DPW Holdings’ Super Crypto Mining subsidiary is going to be harnessing the power of an entire river to mine cryptocurrency. They have purchased a hydroelectric dam in Valatie Falls, New York, and are converting it into a crypto mining facility. The dam continuously produces 1 MW of clean renewable energy. The crypto mining farm is expected to launch by Q4 2018.
There have been concerns that crypto mining, specifically Bitcoin mining, is an environmental danger because it is consuming tremendous amounts of fossil fuel, which could damage the environment by releasing CO2 and toxic chemicals. One popular site, Digiconomist, says Bitcoin uses the same amount of electricity as the entire country of Austria and releases over 35,000 kilotons of CO2 into the atmosphere per year. Some experts say this is an overestimate of the energy Bitcoin mining uses though, and the CO2 estimate doesn’t factor in renewable sources. There is also no real cost-benefit estimate that takes into account the benefits provided by this activity, such as an immutable and virtually impregnable network of global payments.
If mining uses renewable energy like hydroelectric then it doesn’t damage the environment and this new crypto mining operations at Valatie Falls is a good example of how crypto mining can be environmentally friendly. In general, crypto mining hubs are clustered around renewable energy sources, like geothermal in Iceland and hydroelectric in China, because power costs are lower in those regions.
In addition to using renewable hydroelectric energy as a power source, DPW Holdings is installing Anteater mining rigs produced by Coolisys that are more energy efficient. Anteaters use 10 nm chips, instead of the standard 16 nm chips, and each rig has a hash rate of 17.2 TH/s with an energy consumption of 1,430 W.
Valatie Falls has the energy capacity for about 700 Anteater rigs, which yields a hash rate near 12 Petahash/s. This is only a drop in the bucket compared to the Bitcoin network hash rate of 62,000 Petahash/s, but still would yield a respectable USD 2,000+ per day of Bitcoin revenue at least for the time being. Of course, Bitcoin’s hash rate is exponentially increasing and mining is becoming more difficult long term.
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