Billionaire Mark Cuban weighs in on the bitcoin halving

While Dallas Mavericks owner and “Shark Tank” host Mark Cuban noted that bitcoin miners will be impacted by the halving, he’s more interested in the potential impact of AI.

When asked about the significance of the bitcoin halving, Cuban told The Block, “Just that it’s going to make it harder for miners to get paid.” With the halving cutting mining rewards from 6.25 

 BTC +0.89%

 to 3.125 BTC, this will cut miner revenue nearly in half.

“But the truly interesting question related to halving is the GPU market,” Cuban said. “Miners need more power. There is unprecedented demand from AI for those GPUs. Will that distort the economics of mining? Not just from the perspective of cost, but could it be a better business to use those GPUs to train models?”

This won’t directly affect bitcoin miners who mine using ASIC machines, which are not suited to general computing required by AI. But it may affect those that still mine other cryptocurrencies using GPUs.