Everything in Observer
Infrastructure
Business Description
Barefoot Mining, founded by former Gateway Inc. CTO Bob Burnett, operates a portfolio of investor-funded Bitcoin mining sites in Nebraska, South Dakota, and South Carolina under a direct-distribution model that routes mined bitcoin to partner wallets monthly rather than accumulating it on a corporate balance sheet.
The company traces to 2017, when Burnett and Keith Thomas, both 13-year Gateway Inc. veterans, launched Divvy Systems to design and manufacture GPU-based mining equipment. Hosting demand from Divvy Systems equipment buyers led to the creation of Barefoot Mining as a separate site-development and operations entity. By mid-2018, Divvy Systems signed a U.S. distribution and service agreement with Bitfury and has since remained Barefoot Mining's exclusive hardware supplier.
Barefoot Mining's operational footprint covers five sites. The first two were a warehouse in Nebraska and a data center in South Dakota. The third, Bitflow, operates behind the meter at a private hydroelectric facility in South Carolina, co-developed with two investment groups. Barefoot subsequently self-funded two additional South Dakota sites, and a fifth operation, Red Horse Mining, was developed with outside investors and targeted for launch in Q2 2022. The company uses the term "horse-class" for its preferred scale: mid-sized sites positioned between small hobbyist setups and the gigawatt-scale facilities operated by publicly traded miners.
Beyond its existing hydroelectric footprint in South Carolina, Barefoot Mining actively pursues partnerships covering stranded gas, flared gas, bio-energy, solar, geothermal, and wind. The company is open to site discussions globally.
The investor structure requires a minimum project commitment of $50,000. Bitcoin is deposited directly to investor wallets on approximately a monthly basis, bypassing corporate treasury accumulation and deferring tax-recognition events for individual partners. Investors get direct exposure to mined bitcoin without taking on site development, equipment management, or grid negotiations.
The leadership team draws heavily from the PC industry. Burnett holds a Computer Engineering degree from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and over 35 years in technology; Thomas holds Electrical Engineering degrees from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. Operations Manager Scott Wilhelm adds field experience from Peace Corps service in El Salvador and staff work with Peace Corps Rwanda. Burnett has written for Bitcoin Magazine, including a piece on the Bitcoin mining trilemma in July 2022, and appeared on the Stephan Livera Podcast (SLP525, November 2023) to discuss blockspace scarcity, arguing that competition for Bitcoin block inclusion will intensify as subsidy rewards diminish.
