A natural gas-fired power plant in the US state of New York uses the energy it generates in times of low demand to mine Bitcoin with its own computer farm. This generates up to 5.5 BTC worth around 45,000 US dollars a day.
The USA once again lives up to its reputation as a country that is full of innovation: The operators of a power plant have come up with the idea of using unused electricity at night to operate Bitcoin Mining. As several US media report unanimously, this little story takes place in the state of New York in a small village called Dresden with just 300 inhabitants. There, the energy company Greenidge Generation has committed itself to environmentally friendly solutions. Because the power plant in Dresden runs on natural gas, it can hardly react to fluctuations in demand. In other facilities of this kind, gas is simply flared off. Greenidge Generation now avoids this waste by operating a Bitcoin Mining Farm and sees its project as a potential model for other power plants.
Bitcoin Mining in the USA – can it even pay off?
Greenidge Generation has brought on board the investment company Atlas Holdings for its BTC project, which according to the information provided has provided 65 million US dollars. Among other things, 7,000 Asic Miners were purchased for this purpose, which consume around 14 megawatts when fully operational. The power plant itself currently produces between 30 and 104 megawatts of power, and a shutdown would be necessary for less than 30 megawatts. On good days, the Greenidge Generation Mining Pool finds 5.5 BTC with a current value of about 45,000 US dollars. Since electricity costs are not incurred or only symbolically, it would take about five years for the investment to pay off in this model calculation. However, this does not take into account the upcoming Bitcoin Halving or the considerable price fluctuations of BTC. Although the concept sounds impressively simple, profitability has yet to prove itself in the medium term.
Nevertheless, Greenidge Generation and Atlas Holdings are already talking about expanding Bitcoin Mining and extending the computer farm to the maximum capacity of 104 MW. Foreign investors will also be invited. A positive side effect of the project is the creation of new jobs. Negotiations are underway with the authorities about tax breaks.
Is environmentally friendly Bitcoin Mining becoming a trend?
The news also came from the USA in 2019. to want to operate Bitcoin Mining with green electricity. This project also raises the question of profitability. However, in these pilot projects, there is always something going on between the lines: not to leave mining of BTC and other crypto currencies to China without competition. The aim is to retain know-how and capacities in the country – proof of the extent to which crypto-currencies are already accepted in the USA, at least by progressive investors.
Will the Greenidge Generation example also set an international precedent? Other companies, for example, are developing mobile mining farms to exploit temporary energy surpluses, and still others are developing models that will allow the mining of Bitcoin and Co. to count positively towards greenhouse gas emissions. Such concepts tend to take some of the wind out of the sails of the counter-argument to Bitcoin, according to which BTC’s mining is environmentally harmful due to high power consumption.
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