Starcloud to Mine Bitcoin in Space Using ASICs in 2026
Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston announced the company will become the first to mine Bitcoin off Earth using specialized ASIC hardware, citing dramatic cost advantages over traditional GPU-based mining in space.
Key Takeaway
Space mining could reshape Bitcoin's energy economics if ASICs prove 30x more cost-effective than Earth operations.
Starcloud CEO Philip Johnston announced the company will become the first to mine Bitcoin off Earth. The Nvidia-backed orbital data center startup plans to launch its second spacecraft later in 2026 for Bitcoin mining operations, with the announcement made in a Thursday HyperChange interview before being posted to X on March 8.
ASICs are 30 times cheaper to mine Bitcoin on a kilowatt-hour basis than GPUs in space, according to Johnston. A 1-kilowatt B200 chip costs ₱1,775,029 ($30,000) while a 1-kilowatt ASIC costs ₱59,168 ($1,000). Johnston argued that running ASIC miners would be one of the most compelling use cases of space compute.
Bitcoin mining consumes about 20 gigawatts of power continuously, Johnston said. He argued it makes no sense to do this on Earth and predicted that in the end state, all of this will be done in space. Johnston said Bitcoin mining in space will become a massive industry due to economic advantages over Earth-based mining.
Starcloud launched a satellite with an NVIDIA H100 into orbit in November 2025, marking the first time this GPU operated in space. The company was founded in early 2024 and plans to eventually deploy 88,000 satellites comprising its data center constellation. Bitcoin mining difficulty fell 7% to 145 trillion units from its November record of 155.9 trillion units.
This article was written based on reporting from Cointelegraph.
