Cryptocurrency miners are taking more than just terminology from the natural resource sector.
A Reuters article appearing in the Financial Post details how new partnerships are forming between these miners, who require vast amounts of energy to supply the necessary computing power to “mine” for cryptocurrency by solving complex math problems, and oil companies, who are providing them with stray and unwanted natural gas that would otherwise be wasted in the burn of a flare stack.
The article details how mobile trailers filled with supercomputers are being rigged up to wells across the oil fields in the United States and Canada because it is one of the cheapest ways to obtain the enormous amount of energy that they need to operate.
And the arrangement is a mutually beneficial one, as the article reports:
“In some cases, cryptocurrency miners pay the oil firms for their natural gas wholly or in part using the coins they mine. In the case of Kirkwood, EZ Blockchain uses stranded natural gas to make Bitcoin, giving it all to Kirkwood. EZ Blockchain makes money by supplying equipment and mining services for a fee.”
While critics argue that this practice merely displaces emissions rather than replacing them, proponents assert that the oil-cryptocurrency alliance moves mining for virtual coins to North America and away from Asia where currently 60 percent of such operations are located and which largely rely on coal-powered electricity — a process that produces about twice as much C02 as natural gas.
