Hut 8 CEO weighs in on the bull and bear markets from a mining perspective

cointelegraph.com:

In January 2023, during the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual conference in Davos, Switzerland, Jaime Leverton, CEO of Hut 8, a crypto mining entity that trades as a public company, sat down with me for a fireside chat at the Crypto Summit on the Promenade. Leverton outlined some of her views on the recent shakeout in the cryptocurrency market and reflected on how Bitcoin (BTC) mining fares during the current turbulent period for the industry.

Throughout 2021 and 2022, the crypto industry experienced significant growth, followed by bear market struggles, bankruptcies and job cuts. Leverton took on the position of leading Hut 8 Mining as CEO a little over two years ago and experienced those ups and downs from the front line.

“Obviously, all of us in crypto have experienced the volatility,” Leverton said when asked about her thoughts on the last couple of years while leading Hut 8 through the crypto industry’s ups and downs. “I think the mining industry, in particular, has gone through some pretty big swings in the last two years,” she added, noting that “2022 was really the perfect storm from a Bitcoin mining industry perspective.” She continued:

A pioneer in the Bitcoin mining sector as far as public entities go, Hut 8 hit the Canadian market in 2018 and subsequently the Nasdaq in 2022, Leverton noted. The 2021 crypto bull run attracted sizable capital inflows to digital asset mining, which increased leverage, according to the Hut 8 CEO.

“Then you couple that with the perfect storm that I referenced happened in 2022 — the industry has really been shaken up, and people that took on a lot of leverage we’ve seen struggle, and so we’re now in a period of starting to see some consolidation in the space, we’re starting to see