How load-flexible mining could power an abundant energy future
Brady Cuddy is director, field operations energy at Cholla, Inc, overseeing the company’s energy and Bitcoin-mining divisions. He has an extensive background in energy, and he’s known for his expertise in ASIC performance and cooling techniques—featured on The Mining Pod and dubbed “Bitcoin Jesus” on Energizing Bitcoin & AI. Passionate about energy innovation, he helps Cholla push the boundaries of sustainable, load‑flexible mining operations. He recently spoke with American Habits Editor Ray Nothstine about energy abundance and the important role of bitcoin mining.
What is Cholla and why is it innovative in the bitcoin and energy space? What is the most important aspect on why somebody should know and care about it? I like the concept of Bitcoin as a solution to inflation but unsure sometimes beyond that. Help me understand.
Cuddy: It does feel like a loaded question, because Bitcoin touches on so many things. At its base layer, Bitcoin is money but it’s not just any money; it’s energy-packed freedom money. And since money is a tool everyone uses, that means Bitcoin has the potential to impact everyone.
One of the most interesting aspects, especially from an energy perspective, is that Bitcoin mining is the only load that’s both location-agnostic and flexible. In every other industrial process, you have energy plus some manufacturing or transformation that produces a widget or service, which is then sold for dollars (or whatever currency). With Bitcoin mining, you’re converting energy directly into money and the process happens entirely over the internet.
All you need is access to power and a basic internet connection, even something like Starlink or a simple cellular signal, and you can mine this energy-backed freedom money anywhere in the world.
The grid is probably the most complex and beautiful machine we have.
When it comes to inflation, it’s important to remember that the fiat currency system we live under has only existed in its current form since 1971, when we completely left the gold standard. The money we use today is, in many ways, is an experiment and if you look at prices over the past 50 years, you can see how that experiment is playing out.
There’s a great website called WTF Happened in 1971? that tracks basic consumer price indexes, housing costs, tuition, and other economic indicators. The charts make it clear: when money costs nothing to produce, incentives get misaligned and fiscal policy can spiral out of control.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, is a return to hard money. There’s a real cost to produce it, you’re consuming energy, running physical servers, and operating mining facilities that exist in the real world. There’s steel on the ground, copper wiring, and real electrons flowing through those machines. It’s grounded in reality, even though it’s often called “magic internet money.”
At American Habits, one of our goals is to shine a light on state and local heroes, folks who are doing meaningful work and making a difference in their communities. How does Cholla embody and practice that mission? Or to put it another way: why are Bitcoin miners playing such an important role in reenergizing and revitalizing how we harness and think about energy?
Cuddy: That really highlights how location-agnostic Bitcoin mining is and miners will go wherever energy is cheapest. Cheap energy is usually found where there’s abundant generation but little local demand. For example, in West Texas, you have massive wind and solar resources and the prolific Permian Basin oil field, but very few people live there. Meanwhile, most Texans live in the ‘Golden Triangle’ formed by Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin. So, there’s a surplus of energy in West Texas with not enough local load, making it ideal for miners.
For a long time, depending on the county and who owns the rights, you’d see windmills and solar farms go up, but not much would flow back to the local community. Bitcoin mining helps change that by bringing in jobs — and these are technical roles that often build on skills people in the area already have. There’s plumbing, electrical work, computer networking, low-voltage electronics, and micro soldering. These jobs are cross-compatible with existing trades and create new opportunities for local workers.
It spans a wide range of skills and brings these technical jobs right into the backyards of people who might not have had this opportunity otherwise. In the past, they might have needed to move to the DFW area to find a high-paying job. But because mining operations don’t need to be near population centers, they just need access to excess energy, which West Texas has in abundance and people can stay where they are. This gives folks more options, keeps families together, and helps communities stay stronger.
We at Cholla try to do our best to involve the community, have the conversations with the county judges, with the mayors, and with the economic development boards. There’s a movement called the Texas Flywheel. It’s trying to bring awareness around the digital compute economy that is happening in West Texas and all of Texas, really.
For us, it’s about having an open-door policy. We want to elevate the conversation, demystify what Bitcoin mining is, and invite people to see it for themselves. We bring them on-site to show exactly how it works, how the equipment can be cooled with air, direct-to-chip hydro like many modern data centers use, or immersion cooling, which involves submerging servers in a special oil. In short, we believe in transparency and helping people understand what’s happening right in their backyard.
When I lived in Grand Rapids, I knew someone mining Bitcoin with a $1,000 plus power bill every month, he just ran desktops in his basement. I’ve read that AI data centers and Bitcoin miners can now lower their energy use during peak times to reduce costs and demand. How does that actually work? Is it mainly about economic incentives, trust, or both? Can you explain that model to me?
Cuddy: Yes — Bitcoin mining is one of the most economically rational electricity consumers out there. That’s because Bitcoin always has a market price in dollars, so miners know exactly how much they’ll earn based on the compute they provide. This makes it easy to calculate a clear dollar-per-megawatt-hour break-even point.
Depending on the type of machine, those break-even costs typically range from about $70 to $200 per megawatt hour. Put another way, that’s around 7 to 20 cents per kilowatt hour — which is the same unit you’d recognize on a household power bill.
At Cholla, we use older-generation equipment and stay profitable by being price responsive. In Texas’s real-time power market, cheap electricity is often abundant, there’s so much wind and solar generation that they compete against each other, driving bids and prices down. That’s when we want to be online: when prices are low, mining is more profitable.
But when there’s a scarcity event and the grid is constrained, the price starts to rise. As soon as it climbs above our break-even point, we simply shut down our machines. That flexibility helps balance the grid and keeps our costs in check.
Bitcoin miners are turning off somewhere between $70 to $200 a megawatt hour. For reference, the price of power goes all the way up to $5,000 a megawatt hour. Very small on the grand scheme of the total price curve that is possible.
Brad, I was reading your bio and noticed you have a strong background in oil and gas. I recently interviewed Fervo Energy about geothermal and was struck by how much credit is owed to oil and gas for driving drilling innovations that now make cleaner, potentially more efficient energy possible.
Given your experience, where do you see the most exciting or innovative developments in energy production happening today? I love how you and others in this space focus on abundance — the idea that there’s so much untapped energy we could harness. Are there any areas or technologies you’re particularly optimistic about for the future?
Cuddy: I think there are a lot of interesting synergies emerging right now because so much is happening in the energy space. I don’t have one single project I’m most excited about, but there are several areas that stand out.
Battery technology keeps getting cheaper, which is a huge boost for inverter-based renewables like wind and solar. Solar panel efficiencies alone have improved by about 30% in just a few years. Geothermal is another promising area, not just traditional geothermal but also thermal energy storage systems.
One especially interesting idea is a small modular nuclear reactor (SMNR) project proposed for West Texas, though it’s still just a vision until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) gives its approval. The concept is to power oil and gas operations with carbon-free nuclear energy and then use the waste heat from the reactor’s thermal salt system to distill salt water. That would produce fresh water that could be returned to potable aquifers, while the leftover minerals and salts could be separated and sold. It’s a great example of how we can find new efficiencies and create value through smarter integration — that kind of synergy is what excites me most.
Brad, just broadly speaking, what do you wish more people, especially lawmakers, understood about energy policy and consumption in America today? What’s the biggest misconception or frustration you run into when people talk about this industry? Many people tend to focus mainly on the consumption side or think in terms of scarcity. How would you like to see that understanding shift?
Cuddy: Unfortunately, it’s complicated and I think that’s why so many people misunderstand it. The grid is probably the most complex and beautiful machine we have. Demand and supply always need to be balanced in real time, so it’s a constant, careful dance.
At the end of the day, the ‘right’ energy solution really depends on where you are. It’s about letting the market work, like Texas does with its energy-only market. You’d think Texas, being a red state, might not have the greenest grid but in fact, we have some of the highest wind and solar penetration in the country. Technically, CAISO has more total solar, but on a per-megawatt basis, we’re ahead. By letting market forces play out and responding to local conditions, Texas has become a leader in renewable buildout.
That works here because we sit at the crossroads of the wind belt (North Dakota to West Texas) and the solar belt (California to West Texas). So, developers naturally chose to build out wind and solar where it made sense. But that approach won’t work everywhere. Some places don’t have strong wind or steady sun, so they’ll need a different mix, likely nuclear, geothermal, hydro, or even more thermal generation.
People often overlook that coal, for example, is one of the only generation sources where you can store your feedstock right at the plant without huge storage constraints. Natural gas can be stored too, but that requires specific geology, like big underground salt caverns, if you want to run gas peaker plants or combined cycle plants nearby.
I’m a big believer in free markets. If you let the market work, you’ll usually get the right solution. But you also must be realistic and prudent about your goals. We’ve seen what happens when you’re not, like Spain, where they pushed toward nearly100% inverter-based resources with solar, but didn’t invest in the control equipment needed to keep system frequency and voltage stable.
Bottom line: trust your experts, understand local conditions, and let the market do what it does best — while staying practical about what it takes to keep the grid reliable.
Let me ask you, how does the West Texas landscape influence your mind and worldview? For me, it just had this overwhelming expanse on my soul. It’s obviously pretty, but it’s wide open. How does the topography play into some of your worldview?
Cuddy: Yes, it’s big country out there. Besides working offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, I haven’t seen prettier sunsets. It really showcases the vastness of Texas itself and of America. We’re in an incredible place, a blessing to be in the country that we are in. To look around and to see windmills commingled with oil and gas pump jacks and to see solar panels out there, also with the fields and the cows grazing and everything, it’s a harsh land. It can be a little destitute, but it’s also got a spirit of abundance.
There’s a lot out there. You’re in a big empty space, in my mind, endless possibilities type of deal. The people that are out there, they’re kind, they’re industrious, they’re hardworking. They’re scrappy. It’s the old school mentality of, “Hey, I’m out here in the middle of nowhere and I’m going to fend for myself and I’m going to make sure that I get what I need to done.” Those are the perfect people.
