Meet Gryphon Digital Mining: Exclusive interview with CEO Rob Chang

In an exclusive interview with The Fly, Gryphon Digital Mining’s (GRYP) CEO Rob Chang talked about the company, the Bitcoin mining space, artificial intelligence, upcoming milestones, and much more.

BITCOIN MINING OPERATION: Gryphon Digital Mining sees itself as a rising leader in the Bitcoin mining space dedicated to helping bring digital assets onto the clean energy grid. The company is a sole mining operation fully powered by renewable energy sources. Its mission is to create “a financially nimble, highly profitable, and environmental bitcoin miner,” according to Gryphon. “We are a Bitcoin miner, and it sounds really fancy. But ultimately, we own computers that effectively are throwing numbers at an algorithm as fast as possible, with the hopes that one of the numbers that we throw in solves the puzzle that is created by the Bitcoin network. And that’s effectively what a Bitcoin miner does, and that’s how we secure the network,” CEO Rob Chang explained in an exclusive interview with The Fly.

PUBLIC DEBUT: The company debuted recently on Nasdaq following its merger with Akerna Corp. The reception by Wall Street has been “a bit of a challenge,” the executive said. “It’s a new challenge for us. We have a great performance history. There are several metrics such as operational efficiency, low cost that we are either the number one or near the top, relative to all publicly traded Bitcoin miners. But the stock really hasn’t traded that way, and I think it’s just a lack of understanding. We’re finding that there’s a lot of investor education that needs to happen, that Wall Street needs to understand what we are, who we are. I don’t think many people even know we exist. And if they do know we exist, they haven’t had the opportunity to look at our performance, which frankly has been top of class. And I think that’s really the challenge now for Gryphon Digital Mining — we just need to get the story out there for people to realize that we have been performing the way we have been,” Chang explained.

REGULATION THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE: Discussing the potential challenges in the space the company operates, Gryphon Digital Mining’s CEO said he sees the biggest being regulation. “I don’t mean regulation in terms of outlawing Bitcoin because I think that’s passed us in terms of the ability to do so. It’s more a matter of having proper regulation to support the growth of Bitcoin. To be more specific, as countries like the U.S., for example, create safety nets for investors or new people using Bitcoin, they need to apply rules, and we fully agree that this is something they do need to do.

“The concern though is that they consistently use financial system rules that are currently in place right now and try to apply that to Bitcoin and it doesn’t necessarily always work. That’s the key thing now. It’s just making sure that regulation is appropriate and possible, in terms of what’s trying to be passed to support Bitcoin,” Gryphon’s CEO says.

UPCOMING MILESTONES: The company has some “very lofty goals” for the medium term. “We have put out a stated goal that we’d like to grow to 10 exahash, which is a very lofty, self admittedly, a very lofty target for us given that we’re just under 1 exahash right now. But our goal really is to focus on growing but growing at a reasonable cost. A very key thing to point out is that we intentionally grew the company the way we have. We could have been bigger, like many of our peers, but we built this company based on a very blue-chip perspective. We’re not growing at any cost and not caring what price we’re paying. When we make our deals, we make them very efficient, very long-term friendly, and with very shareholder friendly metrics. Based on that, we have built a company that has better survivability characteristics. We were always operationally cash flow positive throughout our entire existence, and that’s something we’re very, very proud of, and something that’s, in my opinion, very special given the downturn in the market that occurred. And I don’t think many of our peers can say the same,” Chang added.

AI IMPACT: Artificial Intelligence has touched almost every sector, even in its infancy. Discussing what AI can bring to the mining industry, Gryphon’s CEO told The Fly that he sees it as “a tool for the space.” “I think AI is going to change the world fundamentally. I’ve been actively using AI as much as I can in my everyday work. Regarding our base business, I think it’s one of the few businesses that will be impacted much by AI. Bitcoin miners are just throwing numbers at this equation until one of us gets the answer. There is no fanciness to it or there’s no logic behind it. It really is throwing as many numbers as possible at it. Having AI, which is really known for its predictability and its intelligence on doing things better, there really isn’t a better way to pick a random number. The name of the game for Bitcoin mining really is the speed at sending numbers.

“Now that being said, AI is exceptionally helpful for other things, such as our operations. If we can program AI to start anticipating issues or helping us fix issues, instantaneously when they occur, that’s what AI can super help with. And I think we’d be able to drive down costs that way with the proper use of AI.”

“Meet the Company” is The Fly’s recurring series of exclusive short interviews with Executive Officers to offer a deeper look inside the company.