The final event of the America Loves Crypto tour took place yesterday in Washington, D.C. as the country counts down to the 2024 election. Speakers including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, ConSensys CEO Joseph Lubin, and Congressman Wiley Nickel (D-NC) addressed the maximum capacity crowd at the Black Cat music venue.

The speakers largely agreed on one idea: the importance of supporting cryptocurrency in America through a concerted bipartisan effort.

In their shared stage appearance, Brian Armstrong and Congressman Nickel noted that they see it as critical to keep and foster cryptocurrency innovation in America.

This importance, for Nickel in particular, is not so solely founded on a belief in the technology, but is ostensibly due to the fact that 20% of American adults own some form of cryptocurrency, a voting block that Nickel thinks “[has] the ability to sway elections.”

Nickel added: “If we want to do things in Washington, it’s critically important that we do it in a bipartisan way. If we politicize the issue with one party going into crypto versus another, it’s going to poison the well in Washington for a decade.”

Since Biden took office in 2020, his administration’s SEC, DoJ and DoE (Department of Energy) officials have introduced a fair amount of unwelcome regulatory hurdles. Notably, Nickel’s support of cryptocurrency does signal a change of tune for the historically hostile Democratic Party.

“I started coming to DC five years ago, and when I first came here, most people didn’t know what crypto even was,” said Armstrong. “One member of Congress asked me: ‘Isn’t this all some video game or something like that?’ Once they figured out what crypto was over the years, the conversation totally shifted. Now, everybody knows what crypto is, we’re kind of the belle of the ball, the hot topic on everyone’s lips.”

However, one attendee, an executive at a prominent financial institution who wished to remain anonymous, reflected on the development of crypto-politicking and what they see as under-commitment on the part of the Democratic Party.

In particular, the executive believes that the Biden administration’s veto of legislation overturning SAB 121, which if signed would have allowed highly regulated financial institutions to custody digital assets, was a major wake-up call.

They remarked that the crypto industry, despite raising large amounts of money for campaign contributions, still carries a strong stigma and that policymakers don’t offer the respect this single-issue voter bloc deserves.

The America Loves Crypto tour had been focused on addressing the stigma with a mixture of live music and grassroots community building. Alex Pall and Drew Taggart, otherwise known as The Chainsmokers, closed out the event, entertaining the crowd with their classic hits, unreleased music, and most notably a cry of “F$*# Gary Gesnler”. The Chainsmokers themselves are no strangers to cryptocurrency and founded the tech and crypto-focused Mantis Venture Capital fund in 2020.

With stops in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., many in attendance on the America Loves Crypto tour were hopeful that more than 1.4 million Stand With Crypto advocates nationwide can flex their muscle as a true deciding factor in November.

Hut 8 Corp. (Nasdaq | TSX: HUT), a leading Bitcoin mining company, has expanded its partnership with BITMAIN Technologies Ltd., the world’s largest producer of Bitcoin mining servers, to launch the U3S21EXPH, a next-generation ASIC miner. This model will be the first mass-commercialized miner to feature direct liquid-to-chip (DLC) cooling within a U form factor.

Hut 8 plans to deploy the new miner in the second quarter of 2025, with an initial hosting agreement handling approximately 15 exahash per second (EH/s). This hosting deployment, facilitated by custom-built data center infrastructure developed in-house by Hut 8, is a key part of the company’s strategy to expand its computing power across Bitcoin mining and AI compute sectors.

“Our partnership with BITMAIN has allowed us to advance our thinking on ASIC compute and create a more scalable model for data center design as we expand our footprint,” said Asher Genoot, CEO of Hut 8. “The U3S21EXPH will be the first miner from BITMAIN broadly commercialized with DLC cooling within a U form factor, making it rack-ready like traditional data center hardware. This innovation bridges critical engineering gaps between Bitcoin mining and AI data center infrastructure in both form factor and cooling technology, and we believe this convergence will enable us to unlock significant synergies and flexibility going forward.”

The U3S21EXPH can achieve an efficiency of 13 joules per terahash, producing up to 860 terahash. It uses DLC cooling, a technology traditionally reserved for high-performance computing (HPC) data centers, to make Bitcoin mining more energy efficient and scalable.

“Asher and Mike have been invaluable thought partners to BITMAIN since the early days of US Bitcoin Corp, where they demonstrated a unique focus on cost-efficient procurement and operations,” said Irene Gao, Vice President of Mining at BITMAIN. “Hut 8’s technical expertise, operating strength, and track record of innovation made this partnership a natural evolution of our relationship as we began the journey of developing next-generation ASIC technology.”

The commercial agreement between Hut 8 and BITMAIN includes a fixed hosting fee and a purchase option for Hut 8 to buy the hosted machines in up to three tranches. This structure allows Hut 8 to assess market conditions before making further investments, minimizing financial risk. If Hut 8 exercises this purchase option, its self-mining capacity could grow from 5.6 EH/s to 20.6 EH/s.