Show Notes
🔗 Brad Cuddy:
Website: https://chollainc.com/energy
X (Twitter): https://x.com/_BradCuddy_
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradleycuddy/
In this episode of HashrateUp, Jesse sits down with Brad Cuddy, Director of Energy Operations at Cholla Inc., to unpack the "ASIC retirement home" strategy: buying S19 J Pros for $30 a unit and making them profitable on ultra-cheap Texas power.
Brad explains how Cholla, a three-generation oil & gas exploration company, turned its mining arm into an R&D lab for the wider industry: flexible-load curtailment in ERCOT's energy-only market, early bets on hydro and immersion cooling, and breaking even by mining only when power is cheap. The conversation then widens into the structural shift reshaping mining: pubcos liquidating fleets, megawatts and ASICs being lost to the AI pivot, and what that means for US hashrate.
Whether you run flexible load, hunt for low-cost ASICs, or want to understand where Bitcoin mining goes as AI swallows power capacity, this one is packed with ground-level insight from someone operating at the source.
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Intro & the $30 ASIC tweet
1:30 What Cholla Inc. actually does
5:00 Flexible load: mining only when power is cheap
8:30 Why Bitcoin is the most unique commodity business
12:00 Demand-response software stack (Load, Foreman, Luxor)
15:30 Curtailment strike prices & response times
18:30 Whatsminer vs custom firmware for flexible load
22:00 The $30 S19 J Pro retirement home strategy
26:00 Scrap value as the new price floor
29:00 Pubcos, AI pivot & where lost hashrate goes
33:00 Securing megawatts in B/C-tier jurisdictions
36:00 Oil exploration, Waha pricing & powered-land development
40:00 Rapid fire: best units, hydro vs air, efficiency jumps
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