“If you really dive into this and understand how power markets work, it becomes clear that it [Bitcoin mining] has a very positive impact.”
Jason Les is the CEO and a director of Riot Platforms, a North American-based Bitcoin mining company and the largest publicly traded BTC miner by market capitalization. He has been actively involved in the crypto and blockchain industry for over 10 years, citing 2013 as the beginning of his deep involvement with Bitcoin. Les has significant experience in cryptocurrency mining as an engineer studying protocol development and contributing to open-source projects.
Les received his undergraduate degree in information and computer science from the University of California, Irvine. Before joining Riot, he was a founding partner of software solutions company Binary Digital. For over 10 years, starting in 2004, Les was a professional poker player. In 2015 and 2017, he was chosen as a “human benchmark” in testing the world’s best poker artificial intelligence as a part of “Man vs. Machine” at Carnegie Mellon University.
During 2022, Les continued to mark his involvement in the crypto and blockchain industry through his work with Riot Platforms. The company continued to expand its hash rate capacity throughout the year to reach new records. By the end of the year, Riot had mined an all-time high of 659 BTC and reported that it held 6,897 BTC in total. In October, the company broke ground on land to expand its mining facility. According to comments on Twitter from various Riot employees, the new offices will turn the already massive 265 acres into the largest Bitcoin mining facility in the world.
Riot underwent another big move in July when it relocated hardware from New York to Texas to take advantage of more efficient energy costs. However, the company was affected by the year’s major heat waves in Texas, which negatively impacted the local energy grid. Riot also made efforts to increase the sustainability of the mining industry. In August, lawmakers in the United States requested energy consumption information from four leading mining companies, including Riot. Les tweeted in November that “despite rising energy prices, which significantly impacted many Bitcoin miners, Riot was able to leverage our long-term fixed rate power contract to generate significant power credits and in doing so, significantly reduce our operating costs.”
In addition to his everyday role as CEO, Les spoke at several conferences in the space, including Pacific Bitcoin and the Texas Blockchain Summit, and also appeared on multiple podcasts, such as Talkin’ Investing and Blockware Intelligence. For Les, the critical topics over the last year were seemingly mining ethics, public policy, Riot’s energy and power credits, its hodl approach, and expansion plans.
In an interview, Les called the bear market of 2022 a “time to build,” and Riot’s year reflected precisely that. 2023 started off with significant developments toward the future of the company, the first one being the company’s rebranding from Riot Blockchain to Riot Platforms. According to Riot, the move aligns with its growth strategy and diversified business operations. This came after a rocky 2022 for both crypto and global markets — a year that saw Riot’s share prices drop from a high of $78 to lows of around $3.50. However, since the start of 2023, the company’s valuation has almost doubled.
Additionally, Les welcomed aboard the company’s new head of public policy in the first weeks of 2023, stating that public policy is a priority at Riot. The company also noted that it was expecting shipments of 5,130 Antminer S19 series miners during the first month of the year.
