At Mining Disrupt Miami, Frank Holmes, Executive Chairman of Hive Digital Technologies, walked the audience through how Hive was trying to reinvent how it uses what he called molecules of electricity. His case had two parts: recycling the heat from mining for local use, and turning the company's experience with GPU chips into an artificial intelligence business.
The session took place during Mining Disrupt Miami 2023, recorded on July 25–27, 2023. At the time, Bitcoin was trading at $29,125. Holmes, a money manager and former gold fund manager, co-founded Hive, and said it was the first crypto mining company to go public, in 2017. He said the company had changed its name to Hive Digital Technologies to reflect that it is part of what he called the great digital transformation.
From Bitcoin Proxy to AI Infrastructure
Holmes began with how investors see Hive. In 2017, he said, it was clear a Bitcoin ETF was not going to launch soon, and many investors were reluctant to buy coins on exchanges, so Hive became a proxy. Its shares, he said, carry a much greater inherent beta than Bitcoin, which has drawn a large following of traders who use the stock as a Bitcoin proxy. Early on that meant Ethereum and Bitcoin; by 2023 it was mostly Bitcoin, plus, he said, Hive's future in AI using GPU chips.
He argued that serious mining requires building data centers, an expertise Hive has, and that the great digital transformation needs decentralized data centers. He listed what he described as Hive's firsts: first to go public, first to own and develop its own mining rig, first with a green energy focus, first with an AI strategy for its GPU chips, and first to balance the grid during the December meltdown the previous year. Its operations ran on green power in New Brunswick, Quebec, Iceland and Sweden, which he put at about 153 megawatts.
The Heat Recovery Model: Mining as Utility
Heat was the centerpiece. Holmes described Hive's Montreal area site, where a 40,000 square foot building running on 30 megawatts recycles its heat, like a radiator, into a building five times larger where whirlpools are made and 175 people work. The idea, he said, is to take an electron and keep recycling it in the community.
40 000 square foot building using 30 megawatts of electricity and recycling that heat
Frank Holmes · 6:28
He then showed a greenhouse in Amsterdam, not a Hive project, as an example of the concept: six football fields run off just two megawatts of Bitcoin mining, with the heat used to warm water for growing plants. Hive's own vision, he said, was a 90,000 square foot greenhouse in Sweden, 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle, so the area could grow tomatoes and cucumbers locally instead of trucking them from Spain or Italy. He tied this to Hive's ESG strategy, which he said also includes supporting the community, such as sponsoring 12 kids' hockey teams in Sweden.
particular Greenhouse is six football fields run off of two megawatts Bitcoin mining
Frank Holmes · 7:16
On financials, Holmes said that even in a tough year, Hive did six million in revenue per employee, against about a million at Goldman Sachs, and over 12 million the year before. He compared the model to a gold royalty business, and said that over the prior 30 days Bitcoin was up 24 and Hive was up 110. He credited execution, citing an old capital markets saying: execute, or Mr. Market will execute you.
The GPU Moat: Why Only Few Can Pivot
Holmes stressed that not every Bitcoin miner can get into this space. You need GPU experience, he said, and an appreciation for how sensitive the hardware is. He compared it to driving a Porsche or a Lamborghini versus a Ford F-150 truck.
that we have this expertise with GPU chips in mining ethereum
Frank Holmes · 3:56
About 18 months before the talk, Holmes said, Hive bought almost 70 million dollars worth of Nvidia chips. They let the company mine other coins and convert to Bitcoin, and they were also meant to build out its AI strategy. He said Hive is a strategic partner of Nvidia, and that customers want access to these chips because going through systems like AWS is very expensive.
Ordinals and Green Bitcoin
Holmes also turned to ordinals. He said many developers who had worked on Ethereum moved to Bitcoin after Ethereum switched from proof of work to proof of stake, and that hedge funds were now funding young artists creating ordinals. He said Hive had been offered a quarter million dollars for 200 satoshis, which he compared to two pennies, because certain sats from certain moments in history carry more value, much like limited supply art. He added that Hive had always believed green Bitcoin would become more valuable, and said it had been offered more for its green Bitcoin, in modest amounts.
He said he hoped the growth of ordinals and the Lightning Network would keep the Bitcoin ecosystem growing, and said the boom in AI apps was a big reason Hive had changed its name and widened its outlook.
The 38,000 Chip Bet
The blue sky, as Holmes put it, was the Nvidia chips. Hive had 38,000 of them, he said, and ran a beta site with 400 in a business to business model, with a customer onboard using them. That beta, he said, made a quarter million dollars.
if you scale that we're going to immediately to 38 000 it's a hundred million dollar business
Frank Holmes · 13:22
Holmes framed AI partly as protection against the halving. Miners buying ASICs with a payback of 600 days, he said, were ignoring the halving and might not get their money back unless Bitcoin stayed over sixty thousand dollars. He said AI would let Hive pivot and survive, as it did with Ethereum mining, where he said gross margins reached 92 percent.
When this session was recorded, Bitcoin traded at $29,125; on October 15, 2026 it was $81,431. The figures Holmes gave, from revenue per employee to the projected AI business, were his own statements about Hive in 2023. The conversation continues at Intelligence Disrupt 2027, March 22 to 24 in Irving, Texas.
Holmes closed by inviting the audience to visit the Hive team, with shirts and hats on hand, and by wishing everyone happy investing.