Kevin Zhang opened the 8 a.m. slot at Mining Disrupt Miami 2021, recorded on July 20–21, 2021, with a joke about the turnout and a pitch for the industry's collaborative streak. Zhang, Head of Mining at Foundry Digital, one of the event's lead sponsors, used the session to explain how the company was formed, what it had built in its first year and a half, and where it saw mining going after China's crackdown. Bitcoin traded at $32,125 when the session was recorded; today it is $83,079.
He started with the parent company. Digital Currency Group, he said, had built positions in digital asset management through Grayscale, in financial services through Genesis and in news and media through CoinDesk, and had invested in more than 180 portfolio companies. The piece it was missing was infrastructure. Foundry was formed at the end of 2019 to fill that gap, with a proof-of-work business at its core and a separate unit, Foundry Labs, for proof of stake. The company is based in Rochester, New York.
Financing the Machines
Zhang's account of 2020 began with a common claim about the industry: that Bitcoin mining was concentrated in China at every step, from ASIC design and manufacturing to deployment and the pools miners point their hashrate at. At the start of 2020, with the coronavirus hitting traditional and crypto markets, Foundry used its balance sheet to bring ASICs into North America and offer equipment financing on them.
this isn't about anti-china it's about anti-centralization right a more decentralized network is a more secure one
Kevin Zhang · 3:45
He said Foundry worked closely with MicroBT and Bitmain and helped them address U.S.–China trade war tariffs by growing their volume at overseas plants in Malaysia and Thailand. By the end of 2020, by his count, Foundry had financed nearly 50 percent of the latest generation of equipment coming from both manufacturers, the S19s and M30s.
Zhang described the alternative the company turned down. The easy move at the start of 2020, he said, would have been to keep the machines for its own mining at one or two large sites. That would not have moved the industry forward much. Instead, Foundry had worked with 23 hosting sites and 17 providers by the time of the talk. Many facilities at the start of 2020 were running old, depreciating or unprofitable equipment, and some had empty shelves. As mining economics improved over the following year and a half, Foundry offered the machines it was hosting for financing, to help those sites improve their economics and bring in new customers.
Advisory Work for New Entrants
The third service was Foundry Advisory Services. Zhang expected the next wave of entrants to include sovereign wealth funds, nation states and large energy companies, whose access to cheap electricity and scale gives them an edge. He called the mining business opaque, with language and cultural barriers and some bad actors. If a deal sounds too good to be true, he said, it usually is. The advisory unit was meant to help newcomers avoid those pitfalls using Foundry's track record and network.
Foundry USA Pool and FPPS Payouts
The pool layer was the last piece. Zhang said more than 90 percent of the network's hashrate had been pointed at Chinese pools. Foundry launched Foundry USA Pool at the start of 2021, aimed at institutions that want a pool that is secure, reliable and transparent, and that pays out through FPPS.
the fpps payouts allows for miners on our pool to have steady reliable expected btc rewards
Kevin Zhang · 7:48
Under FPPS, he explained, miners receive expected BTC rewards for their hashrate whether or not the pool is lucky. He tied that to the industry's maturity: flattening expected income is part of what institutional miners need.
He gave a second reason for running a pool: data. Zhang said the pool's numbers back up research showing that Bitcoin mining uses less than 0.1 percent of the world's electricity, and that its energy mix is renewable, stranded or otherwise wasted energy. Foundry intended to put that data behind the initiatives answering claims that mining is bad for the environment.
After the China Crackdown
By the time of the talk, the centralization argument Foundry had set out to fight was, in Zhang's words, largely solving itself. In the two months before the session, China's crackdown had shut off more than 90 percent of the Chinese hashrate and hosting capacity that had been online. The bottleneck, he said, had moved from ASIC procurement and supply chain to finding open hosting capacity, which cannot be built overnight. Foundry's role was to point Chinese colleagues toward proven operators that had built and delivered on time.
He expected a new version of the argument: that mining would now be centralized in North America. Zhang said that would be easy to refute. In China, rules are usually set nationally and pushed down to the provinces; in the United States and Canada, much more is handled at the state, provincial or county level, and states such as Kentucky, Wyoming and Texas are supportive of mining.
He closed on regions that had been passed over because air-cooled miners do not suit hot or humid climates: South America, Africa, Southeast Asia and Australia. With 50 percent of the network shut off in recent months, he said, those regions deserve a second look, since they have plentiful electricity and supportive, reliable governments. Immersion cooling has been around for some time, but capex has been the barrier. Zhang said Foundry was keen to work with manufacturers and vendors on immersion technology, which he expected the demand for hosting capacity to unlock.
The talk ended with an invitation to Foundry's booth near the entrance and a note that the company was hiring. Bitcoin was at $32,125 when Zhang spoke in July 2021 and is at $83,079 today. Mining Disrupt returns March 22–24, 2027.