GoMining CEO Mark Zalan: Bitcoin’s Next Chapter Is About Spending, Not Just Holding

In a rooftop conversation with Blockster contributor Eric Spivak in New York City, GoMining CEO Mark Zalanexplained how the company is expanding from mining infrastructure into a broader Bitcoin ecosystem—and why payments may be the next major test of Bitcoin adoption.

Bitcoin has spent much of its life becoming an asset people accumulate, secure and hold. Mark Zalan believes its next chapter will depend on something more ordinary: whether people can actually use it.

Speaking with Blockster contributor Eric Spivak at a rooftop event in New York City, the GoMining CEO described a company that is moving beyond its original identity as a Bitcoin-mining business. The broader ambition, he said, is to build an ecosystem where users can mine Bitcoin, store it, earn on it and eventually spend it without leaving the same product environment.

“We’re Bitcoin maxis. We believe in the Bitcoin future,” Zalan said. For GoMining, mining remains the economic and technical foundation—but no longer the endpoint.

Guests in conversation during GoMining’s New York City rooftop event. Photo: Blockster

From Mining Product to Bitcoin Ecosystem

GoMining began by making Bitcoin mining economics accessible to users who would not otherwise operate specialized hardware or manage data-center infrastructure. Zalan said the platform has grown to more than six million registered users and manages more than 18 exahashes per second of mining capacity, with most of that capacity associated with its user community.

That growth has created a less visible challenge: the infrastructure team must continually secure sites, equipment, energy and operational capacity quickly enough to support front-end demand.

Zalan compared the experience to “running in front of a running train.” Bitcoin data centers are capital-intensive physical systems, and the tolerance for experimentation changes once tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure are involved.

On the product side, teams can move quickly while testing whether a feature has market demand. On the infrastructure side, he argued, speed must be paired with disciplined execution.

GoMining brought its community together above Manhattan for an evening focused on Bitcoin’s evolving utility. Photo: Blockster

AI Is Increasing the Pressure on Infrastructure

The rise of artificial intelligence has added another source of demand for sites, energy, materials and specialized data-center talent. Zalan acknowledged meaningful overlap between AI compute and Bitcoin mining, but he does not see that competition as an existential constraint.

Instead, he said it has forced GoMining to become “leaner,” “stronger” and “faster.” In his view, organizations that are never challenged can become complacent—and in a fast-moving market, complacency is more dangerous than competition.

The company’s infrastructure pipeline remains ambitious. Zalan said GoMining’s founder has discussed building as much as one gigawatt of additional capacity over the next twelve months. That is a target rather than a completed build, and its outcome will depend on execution, available sites and the economics of deployment.

The Unfinished Bitcoin Payments Problem

The conversation then moved to GoBTC Pay, GoMining’s attempt to close one of Bitcoin’s oldest gaps: the distance between being valuable and being convenient.

Bitcoin was introduced as peer-to-peer electronic cash, yet it became far more successful as a long-term store of value than as a routine payment method. The reasons are familiar. Base-layer transactions are not designed to provide the kind of instant point-of-sale experience consumers expect, and many attempts to improve speed or convenience have introduced new custody, liquidity or infrastructure tradeoffs.

GoMining’s thesis is that its mining infrastructure can help create a different experience. The company describes GoBTC Pay as an open, Bitcoin-native payment protocol offering instant confirmation to merchants while transactions ultimately settle on Bitcoin’s base layer. GoMining says the system uses its mining stack and Stratum V2 infrastructure to prioritize relevant transactions.

The commercial case, Zalan argued, will not be won by Bitcoin ideology alone. It will be won by user experience.

“The solution actually wins,” he said, pointing to the way newer financial-technology companies have displaced entrenched incumbents despite their brand recognition and distribution.

Bitcoin-themed live artwork provided a visual backdrop to the evening’s conversations. Photo: Blockster

Self-Custody Versus Simplicity

That user-experience requirement creates a difficult design question: how should a Bitcoin product preserve self-custody while meeting the expectations of merchants who simply want payments to work?

Zalan said GoMining’s answer is to give merchants a choice. Sophisticated users can select a self-custodial path, while merchants seeking a more managed experience can choose a custodial implementation, subject to availability and applicable rules.

The tradeoff matters. Custodial products can support additional services because the provider can see and manage balances within the product. Self-custodial products preserve direct user control but limit what a platform can do on the user’s behalf.

GoMining’s published materials describe GoBTC Pay’s core architecture as non-custodial and based on a two-of-three multisignature structure. The company says consumers pay no transaction fee, while merchants pay 0.2%, split between participating wallets and miners.

Regulation Will Shape What Comes Next

Some of GoMining’s most ambitious ideas remain dependent on regulation. Zalan discussed the possibility of making merchant balances immediately available or allowing them to begin earning as soon as a payment arrives, but he was careful not to present those features as universally available.

The answer, he said, changes by jurisdiction. Europe, the United States and other markets each impose different requirements, while US payment activity can add state-level complexity on top of federal rules.

That leaves GoMining balancing three overlapping questions: what is technically possible, what makes sense financially and what regulators will permit in each market.

The event connected members of New York’s Bitcoin and digital-asset community. Photo: Blockster

Making Bitcoin Useful

The larger message from Zalan was not that mining is becoming less important. It is that mining can become the infrastructure beneath a wider range of Bitcoin services.

GoMining is positioning that infrastructure as the foundation for a full-service Bitcoin ecosystem: mining, storage, yield-oriented products and payments. The company still has to prove that consumers and merchants want these services at scale—and that it can navigate the operational and regulatory complexity involved.

But its direction is clear. Bitcoin’s next adoption milestone may not be another investment product or treasury announcement. It may be whether holding Bitcoin and using Bitcoin can finally become parts of the same everyday experience.

As Zalan put it, Bitcoin “was always meant to be an electronic peer-to-peer cash system.” GoMining is betting that its mining infrastructure can help move that idea closer to reality.

Published on Bitcoin

GoMining CEO Mark Zalan: Bitcoin’s Next Chapter Is About Spending, Not Just Holding