 |
| Bitcoin miners buy mining power stations |
Bitcoin miners buy entire power plants in order to enrich themselves with speculative assets.
A holding company called Stronghold Digital Mining in Pennsylvania is currently mining bitcoin. It uses the Scrubgrass power plant in Wenango County, Pennsylvania. She bought it in the summer of 2021.
As a result, Stronghold Digital Mining raised $105 million to open a powerhouse for cryptocurrency mining.
The facility currently burns waste coal to generate enough power to operate 1,800 miners. According to Stronghold Digital Mining, the company now burns 600,000 tons of coal remaining annually in Scrubgrass to power the mining operation.
Since Stronghold Digital Mining has filed a document with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the information is public and the company plans to do so.
In addition, Stronghold Digital Mining plans to increase the operation of coal-fired power plants.
In August, the company acquired a second power plant in Pennsylvania called Panther Creek Power Plant. The company plans to expand and is currently negotiating the acquisition of a third facility in the state.
Mining requires powerful computer processors to solve advanced mathematical equations. This process runs the digital ledger of cryptocurrencies, the so-called blockchain.
When these computational problems are solved, miners receive a cryptocurrency in return. The higher the computing power, the more equations to be solved and the higher the profit.
In addition, the process is very intensive and people cannot use the capabilities of the computers that they have access to.
Bitcoin mining by power plants
As a result, many miners buy mining equipment for thousands of dollars. These multi-million dollar companies can mine enough bitcoins to make the business profitable at this point.
According to the University of Cambridge’s Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, miners are expected to consume around 130 TWh of energy.
Bitcoin’s CO2 emissions are said to be about the same as for a country of 10 million people like Jordan.
The profits of the Stronghold Digital Mining power plant are funded by taxpayers. Pennsylvania is giving tax breaks to burning remaining coal, according to Bloomberg News.
In addition, the plant at Panther Creek can produce up to 80 megawatts per hour. The total net capacity of Stronghold's two digital mining plants nearly doubled to 165 megawatt-hours.
With these grants, Stronghold Digital Mining has calculated that the cost of each coin you earn from mining is less than $3,000.