Bitcoin Asia 2025: mining hubs and a $1 million dream
Bitcoin Asia 2025, held in Hong Kong, was less an industry expo than a congress of miners – a gathering for Asia’s hash power communities that sustain the network’s backbone.
The hall was filled not only with fund managers and exchange representatives but also with farm operators from China, Kazakhstan, Southeast Asia and North America. These are the people whose machines, energy contracts and risk-taking keep Bitcoin alive.
The most striking moment came on August 29, when Eric Trump took the stage and declared with characteristic directness: “There’s no question Bitcoin hits $1 million.”
The words, spare yet emphatic, electrified the audience. For holders, it was validation. For miners, it was something more essential—a reassurance of purpose. Only at ever-higher valuations can the enormous commitments to hardware, energy and infrastructure remain viable.
Protocol design and scarcity
Satoshi Nakamoto’s original design, as set out in the 2008 white paper Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, has long defined the boundaries of supply. The total is capped at 21 million coins.
By August 2025, around 20 million had already been mined, leaving fewer than one million still to be released. Every 210,000 blocks—roughly every four years—the block reward halves, slowing the pace of issuance. The final coin is expected around 2140, embedding scarcity into the network’s structure.
Market scale and the million-dollar vision
At a current price of around US$108,000, Bitcoin commands a market capitalization of about $2.1 trillion—already one-seventh the value of global gold.
If it were to reach the $1 million mark, its total value would exceed $21 trillion, overtaking gold and challenging equities and bonds as the central pillars of global capital.
The author believes that if Bitcoin were ever to hit $1 million per coin, circulation would diminish sharply, transforming it from a medium of exchange into a reserve asset—potentially more valuable than gold itself.
Yet the path toward such a milestone is far from smooth. Bitcoin’s ascent depends not only on investor conviction but also on its ability to overcome formidable constraints.
Regulation remains the foremost obstacle: the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), the EU’s MiCA framework and China’s prohibitions all cast uncertainty over exchange operations and cross-border flows, directly affecting confidence.
Market depth, too, is limited. With daily trading volumes of $30–50 billion and low payment adoption, sustaining a $21 trillion valuation is anything but straightforward.
Energy and environmental concerns are equally pressing. Bitcoin mining already consumes an estimated 0.5% to 1% of global electricity, drawing ESG scrutiny and raising cost pressures that could cap hashrate expansion.
Competition is also intensifying, as Ethereum and other assets divert capital; Bitcoin’s dominance hovers around 50–60%. Beyond economics, technological uncertainty looms: the limited adoption of the Lightning Network – and the long-term risk posed by quantum computing – remain unresolved questions.
Ultimately, all these challenges converge on a single axis: regulatory uncertainty. It influences liquidity, adoption and institutional participation more directly than any other factor – and may well determine whether Bitcoin’s “million-dollar dream” is ever realized.
The miners’ perspective
Bitcoin Asia became not just an industry forum but a rallying point for morale. Liu Siyu – a long-time entrepreneur and fund investor in tech finance who operates large-scale mining farms, and who was listed on Forbes China’s 30 Under 30 in 2017 and the Hurun 30×30 leadership list – attended the conference.
He summarized his philosophy succinctly: “Speculating on coins is inferior to holding them; holding coins is inferior to mining them.”
The author adds: Bitcoin mining is heavily dependent on energy. Cheap, stable and continuous electricity – such as hydro or wind at costs as low as $0.03 per kilowatt-hour – is the competitive core, often accounting for 60–80% of total costs.
Mining is technically demanding, involving:
- Hardware: ASIC miners optimized for SHA-256, with advanced chip design, efficient cooling, and high-performance computing (e.g., Bitmain Antminer).
- Operations: network management, mining pool optimization and security.
Mining is thus not crude consumption but a composite industry – one that sits at the intersection of energy, semiconductors and digital infrastructure.
Asia continues to anchor the majority of global hash power. Hosting the conference in Hong Kong underscored the city’s role at the intersection of finance and politics. Eric Trump’s presence elevated the debate, framing Bitcoin as a potential “supra-sovereign asset” in rivalry with the US dollar and China’s digital yuan.
Conclusion
Bitcoin Asia 2025 will not be remembered for panels on energy or ETF flows, but for one line: Bitcoin will reach $1 million. For a few days, Hong Kong stood at the center of the debate over the future of money.
If Bitcoin approaches the million-dollar mark in the years ahead, historians may trace the momentum back to this gathering, where miners assembled and a political figure gave their cause a voice loud enough to echo across markets and borders.
Jeffrey Sze is chairman of Habsburg Asia (partially owned by the Habsburg family) and peneral Partner of both Archduke United LPF and Asia Empower LPF. He specializes in high-end art transactions and RWA-T operations. In 2017, he secured a cryptocurrency exchange license in Switzerland.