According to various reports, SpaceX, Elon Musk's space exploration technology company, is expected to soon submit its IPO prospectus to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), aiming for a valuation of $1.75 trillion and hoping to raise over $75 billion. If realized, this will be the largest IPO in history, far surpassing Saudi Aramco's record of $29.4 billion set in 2019, and it will also be the most anticipated IPO of the year.
Interestingly, in February 2026, SpaceX suddenly acquired xAI, another AI company under Musk's umbrella, and incorporated "orbital data centers" into its main strategy: using the vacuum of space for heat dissipation and continuous solar energy to send AI computational power to low Earth orbit. Musk believes that, in the long run, space-based AI is the only way to achieve large-scale development.
At the same time, Nvidia is also actively investing in this direction. It invested in Starcloud, an orbital data center startup, which successfully sent an Nvidia H100 GPU into orbit in November 2025, completing the first training and inference of a large AI model in space.
According to various reports, SpaceX, Elon Musk's space exploration technology company, is expected to soon submit its IPO prospectus to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), aiming for a valuation of $1.75 trillion and hoping to raise over $75 billion. If realized, this will be the largest IPO in history, far surpassing Saudi Aramco's record of $29.4 billion set in 2019, and it will also be the most anticipated IPO of the year.
Interestingly, in February 2026, SpaceX suddenly acquired xAI, another AI company under Musk's umbrella, and incorporated "orbital data centers" into its main strategy: using the vacuum of space for heat dissipation and continuous solar energy to send AI computational power to low Earth orbit. Musk believes that, in the long run, space-based AI is the only way to achieve large-scale development.
At the same time, Nvidia is also actively investing in this direction. It invested in Starcloud, an orbital data center startup, which successfully sent an Nvidia H100 GPU into orbit in November 2025, completing the first training and inference of a large AI model in space.
According to various reports, SpaceX, Elon Musk's space exploration technology company, is expected to soon submit its IPO prospectus to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), aiming for a valuation of $1.75 trillion and hoping to raise over $75 billion. If realized, this will be the largest IPO in history, far surpassing Saudi Aramco's record of $29.4 billion set in 2019, and it will also be the most anticipated IPO of the year.
Interestingly, in February 2026, SpaceX suddenly acquired xAI, another AI company under Musk's umbrella, and incorporated "orbital data centers" into its main strategy: using the vacuum of space for heat dissipation and continuous solar energy to send AI computational power to low Earth orbit. Musk believes that, in the long run, space-based AI is the only way to achieve large-scale development.
At the same time, Nvidia is also actively investing in this direction. It invested in Starcloud, an orbital data center startup, which successfully sent an Nvidia H100 GPU into orbit in November 2025, completing the first training and inference of a large AI model in space.
With SpaceX sending AI computational power into space, many people began to wonder if Bitcoin mining, which also relies on computing chips and can use solar energy, could also be transferred to space. However, this question is actually much more complex than it seems.
A satellite, a solar panel, and a mining machine.
Mining is a competitive mathematical computational process. Millions of mining machines operate simultaneously around the world, competing to be the fastest to solve a given hash value. The successful miner receives the Bitcoin reward for the current block. This process is called Proof of Work and has a cost: a huge consumption of electricity. The continuous energy consumption of the global Bitcoin network is approximately 20 gigawatts, equivalent to the total industrial electricity consumption of a medium-sized country. Miners' profit margins are largely determined by electricity prices; when electricity prices rise, profit margins decrease.
Infinite sunlight in space corresponds precisely to the most crucial cost variable in Bitcoin mining: electricity.
In Earth's orbit, the intensity of solar radiation is approximately 1380 watts per square meter, six times the average level at ground level, and is unaffected by clouds, day/night cycles, or seasons. In a specific geosynchronous orbit between the sun and Earth, a satellite can receive sunlight and generate electricity practically 24 hours a day. The underlying logic of space mining is to couple mining platforms to the back of solar panels, send them into orbit, and let them mine indefinitely.
In December 2024, Peter Todd, a Bitcoin Core developer, published a technical analysis that transformed the concept idea into an engineering project. He proposed the concept of a "flat panel miner": ASIC chips are mounted directly on the back of a solar panel, facing the sun to generate electricity, while the chips on the back consume electricity for mining, and the structure as a whole radiates the residual heat in both directions.
Heat dissipation in space is a counterintuitive challenge. On Earth, the heat from chips can be dissipated by air convection; however, in the vacuum of space, without air, heat can only be dissipated by radiation. Todd's calculations show that, without additional cooling devices, the thermal equilibrium temperature of this structure in orbit is approximately 59 °C, well within the normal operating range of the chip. If the temperature is deemed too high, simply tilting the entire panel slightly in relation to the sun can reduce the area exposed to sunlight, which can further improve heat dissipation.
Communication is surprisingly simple. Communication between miners and mining pools essentially involves receiving new block headers and sending computing results, generating about 10 MB of data per day — less than the data consumed by streaming a song. The communication latency in low Earth orbit (500 to 1000 kilometers above Earth) varies between 4 and 30 milliseconds, resulting in a less than 0.01% probability of invalid blocks (i.e., sending outdated computing results), comparable to that of most terrestrial miners, with no substantial difference. In fact, Blockstream began broadcasting the complete Bitcoin blockchain globally via geostationary satellites as early as 2017, proving that the combination of satellites and blockchain has never been a problem without a solution.
So, if it is physically viable and the engineering structure is also viable, why hasn't it become common practice? The reason is that rocket transportation is very expensive.
An economic calculation that cannot be made.
Sending cargo to low Earth orbit using SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket currently costs about $2,720 per kilogram.
Peter Todd estimates that a complete space mining system of 20 kilowatts, including solar panels, thermal radiators, ASIC chip sets, structural supports, and communication modules, weighs approximately between 1,600 and 2,200 kilograms. At current prices, a single launch would cost between $4.3 million and $6 million.
How much processing capacity can this system generate daily and how many coins can it mine? Researcher Nick Moran answered: approximately $92.70 per day, equivalent to about $34,000 per year. The payback period exceeds 100 years.
Philip Johnston, CEO of Starcloud, calculated that launch costs need to be reduced to less than $200 per kilogram for space mining to have basic commercial viability. This means that costs need to be reduced by a further 13 times.
The SpaceX Starship is widely considered essential to achieving this leap. A fully reusable Starship could, theoretically, reduce the launch cost per kilogram to less than $100, or even less, which is one of the underlying premises for establishing SpaceX's space data center in its vision for the IPO. However, when and if this cost curve will materialize remains an unknown.
Heat dissipation in space is a counterintuitive challenge. On Earth, the heat from chips can be dissipated by air convection; however, in the vacuum of space, without air, heat can only be dissipated by radiation. Todd's calculations show that, without additional cooling devices, the thermal equilibrium temperature of this structure in orbit is approximately 59 °C, well within the normal operating range of the chip. If the temperature is deemed too high, simply tilting the entire panel slightly in relation to the sun can reduce the area exposed to sunlight, which can further improve heat dissipation.
Communication is surprisingly simple. Communication between miners and mining pools essentially involves receiving new block headers and sending computing results, generating about 10 MB of data per day — less than the data consumed by streaming a song. The communication latency in low Earth orbit (500 to 1000 kilometers above Earth) varies between 4 and 30 milliseconds, resulting in a less than 0.01% probability of invalid blocks (i.e., sending outdated computing results), comparable to that of most terrestrial miners, with no substantial difference. In fact, Blockstream began broadcasting the complete Bitcoin blockchain globally via geostationary satellites as early as 2017, proving that the combination of satellites and blockchain has never been a problem without a solution.
So, if it is physically viable and the engineering structure is also viable, why hasn't it become common practice? The reason is that rocket transportation is very expensive.
An economic calculation that cannot be made.
Sending cargo to low Earth orbit using SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket currently costs about $2,720 per kilogram.
Peter Todd estimates that a complete space mining system of 20 kilowatts, including solar panels, thermal radiators, ASIC chip sets, structural supports, and communication modules, weighs approximately between 1,600 and 2,200 kilograms. At current prices, a single launch would cost between $4.3 million and $6 million.
How much processing capacity can this system generate daily and how many coins can it mine? Researcher Nick Moran answered: approximately $92.70 per day, equivalent to about $34,000 per year. The payback period exceeds 100 years.
Philip Johnston, CEO of Starcloud, calculated that launch costs need to be reduced to less than $200 per kilogram for space mining to have basic commercial viability. This means that costs need to be reduced by a further 13 times.
The SpaceX Starship is widely considered essential to achieving this leap. A fully reusable Starship could, theoretically, reduce the launch cost per kilogram to less than $100, or even less, which is one of the underlying premises for establishing SpaceX's space data center in its vision for the IPO. However, when and if this cost curve will materialize remains an unknown.
Heat dissipation in space is a counterintuitive challenge. On Earth, the heat from chips can be dissipated by air convection; however, in the vacuum of space, without air, heat can only be dissipated by radiation. Todd's calculations show that, without additional cooling devices, the thermal equilibrium temperature of this structure in orbit is approximately 59 °C, well within the normal operating range of the chip. If the temperature is deemed too high, simply tilting the entire panel slightly in relation to the sun can reduce the area exposed to sunlight, which can further improve heat dissipation.
Communication is surprisingly simple. Communication between miners and mining pools essentially involves receiving new block headers and sending computing results, generating about 10 MB of data per day — less than the data consumed by streaming a song. The communication latency in low Earth orbit (500 to 1000 kilometers above Earth) varies between 4 and 30 milliseconds, resulting in a less than 0.01% probability of invalid blocks (i.e., sending outdated computing results), comparable to that of most terrestrial miners, with no substantial difference. In fact, Blockstream began broadcasting the complete Bitcoin blockchain globally via geostationary satellites as early as 2017, proving that the combination of satellites and blockchain has never been a problem without a solution.
So, if it is physically viable and the engineering structure is also viable, why hasn't it become common practice? The reason is that rocket transportation is very expensive.
An economic calculation that cannot be made.
Sending cargo to low Earth orbit using SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket currently costs about $2,720 per kilogram.
Peter Todd estimates that a complete space mining system of 20 kilowatts, including solar panels, thermal radiators, ASIC chip sets, structural supports, and communication modules, weighs approximately between 1,600 and 2,200 kilograms. At current prices, a single launch would cost between $4.3 million and $6 million.
How much processing capacity can this system generate daily and how many coins can it mine? Researcher Nick Moran answered: approximately $92.70 per day, equivalent to about $34,000 per year. The payback period exceeds 100 years.
Philip Johnston, CEO of Starcloud, calculated that launch costs need to be reduced to less than $200 per kilogram for space mining to have basic commercial viability. This means that costs need to be reduced by a further 13 times.
The SpaceX Starship is widely considered essential to achieving this leap. A fully reusable Starship could, theoretically, reduce the launch cost per kilogram to less than $100, or even less, which is one of the underlying premises for establishing SpaceX's space data center in its vision for the IPO. However, when and if this cost curve will materialize remains an unknown.
Heat dissipation in space is a counterintuitive challenge. On Earth, the heat from chips can be dissipated by air convection; however, in the vacuum of space, without air, heat can only be dissipated by radiation. Todd's calculations show that, without additional cooling devices, the thermal equilibrium temperature of this structure in orbit is approximately 59 °C, well within the normal operating range of the chip. If the temperature is deemed too high, simply tilting the entire panel slightly in relation to the sun can reduce the area exposed to sunlight, which can further improve heat dissipation.
Communication is surprisingly simple. Communication between miners and mining pools essentially involves receiving new block headers and sending computing results, generating about 10 MB of data per day — less than the data consumed by streaming a song. The communication latency in low Earth orbit (500 to 1000 kilometers above Earth) varies between 4 and 30 milliseconds, resulting in a less than 0.01% probability of invalid blocks (i.e., sending outdated computing results), comparable to that of most terrestrial miners, with no substantial difference. In fact, Blockstream began broadcasting the complete Bitcoin blockchain globally via geostationary satellites as early as 2017, proving that the combination of satellites and blockchain has never been a problem without a solution.
So, if it is physically viable and the engineering structure is also viable, why hasn't it become common practice? The reason is that rocket transportation is very expensive.
An economic calculation that cannot be made.
Sending cargo to low Earth orbit using SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket currently costs about $2,720 per kilogram.
Peter Todd estimates that a complete space mining system of 20 kilowatts, including solar panels, thermal radiators, ASIC chip sets, structural supports, and communication modules, weighs approximately between 1,600 and 2,200 kilograms. At current prices, a single launch would cost between $4.3 million and $6 million.
How much processing capacity can this system generate daily and how many coins can it mine? Researcher Nick Moran answered: approximately $92.70 per day, equivalent to about $34,000 per year. The payback period exceeds 100 years.
Philip Johnston, CEO of Starcloud, calculated that launch costs need to be reduced to less than $200 per kilogram for space mining to have basic commercial viability. This means that costs need to be reduced by a further 13 times.
The SpaceX Starship is widely considered essential to achieving this leap. A fully reusable Starship could, theoretically, reduce the launch cost per kilogram to less than $100, or even less, which is one of the underlying premises for establishing SpaceX's space data center in its vision for the IPO. However, when and if this cost curve will materialize remains an unknown.
Heat dissipation in space is a counterintuitive challenge. On Earth, the heat from chips can be dissipated by air convection; however, in the vacuum of space, without air, heat can only be dissipated by radiation. Todd's calculations show that, without additional cooling devices, the thermal equilibrium temperature of this structure in orbit is approximately 59 °C, well within the normal operating range of the chip. If the temperature is deemed too high, simply tilting the entire panel slightly in relation to the sun can reduce the area exposed to sunlight, which can further improve heat dissipation.
Communication is surprisingly simple. Communication between miners and mining pools essentially involves receiving new block headers and sending computing results, generating about 10 MB of data per day — less than the data consumed by streaming a song. The communication latency in low Earth orbit (500 to 1000 kilometers above Earth) varies between 4 and 30 milliseconds, resulting in a less than 0.01% probability of invalid blocks (i.e., sending outdated computing results), comparable to that of most terrestrial miners, with no substantial difference. In fact, Blockstream began broadcasting the complete Bitcoin blockchain globally via geostationary satellites as early as 2017, proving that the combination of satellites and blockchain has never been a problem without a solution.
So, if it is physically viable and the engineering structure is also viable, why hasn't it become common practice? The reason is that rocket transportation is very expensive.
An economic calculation that cannot be made.
Sending cargo to low Earth orbit using SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket currently costs about $2,720 per kilogram.
Peter Todd estimates that a complete space mining system of 20 kilowatts, including solar panels, thermal radiators, ASIC chip sets, structural supports, and communication modules, weighs approximately between 1,600 and 2,200 kilograms. At current prices, a single launch would cost between $4.3 million and $6 million.
How much processing capacity can this system generate daily and how many coins can it mine? Researcher Nick Moran answered: approximately $92.70 per day, equivalent to about $34,000 per year. The payback period exceeds 100 years.
Philip Johnston, CEO of Starcloud, calculated that launch costs need to be reduced to less than $200 per kilogram for space mining to have basic commercial viability. This means that costs need to be reduced by a further 13 times.
The SpaceX Starship is widely considered essential to achieving this leap. A fully reusable Starship could, theoretically, reduce the launch cost per kilogram to less than $100, or even less, which is one of the underlying premises for establishing SpaceX's space data center in its vision for the IPO. However, when and if this cost curve will materialize remains an unknown.
Heat dissipation in space is a counterintuitive challenge. On Earth, the heat from chips can be dissipated by air convection; however, in the vacuum of space, without air, heat can only be dissipated by radiation. Todd's calculations show that, without additional cooling devices, the thermal equilibrium temperature of this structure in orbit is approximately 59 °C, well within the normal operating range of the chip. If the temperature is deemed too high, simply tilting the entire panel slightly in relation to the sun can reduce the area exposed to sunlight, which can further improve heat dissipation.
Communication is surprisingly simple. Communication between miners and mining pools essentially involves receiving new block headers and sending computing results, generating about 10 MB of data per day — less than the data consumed by streaming a song. The communication latency in low Earth orbit (500 to 1000 kilometers above Earth) varies between 4 and 30 milliseconds, resulting in a less than 0.01% probability of invalid blocks (i.e., sending outdated computing results), comparable to that of most terrestrial miners, with no substantial difference. In fact, Blockstream began broadcasting the complete Bitcoin blockchain globally via geostationary satellites as early as 2017, proving that the combination of satellites and blockchain has never been a problem without a solution.
So, if it is physically viable and the engineering structure is also viable, why hasn't it become common practice? The reason is that rocket transportation is very expensive.
An economic calculation that cannot be made.
Sending cargo to low Earth orbit using SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket currently costs about $2,720 per kilogram.
Peter Todd estimates that a complete space mining system of 20 kilowatts, including solar panels, thermal radiators, ASIC chip sets, structural supports, and communication modules, weighs approximately between 1,600 and 2,200 kilograms. At current prices, a single launch would cost between $4.3 million and $6 million.
How much processing capacity can this system generate daily and how many coins can it mine? Researcher Nick Moran answered: approximately $92.70 per day, equivalent to about $34,000 per year. The payback period exceeds 100 years.
Philip Johnston, CEO of Starcloud, calculated that launch costs need to be reduced to less than $200 per kilogram for space mining to have basic commercial viability. This means that costs need to be reduced by a further 13 times.
The SpaceX Starship is widely considered essential to achieving this leap. A fully reusable Starship could, theoretically, reduce the launch cost per kilogram to less than $100, or even less, which is one of the underlying premises for establishing SpaceX's space data center in its vision for the IPO. However, when and if this cost curve will materialize remains an unknown.
Heat dissipation in space is a counterintuitive challenge. On Earth, the heat from chips can be dissipated by air convection; however, in the vacuum of space, without air, heat can only be dissipated by radiation. Todd's calculations show that, without additional cooling devices, the thermal equilibrium temperature of this structure in orbit is approximately 59 °C, well within the normal operating range of the chip. If the temperature is deemed too high, simply tilting the entire panel slightly in relation to the sun can reduce the area exposed to sunlight, which can further improve heat dissipation.
Communication is surprisingly simple. Communication between miners and mining pools essentially involves receiving new block headers and sending computing results, generating about 10 MB of data per day — less than the data consumed by streaming a song. The communication latency in low Earth orbit (500 to 1000 kilometers above Earth) varies between 4 and 30 milliseconds, resulting in a less than 0.01% probability of invalid blocks (i.e., sending outdated computing results), comparable to that of most terrestrial miners, with no substantial difference. In fact, Blockstream began broadcasting the complete Bitcoin blockchain globally via geostationary satellites as early as 2017, proving that the combination of satellites and blockchain has never been a problem without a solution.
So, if it is physically viable and the engineering structure is also viable, why hasn't it become common practice? The reason is that rocket transportation is very expensive.
An economic calculation that cannot be made.
Sending cargo to low Earth orbit using SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket currently costs about $2,720 per kilogram.
Peter Todd estimates that a complete space mining system of 20 kilowatts, including solar panels, thermal radiators, ASIC chip sets, structural supports, and communication modules, weighs approximately between 1,600 and 2,200 kilograms. At current prices, a single launch would cost between $4.3 million and $6 million.
How much processing capacity can this system generate daily and how many coins can it mine? Researcher Nick Moran answered: approximately $92.70 per day, equivalent to about $34,000 per year. The payback period exceeds 100 years.
Philip Johnston, CEO of Starcloud, calculated that launch costs need to be reduced to less than $200 per kilogram for space mining to have basic commercial viability. This means that costs need to be reduced by a further 13 times.
The SpaceX Starship is widely considered essential to achieving this leap. A fully reusable Starship could, theoretically, reduce the launch cost per kilogram to less than $100, or even less, which is one of the underlying premises for establishing SpaceX's space data center in its vision for the IPO. However, when and if this cost curve will materialize remains an unknown.
Heat dissipation in space is a counterintuitive challenge. On Earth, the heat from chips can be dissipated by air convection; however, in the vacuum of space, without air, heat can only be dissipated by radiation. Todd's calculations show that, without additional cooling devices, the thermal equilibrium temperature of this structure in orbit is approximately 59 °C, well within the normal operating range of the chip. If the temperature is deemed too high, simply tilting the entire panel slightly in relation to the sun can reduce the area exposed to sunlight, which can further improve heat dissipation.
Communication is surprisingly simple. Communication between miners and mining pools essentially involves receiving new block headers and sending computing results, generating about 10 MB of data per day — less than the data consumed by streaming a song. The communication latency in low Earth orbit (500 to 1000 kilometers above Earth) varies between 4 and 30 milliseconds, resulting in a less than 0.01% probability of invalid blocks (i.e., sending outdated computing results), comparable to that of most terrestrial miners, with no substantial difference. In fact, Blockstream began broadcasting the complete Bitcoin blockchain globally via geostationary satellites as early as 2017, proving that the combination of satellites and blockchain has never been a problem without a solution.
So, if it is physically viable and the engineering structure is also viable, why hasn't it become common practice? The reason is that rocket transportation is very expensive.
An economic calculation that cannot be made.
Sending cargo to low Earth orbit using SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket currently costs about $2,720 per kilogram.
Peter Todd estimates that a complete space mining system of 20 kilowatts, including solar panels, thermal radiators, ASIC chip sets, structural supports, and communication modules, weighs approximately between 1,600 and 2,200 kilograms. At current prices, a single launch would cost between $4.3 million and $6 million.
How much processing capacity can this system generate daily and how many coins can it mine? Researcher Nick Moran answered: approximately $92.70 per day, equivalent to about $34,000 per year. The payback period exceeds 100 years.
Philip Johnston, CEO of Starcloud, calculated that launch costs need to be reduced to less than $200 per kilogram for space mining to have basic commercial viability. This means that costs need to be reduced by a further 13 times.
The SpaceX Starship is widely considered essential to achieving this leap. A fully reusable Starship could, theoretically, reduce the launch cost per kilogram to less than $100, or even less, which is one of the underlying premises for establishing SpaceX's space data center in its vision for the IPO. However, when and if this cost curve will materialize remains an unknown.
Heat dissipation in space is a counterintuitive challenge. On Earth, the heat from chips can be dissipated by air convection; however, in the vacuum of space, without air, heat can only be dissipated by radiation. Todd's calculations show that, without additional cooling devices, the thermal equilibrium temperature of this structure in orbit is approximately 59 °C, well within the normal operating range of the chip. If the temperature is deemed too high, simply tilting the entire panel slightly in relation to the sun can reduce the area exposed to sunlight, which can further improve heat dissipation.
Communication is surprisingly simple. Communication between miners and mining pools essentially involves receiving new block headers and sending computing results, generating about 10 MB of data per day — less than the data consumed by streaming a song. The communication latency in low Earth orbit (500 to 1000 kilometers above Earth) varies between 4 and 30 milliseconds, resulting in a less than 0.01% probability of invalid blocks (i.e., sending outdated computing results), comparable to that of most terrestrial miners, with no substantial difference. In fact, Blockstream began broadcasting the complete Bitcoin blockchain globally via geostationary satellites as early as 2017, proving that the combination of satellites and blockchain has never been a problem without a solution.
So, if it is physically viable and the engineering structure is also viable, why hasn't it become common practice? The reason is that rocket transportation is very expensive.
An economic calculation that cannot be made.
Sending cargo to low Earth orbit using SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket currently costs about $2,720 per kilogram.
Peter Todd estimates that a complete space mining system of 20 kilowatts, including solar panels, thermal radiators, ASIC chip sets, structural supports, and communication modules, weighs approximately between 1,600 and 2,200 kilograms. At current prices, a single launch would cost between $4.3 million and $6 million.
How much processing capacity can this system generate daily and how many coins can it mine? Researcher Nick Moran answered: approximately $92.70 per day, equivalent to about $34,000 per year. The payback period exceeds 100 years.
Philip Johnston, CEO of Starcloud, calculated that launch costs need to be reduced to less than $200 per kilogram for space mining to have basic commercial viability. This means that costs need to be reduced by a further 13 times.
The SpaceX Starship is widely considered essential to achieving this leap. A fully reusable Starship could, theoretically, reduce the launch cost per kilogram to less than $100, or even less, which is one of the underlying premises for establishing SpaceX's space data center in its vision for the IPO. However, when and if this cost curve will materialize remains an unknown.
Another challenge is the automatic adjustment of Bitcoin's mining network difficulty. The Bitcoin protocol calculates the total network hashrate every two weeks and automatically adjusts the mining difficulty to maintain the block generation rate at approximately one every 10 minutes. In other words, if a large number of space mining machines flood the market and the network hashrate increases significantly, the mining difficulty will increase proportionally, and all miners, including those in orbit, will see their profits reduced.
In this world, there are always busy people searching for treasures.
However, several startups are still hard at work to advance in this direction.
Starcloud, formerly known as Lumen Orbit, is currently the closest company to practical application and a crucial case study throughout the sector. Founded in 2024 and based in Redmond, Washington, it is supported by angel investors, including NFX, Y Combinator, a16z, and Sequoia Capital, as well as Nvidia. The company has already raised approximately $200 million in total funding. The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Starcloud worked for ten years in Airbus's defense and aerospace division, and its chief engineer led the Starlink project at SpaceX.
In November 2025, Starcloud successfully launched its first satellite, equipped with an NVIDIA H100 GPU, into orbit. Running Google's Gemma language model in space, it transmitted the first AI-generated message in orbit to Earth. In March 2026, Starcloud announced that its second satellite would simultaneously feature an ASIC chip for Bitcoin and NVIDIA's state-of-the-art Blackwell GPU, aiming to become the first organization in human history to mine Bitcoin in space. Additionally, the company applied to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a constellation plan to deploy up to 88,000 satellites, with a long-term vision of establishing a total of 5 gigawatts of computing power infrastructure in orbit.
SpaceChain is a pioneer in this field, co-founded by former Bitcoin Core developer Jeff Garzik and Zheng Zhong. Since 2017, SpaceChain has launched at least seven blockchain payloads for satellites and the International Space Station. In June 2020, Garzik completed the first Bitcoin transaction in space, worth 0.0099 BTC, at an altitude of 400 kilometers, using a multi-signature wallet node installed by SpaceChain at the space station. The main focus of SpaceChain is on secure orbital nodes for blockchain transactions, rather than active mining: locking private keys in space, making them physically inaccessible to any hacker or government on Earth.
Founded by two Stanford PhDs, Cryptosat currently operates three satellites in orbit, mainly providing tamper-proof orbital cryptography services. In 2023, Cryptosat participated in the largest trust establishment ceremony in Ethereum's history (KZG Ceremony), generating random numbers parameters through its orbital nodes. This institutional assurance ensures that these parameters cannot be controlled by any terrestrial institution. This explores another possibility for space blockchains: no mining, but making the entire crypto-economic system harder to attack.
From rail transport to market: what does this mean for mining?
Although space mining does not currently pose a real competitive threat to existing Bitcoin miners in the short term, various startups are still experimenting with this technology, indicating the significant cost reduction potential it offers, as well as its ongoing appeal and growth potential for the sector. This also reflects the structural cost pressures that the entire sector faces.
After the halving in 2024, computational power and network difficulty continued to reach record levels, with energy costs accounting for 70% to 90% of total operating costs. In this context, whoever can obtain clean electricity reliably and at the lowest cost will have the greatest competitive advantage. Hydropower, wind power, and associated natural gas resources in the United States, the Middle East, and Africa are becoming the main drivers of a new wave of mergers and acquisitions in the mining sector and site selection.
The logic behind space mining is the maximum extrapolation of the above trend: if cheap electricity on Earth eventually becomes scarce due to competition for demand, then the solution is to seek energy in the most abundant place, namely, the universe.
Of course, if the Starcloud-2 satellite manages to mine the first Bitcoin in 2026, it will be like a grain of sand falling into the ocean compared to the global hash rate of over 900 EH/s. But the symbolic meaning itself is powerful. Just like the space transfer of 0.0099 BTC in 2020, its value lies not in the amount, but in proving that it is possible.
From the narrative of SpaceX's IPO to Nvidia's orbital computing power strategy and Starcloud's ASIC satellite program, a picture begins to emerge: the universe is becoming the arena for competition in next-generation computing infrastructure. AI computational power is at the forefront, closely followed by Bitcoin computational power.
On that day, the global digital network described in Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper, which connects all corners of the Earth, could also break free from Earth, float into the universe, and seek new opportunities.
