One of the most significant technological events in the year, the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), saw participation from the Bitcoin and crypto industry. The nascent asset class has seen a persistent downtrend in its value, but the bear market is failing to slow down innovation.
Bitcoin Miners Take Center Stage
According to a report from Michael Carter, from crypto miner and consultant company BitsBeTrippin’ (BBT), the CES 2023 saw heavy participation from this sector. Carter spent a week at the event and reported a heavy presence of vendors with crypto-mining products.
The main focus was “heat and sound solutions” for Bitcoin mining hardware. This activity has experienced substantial growth since the cryptocurrency’s early years, represented by the BTC mining difficulty. This metric trends to the upside as more miners join the network.
As seen in the chart below, 2021 saw substantial growth in these terms as the price of Bitcoin supported an expansion in mining operations. Despite downside price action across the board and many miners shutting down their operations, the metric remains high, suggesting that there is still interest in the sector.
In the CES 2023, Carter saw solutions to cool down BTC miners using a cost-efficient approach to Water Cooling. Other mining companies are trying to diversify their operations from BTC mining and Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), the hardware used to mine this cryptocurrency. Carter wrote:
Crypto Trends And Buzzwords With A Presence At CES 2023Several bitcoin companies diversifying their offerings, including taking their fabrication lines and building other focused ASICS for ML/AL processing. Companies that cross-hedge in multiple industries have more of a fighting chance to stay relevant during bear markets.
Carter described the overall sentiment in the event, from crypto companies, as “positive.” The projects that attended the CES 2022 acknowledged the current trend, are focused on “building,” and welcome the opportunity to grow without the “noise” intrinsic to bull markets.
During the event, Carter asked participants about the trends to watch in 2023. Many are eyeing the regulatory implications for the industry following the FTX collapse, while others focus on more bankruptcy filings from significant companies.
The crash in the crypto market has negative consequences for operations with debt and a high cost of doing business, but it might positively impact global BTC mining. Finally, Carter saw “significant growth in the Metaverse,” Virtual Reality (VR), and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
In closing CES is always a recharge for me. It’s good to see where the tech stack is moving and what’s getting the attention. While AI for the last year has been the buzz without a lot of tangible representation, this year it was the common theme. Ai assistants are this year 9/
— Bitsbetrippin (@BitsBeTrippin) January 9, 2023
These were some of the buzzwords during the CES 2023. The projects coming out of these sectors are poised to have implications for the nascent industry and global markets.
As of this writing, BTC’s price is experiencing positive price action following a long period of consolidation. The cryptocurrency is trading at $17,200.
