NASHVILLE — Bitcoin miners at Bitcoin 2024 came out of the gate striking back on the question of energy use, arguing that its critics are thinking about energy all wrong.

Why it matters: The question is one of the core points of contention between Bitcoin miners and the wider world, which still views the asset with suspicion — a fight that has gotten political at the highest levels in recent years.

What they're saying: "We should not be conservation maximalists," Harry Sudock of GRIID said on stage at one of the first sessions of the conference.

• Sudock said that quality of life for humans and energy consumption are correlated — more power used equates to greater human flourishing.
• He said the world should strive not to use less power, but to produce more as sustainably as possible.

💭 Our thought bubble: That argument isn't selling at the mass level of American discourse.

Fun fact: Core Scientific has a multimedia booth here with a 360-degree screen that articulates Bitcoin as the next step to harnessing energy of the whole universe.

• The display is like standing in a Stanley Kubrick movie.

The latest: While people have criticized Bitcoin for years for its power use, it's clear that the next big consumer — artificial intelligence — will blow Bitcoin away in terms of its power consumption.

Zoom in: Jayson Browder who works on the government affairs team of the largest publicly traded Bitcoin miner, Marathon Digital Holdings, told Axios about how Bitcoin miners can help power suppliers capitalize on expansions that can seal the deal with AI customers.

• AI providers need to guarantee 100% uptime. They can't function in a demand response environment as Bitcoin can. However, they need to know that when they build, all the power will be there.

Friction point: As Browder put it, power suppliers don't want to build what they can't sell, but AI providers won't build if they don't know the power will be there.

• Bitcoin miners, he argued, can step into that gap. If providers build for the AI clients, Bitcoin miners can use the power while they build out data centers and scale back once those centers enter operations.
• This largely squares with what Russell Cann of Core Scientific said on another panel: Bitcoin mining and artificial intelligence are very different businesses with different power profiles.
• But Bitcoin mining can help with making it worthwhile to develop power sources for all this incoming demand.

What's next: Policy around the country hasn't caught up with the power-hungry future. Browder said they're watching policy at all levels going into this election year and looking for opportunities to advance the industry's interest.

• "This is the last White House election where you can be against the industry," he predicted.

Robert Mitchnick, head of digital assets at BlackRock, said on stage at Bitcoin 2024 that he expects major wealth advisers to start soliciting its bitcoin ETF this year, describing it as "likely."

Why it matters: Once major wealth advisers start showing the new instrument to clients, that should open a giant new wave of buyers — for products that came out of the gate stronger than any other ETF in history.

What they're saying: Mitchnick called out what he describes as the bitcoin "punditry community" for describing the cryptocurrency as a risk asset.

• "One, I think it's fundamentally inaccurate and, two, I think it's massively unhelpful," he said on stage.
• Mitchnick argued that while bitcoin is heavily tied to real interest rates, it isn't correlated well to anything else, provided you take a long-term view.

Zoom in: He argued that holders of the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) seem to be long term. The fund has only had one down day in terms of outflows, despite some big swings in price.

What's next: With bitcoin and ether ETFs in the bag, BlackRock is looking at other facets of the crypto economy. Similar to the view we got from Google yesterday, Mitchnick likes stablecoins.

• "We think that has the potential to transform many elements of our global payments system," he said.

Bitcoin mining companies seem to really like dioramas. There are lots of models of mining rigs and mining facilities at Bitcoin 2024.

💭 Brady's thought bubble: Riot Platforms had two nice ones. If there's a blue ribbon for dioramas at the conference, I think they win.

Ledger's latest hardware wallet, called Flex, is shipping, and a special edition is on sale in Nashville.

Zoom in: It's the second product from Ledger this year and is priced at a slightly more accessible $249. (It's not cheap but is less expensive than the now $399 Stax.)

• 👆 The special BTC edition of the Flex has that orange bar at the bottom.

Flashback: When Ledger's chief experience officer showed us the goods in New York a few weeks back, he said that the firm was indifferent to which one sells.

• Some people drive Mercedes, others, Toyota, he said.

💭 Crystal's thought bubble: I prefer the feel of the Stax over the Flex.

• The difference is subtle, but it's there.

At the end of a card featuring a nearly unendurable number of fights, Nic Carter, VC investor and crypto philosopher, faced off last night against Coty Kuhn of the decentralized finance company DFX Finance.

• Unlike the Karate Combat fights that we saw preceding it, Nic won it quickly in the first round. We couldn't hear a thing anyone said over the sound system, and it was tough to see, but it might have been by submission?
• Carter ran all around the ring after his win.

What they're saying: In the post-fight interview he apologized to his team for not showing up to work for five months (we're pretty sure that's what he said), adding, "but it was worth it."

• Then he threw some shade on the guy he was supposed to fight in Texas, before making his way out of the ring in triumph.

Former President Trump will deliver a keynote speech tomorrow to close out Bitcoin 2024.

Behind the scenes: There's lots of support for Trump on the ground in Music City.

• There's swag that plays on "Make America Great Again," and boxes of T-shirts being given away that say "Free Ross Vote Trump," a nod to the imprisoned founder of the online illegal drug marketplace Silk Road, whose sentence Trump has pledged to commute.

Bitcoin price is rising heading into the speech, up 5% over the past 24 hours, topping $67,000.

What we're watching: The question is whether he'll focus his speech on the industry, or if it amounts to just another campaign stop.