NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang: Bitcoin Transforms Surplus Energy into a New Currency Revolution

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated that Bitcoin is absorbing surplus energy and storing it as a new form of currency that people can carry with them and take anywhere they want. The head of the AI chip giant believes that Bitcoin offers a digital transformation path for energy resources, and this structure is becoming one of Bitcoin’s key value foundations.

Bitcoin’s Value Foundation: Digital Transformation of Surplus Energy

(Source: X)

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said at a forum: “Bitcoin converts the world’s idle or surplus energy into a new kind of currency, making it portable and transferable anywhere.” This perspective provides a brand-new value framework for Bitcoin, going beyond the traditional “digital gold” or “speculative asset” positioning.

Huang added, “This provides a digital transformation path for energy resources,” commenting, “This structure is becoming one of the key value foundations of Bitcoin.” This narrative closely links Bitcoin to energy economics, suggesting that Bitcoin mining is not merely an “energy waste,” but rather a process of converting otherwise unusable surplus energy into a portable, transferable form of currency.

From Nvidia’s perspective, this view is twofold. First, Nvidia is the world’s largest GPU manufacturer, and GPUs were the core hardware for Bitcoin mining (especially in the early days) and remain dominant in mining other cryptocurrencies. Although Bitcoin mining now primarily uses dedicated ASIC miners, Nvidia’s products still play a leading role in mining cryptocurrencies like Ethereum. Second, Nvidia is also a core supplier for AI computing, and AI training similarly requires large amounts of energy. By positioning Bitcoin as “energy currency,” Huang is, to some extent, also defending high-energy computation industries.

Three Major Advantages of Bitcoin’s Energy Transformation

Utilizing Idle Energy: Transforming surplus hydropower during wet seasons or waste energy from gas flaring into economic value

Energy Arbitrage Mechanism: Miners can move to regions with the lowest energy costs, optimizing global energy allocation efficiency

Portable Currency Form: Storing energy in the form of digital currency, enabling value transfer across regions and over time

This narrative echoes the growing “green mining” storyline within the Bitcoin community. Many Bitcoin miners are turning to renewable energy, especially surplus hydropower during wet seasons or geothermal energy. Mining farms in places like Iceland, Norway, and Sichuan, China, are typical examples of this model. Huang’s comments provide mainstream tech company endorsement for this trend.

The AI Race Is a Marathon, Not a Single Breakthrough

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang believes that the outcome of the artificial intelligence race will not be determined by a single breakthrough. On “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Huang described the rapid development of AI as the latest chapter in a long-term global technological competition, one that has been reshaping the geopolitical landscape since World War II and the Cold War.

Huang said, “We have always been in a technological race with others.” He compared today’s AI leadership contest to the Manhattan Project. He believes the difference lies in the pace: AI development is not a one-time leap but advances in waves, with progress that may be easy to overlook at the time but obvious in hindsight.

This analogy carries deep historical significance. The Manhattan Project was the top-secret U.S. effort to develop the atomic bomb during World War II, gathering the top scientists and vast resources of the era. The project not only changed the outcome of the war but also reshaped the postwar international order. By comparing the AI race to the Manhattan Project, Huang suggests that AI technology holds similar strategic importance in determining national destinies.

According to the chip giant’s CEO, this doesn’t mean there’s little risk. Huang noted that in the past two years, AI systems’ capabilities have increased nearly 100-fold, and this rapid progress has heightened public concerns over autonomous weapons and machines exceeding human moral constraints. A 100-fold capability increase is a staggering figure which, if true, would mean AI is advancing faster than any previous technological revolution in history.

However, Huang’s perspective is the opposite: he claims that most of the momentum is being directed toward functionality and safety, making systems more reliable, useful, and less prone to errors. This narrative seeks to quell public fears of AI running amok, emphasizing that technological progress is primarily reflected in utility and safety improvements, not merely the pursuit of greater intelligence.

Debate over Defense AI and the Quantum Threat

Huang also defended the U.S. military’s role in AI development, arguing that defense sector involvement can normalize the technology’s position in national security, rather than leaving it to mysterious, unaccountable actors. This viewpoint has sparked controversy in Silicon Valley, where many tech workers oppose the use of AI for military purposes.

Rogan highlighted some familiar concerns: AI surpassing human judgment and the long-term threat of quantum computing potentially breaking modern cryptography. The threat quantum computing poses to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin is a long-standing topic, as quantum computers could theoretically crack the elliptic curve cryptography currently protecting Bitcoin wallets.

Huang countered that AI will always be “one step ahead,” and history offers many examples of society panicking over new inventions, only to adapt once the technology becomes better understood and regulated. This optimism reflects a typical Silicon Valley elite stance: believing that technical problems will ultimately be solved by more technology.

If Huang’s ideal end state is someone holding up a winner’s trophy, that’s not the case. It’s closer to a calmer scenario: AI becoming infrastructure, playing an indispensable role in everyday systems—from healthcare to transportation—quietly blending into the background, less as a world-conquering intelligence and more as a brand-new computational layer that people take for granted because it runs so reliably.

Nvidia’s Strategic Positioning and Its Intersection with the Crypto Industry

Huang’s positive assessment of Bitcoin is no accident. While Nvidia doesn’t directly participate in the cryptocurrency business, its GPU products hold significant importance in the crypto mining market. During the 2021 crypto bull market, Nvidia’s GPUs were in short supply, partly due to heavy purchases by miners. Although Nvidia has tried to limit GPU mining performance to distinguish between gamers and miners, mining demand has still brought considerable revenue to the company.

More importantly, Nvidia’s dominance in AI has deep technological commonalities with the crypto industry. Both require large-scale parallel computing, high energy efficiency, and continuous hardware innovation. By positioning Bitcoin as “energy currency,” Huang is, in a sense, legitimizing the entire high-energy computation industry: this energy consumption isn’t wasted—it’s creating new forms of value.

From a strategic perspective, Nvidia needs to find ongoing sources of demand for its products. AI training is currently the biggest growth driver, but crypto mining, scientific computing, and other high-performance computing applications are also important markets. Huang’s endorsement of Bitcoin helps maintain the legitimacy of the crypto industry and thus stabilizes Nvidia’s diversified revenue streams.