TUESDAY, MAR10
1. Waterfall fund distributes, 2. Bitaxe Turbo Touch, 3. CleanSpark to Texas, 4. AI seniority impacts
Supported by Proto and Bitkey - part of the Bitcoin ecosystem at Block, Inc.
1. waterfall
Waterfall Fund distributed 12,130,173 sats to 63 grassroots Bitcoin projects across five continents in its inaugural year, according to the fund's 2025 annual report authored by co-founder Paco de la India. The fund launched after Marc Perry donated $20,000 worth of sats sourced from a PPP loan he had committed to giving away, and Paco structured the capital as a microgrant program targeting Bitcoin education, media, and circular economy initiatives. Nearly two-thirds of grants went to projects in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, with an average grant size of 192,542 sats. Paco describes the philosophy, "Small amounts can be sent earlier, with little friction. Sometimes that's enough to get something off the ground." Grantees included education projects in Gabon, a merchant circular economy effort in Chile, and a public Bitcoin data dashboard in Northeast India. Looking ahead, Waterfall Fund is pursuing 501(c)(3) status and plans to expand its reach into Central Asia and Oceania, testing how far a lean, application-free model can extend Bitcoin's grassroots infrastructure.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY2. touch
Houston-based Solo Satoshi has launched the Bitaxe Turbo Touch, a home bitcoin miner the company claims delivers more than double the hashrate of competing touchscreen devices in its category. According to a note shared with Bitcoin Magazine, the unit produces approximately 2.15 TH/s using dual BM1370 ASIC chips, the same silicon found in Bitmain's industrial Antminer S21 Pro, achieving roughly 18 joules per terahash efficiency. The device consumes 43 watts, costs an estimated $3.70 per month to run at typical U.S. residential electricity rates, and undercuts its closest touchscreen competitor, the Braiins BMM 101, at $151 per TH versus roughly $299. Founder Matt Howard framed the project around verifiability, "Every line of code between the ASIC chips and the pixels on the touchscreen is open source." The firmware stack, hardware schematics, and board layouts are all publicly available under an open hardware license. Solo Satoshi developed the device in part with the Open Source Miners United community after a previous collaboration shipped with closed-source firmware, a distinction the company treats as foundational rather than incidental.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY3. texas
CleanSpark finalized its acquisition of a data center development site in Brazoria County, Texas, closing a deal announced in January that adds 300 megawatts of ERCOT-approved capacity to its portfolio. According to the company's latest operational update, the purchase follows an earlier Austin County land acquisition carrying 285 MW of approved power, bringing CleanSpark's total contracted capacity to 1.8 gigawatts across 808 MW of active mining operations. CEO Matthew Schultz called it "meaningfully expanded hyperscale-ready infrastructure," signaling the company is positioning for growth beyond its current footprint. On the mining side, CleanSpark produced 568 bitcoin in February for a year-to-date total of 1,141, operating at 50.0 EH/s total hashrate with an efficiency of 16.07 J/TH. The miner sold 553 bitcoin at an average price of $66,279, generating roughly $36.7 million in proceeds, and holds 13,363 bitcoin in treasury. The Texas land strategy reflects a broader industry pattern of locking in large-scale power agreements in ERCOT territory ahead of anticipated hashrate expansion through the next market cycle.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILY4. seniority
A Harvard working paper finds that generative AI adoption is producing what researchers call "seniority-biased technological change," hitting junior workers sharply while leaving senior employment largely intact. Authors Seyed Mahdi Hosseini Maasoum and Guy Lichtinger analyzed résumé data covering 62 million workers across 285,000 firms from 2015 through 2025, identifying GenAI-adopting firms through job postings that signal active implementation. Following adoption, junior employment declined sharply at adopting firms relative to non-adopters, while senior headcount remained largely unchanged. Critically, the mechanism is not layoffs: the decline is driven by slower hiring rather than increased separations or promotions, meaning firms are quietly closing the entry-level door rather than pushing people out. The effect is concentrated in occupations most exposed to GenAI capabilities. The findings carry structural implications beyond the labor market: if junior roles function as the first rung of career ladders, suppressing entry-level hiring doesn't just reduce headcount today, it compresses the pipeline of experienced workers a decade from now. For the broader AI displacement debate, the paper adds empirical weight to the concern that AI's near-term labor impact lands hardest on workers with the least cushion to absorb it.
-EDITOR·OP_DAILYConsider subscribing and forwarding OP_Daily to your community.