you've paid for it," he said. He closed the episode with the line he kept repeating: bring your corn home.
For a newcomer, the idea behind the close is self-custody. Coins held on an exchange are controlled by the exchange's keys; if the exchange fails or sells what it holds, customers stand in line with everyone else. Moving coins to a wallet whose keys you hold removes that exchange risk, which is the step the host urged before any collapse rather than after.
The conversation continues at Mining Disrupt 2027, March 22 to 24 in Irving, Texas. When this episode was recorded, Bitcoin traded at $26,085; on October 25, 2026 it was $80,064.