Moving Ownership Faster than Electrons

Welcome back! This is Canaan's weekly newsletter on Bitcoin mining, energy, and compute infrastructure.

Tokenization has spent years just being a conference-panel buzzword. Now, the idea behind it is showing up in very different places. India launched a pilot in which tokenized corporate bonds settle against the RBI's wholesale digital rupee. The European Central Bank switched on Pontes, a bridge that lets tokenized securities settle in central bank money. And CME plans to start trading futures on the rental price of Nvidia GPUs, subject to regulatory review.

These different markets seem to be aligned on the idea that a financial claim or contract, whether a government bond or an hour of GPU time, can be priced and moved faster than the thing itself.

Bitcoin was the prototype. Since 2009 it has settled around the clock and across borders, open to anyone with a connection. Traditional finance is now building those properties in, carefully.

Sovereign and corporate debt is moving first. The ECB plans to put a small slice of its own funds into tokenized euro-area government and agency bonds. In the US, tokenized Treasury funds already hold about $14.7 billion, per RWA.xyz. This year, the SEC cleared Nasdaq to trade tokenized shares on the same order book as ordinary ones.

Mining also got here early. Luxor created its hashprice index in 2020 to put a daily price on hashrate, and regulated hashrate futures followed on Bitnomial in 2024. This year, Omnes and Apex Group announced plans to issue a tokenized, hashrate-backed note on Base. Compute seems to be running the same sequence: an index, then derivatives, then tokenized claims.

It's worth distinguishing tokenized assets from AI tokens. An AI token is a unit used to measure model input or output, not a financial claim on infrastructure. Nvidia now markets its newest racks on throughput per megawatt, pitching it as the figure power-limited AI factories should care about above all. The exchanges are pricing compute the same way. CME's GPU contracts will list on NYMEX, better known for oil and natural gas. ICE plans compute futures on NATIVX's COIL index, which prices tokenized compute against an energy benchmark and is designed to sit on the same screen as ICE's power and gas futures.

For the people who build and run this infrastructure, the first implication is practical. Output with a public price can be hedged, and hedged revenue can be financed. Luxor made that case when it launched hashrate futures, arguing that steadier revenue improves a miner's standing with lenders and lowers its cost of capital. GPU operators are about to get the same tool.

The second implication is that tokenization moves claims, not electrons. While capital is getting faster and more mobile, interconnection queues and chip supply still run on physical time. The cheaper the representation layer becomes, the more value concentrates in the physical one.

In the News

• MARA Posts $100M Deposit, Reworks Texas Deal Amid Data Center Audit

• Inside Oracle's delays at $165B Project Jupiter data center

• Crusoe Details Google's Texas AI Campus, With Links to 531 MW of Wind

• Hut 8 Wins Poolin Auction With $140 Million Bid as AI Fuels Race for Power

• Cipher Secures 20-Year Barber Lake Commitment Worth Over $9 Billion

• Applied Digital Confirms Brookwood, Alabama, as Site of Delta Forge 2 AI Factory

• Nscale Secures $3.36 Billion in Pre-IPO Financing Led by Third Point

• CoreWeave, Nebius take Platinum in SemiAnalysis rankings

Network at a Glance

• BTC price (USD): ~$84,337

• Network hashrate: 976.7 EH/s

• Difficulty: 132.7T

• Hashprice: ~$39.99 / PH / day

Project Spotlight

In September 2023, Canaan marked its tenth anniversary with Avalon Bitcoin & Crypto Day at the Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore, hosting more than 400 clients and partners. The launch that week was the A14 series, and its top model was the immersion-cooled A1466I.

https://x.com/WuBlockchain/status/1701442270053236756

The headline number was efficiency. At 170 TH/s and 19.5 J/TH, the A1466I was Canaan's first machine rated below 20 joules per terahash. Two air-cooled siblings launched with it: the A1466 at 150 TH/s and the A1446 at 130 TH/s.

The timing mattered. The April 2024 halving was seven months away, and efficiency was about to decide which fleets kept running. Early production units shipped that autumn, with bulk deliveries following in 2024.

Events and Media

• Canaan Vice President Johnny Yao gave a main-stage keynote at BTCHEL in Helsinki. There, Canaan showcased its hash-to-heat solutions, including an 8 MW Nordic district heating project. Earlier in the week, he joined the heat-reuse panel at the European Mining Summit, convened by BTCHEL.
  

• Canaan is at Yotta 2026 in Las Vegas this week, running September 28 to 30 at Caesars Forum.

• Canaan donated an Avalon Mini 3 to the Blockchain Association in Washington, DC.
  

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Disclaimer: This newsletter shares industry commentary and third-party news for informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by third-party sources are those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Canaan Inc. For official news, please refer to Canaan's press releases and SEC filings at https://investor.canaan-creative.com/.