Hive Digital CEO Blockchain and AI can mutually benefit each other

Hive Digital CEO Blockchain and AI mutually benefit each other.

Author: TOM MITCHELHILL, COINTELEGRAPH; Translation: Song Xue, LianGuai

In July of this year, cryptocurrency mining company Hive Blockchain abandoned the term “blockchain” and chose to name itself Hive Digital Technologies, sending a signal to the technology industry that reflects its foray into the field of artificial intelligence.

In January, cryptocurrency mining company Riot Blockchain changed its name to Riot Platform, and in June, cryptocurrency mining company Applied Digital announced a $460 million deal to host artificial intelligence cloud computing in its data centers.

Hive Digital Technologies CEO Aydin Kilic and Chairman Frank Holmes reiterated in an interview that, despite the name change, the company is still heavily involved in bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining businesses.

However, they now believe that the two emerging fields of blockchain and artificial intelligence are almost symbiotic in Web3 development, Kilic said:

“Blockchain and artificial intelligence can certainly coexist – they are both pillars of Web3.”

Kilic pointed out the key differences between Web2 and Web3, suggesting that over time, artificial intelligence will be used to enhance the user experience of Web3.

“Artificial intelligence makes Web3 more adaptable. In Web2, you have all this metadata, but you lose privacy because all the big internet companies secretly collect all this data for profit,” Kilic said.

“With blockchain, you have all this privacy, and you can own your own data. But without this metadata, how do you get a curated web experience? That’s where artificial intelligence comes in, making it more adaptable and intuitive. It all works together,” he explained.

“Where artificial intelligence comes in, metaverse and DAO will also come in. All of Web3 is still in its early stages.”

“The application of these technological pillars in novel and widely adopted ways remains to be seen,” he added.

Ethereum taught us a valuable lesson

Hive Digital Technologies is the first publicly listed cryptocurrency mining company, having established its first Bitcoin mining center in 2014 and going public in 2017.

Holmes attributes the company’s ability to enter new technologies to a large extent to the lessons learned from Bitcoin and Ethereum mining.

“Through Ethereum mining, our mining business has indeed been enhanced. ASICs require a 2 to 1 ratio of staff,” he said.

Holmes explained that these lessons were crucial for learning how to best transition and ensuring that they have a broad enough range of products and technical knowledge to leverage emerging technologies.

The Hive team did not purchase chips purely focused on mining, but instead decided to buy chips that allow for dual processing, meaning the company can mine while providing high-performance computing.

“One thing we were concerned about was the transition of Ethereum from proof of work to proof of stake. Initially, we thought it would take longer, but we said, okay, we’re going to buy Nvidia chips. About 18 months ago, we made that decision and built our high-performance data center website accordingly.”

Cryptocurrency remains the focus

Kilic pointed out that the company still focuses on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining.

“We have the highest BTC/exahash in the industry every month. Currently, our Bitcoin mining volume is 4 exahash, and our goal is to reach 6 exahash by the end of this year.”

Kilic also explained in detail how their 38,000 Nvidia GPUs are used in day-to-day operations.

“Currently, 500 of these cards are used for AI or HPC computing, while the remaining 37,500 cards are still used for proof of work mining, using profit-switching algorithms that change daily to mine altcoins. Essentially, we are leveraging GPU computing power every day to mine the most profitable tokens.” Kilic explained.

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