H4shr8 Crypto Mining Podcast

Welcome back to The Mining Pod! Max Guise, a team member from Block’s Proto division, joins to talk about the company’s new ASIC chip. A veteran of Block, Guise has worked on everything from the Proto mining ASIC, to Square’s point-of-sale, and its hardware wallet Bitkey. During the discussion, Guise gives us a brief history of Proto’s origins, discusses the challenges of designing (and manufacturing and marketing!) a bitcoin mining ASIC, provides a timeline for the Proto ASIC rollout, and even graces us with a demo of the chip! Timestamps: 00:00 Start 03:21 Max bio 03:56 Working at Square & CashApp 04:58 Building the point of sale product 06:20 Building hardware 09:48 Genesis of Proto 12:33 Open development 13:37 The team 14:59 What is Proto 16:59 Selling chips 19:56 Closed sourced firmware 21:38 Lifecycle examination 23:32 Market strategy 24:33 Financing 25:05 Hashrate as payment 26:16 Deployment 28:29 When new rig? 28:59 Ecosystem of products 30:13 Other components 30:58 Working with competing miners Pu