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But one company in western Pennsylvania believes that they have
found a way to put crypto mining to work to clean up their
community.
Stronghold Digital Mining uses waste left behind by decades-old
coal power plants to generate electricity that powers hundreds
of supercomputers working to mine bitcoin.
Bitcoin, the world’s largest peer-to-peer digital currency, is
issued through a process called mining, which requires computers
to solve complex puzzles in exchange for the virtual currency.
Powering those computers involves large amounts of electricity –
in fact, more electricity is used annually to create bitcoin
than is used in the entire country of Finland.
"The bitcoin mining network itself is the largest decentralized
computer network in the world, and it's power hungry, so
co-locating bitcoin mining and a power plant makes a lot of
sense," said Greg Beard, chief executive officer of Stronghold.
Coal ash, the byproduct left over from burning coal to produce
electricity, can leach into groundwater and pollute waterways,
and contains heavy metals considered to be carcinogens.
Stronghold collects coal ash from a nearby mine and processes it
at a waste coal processing facility. After the coal ash is
sorted and crushed, it goes to a boiler building where it is
burned to generate the electricity to power the company’s
bitcoin mining operation.
"I think this is a perfect niche for crypto," said Bill Spence,
co-chairman of Stronghold Digital Mining.
(Reporting by Dan Fastenberg and Eric Cox in Kennerdell,
Pennsylvania; writing by Hannah Lang in Washington; Editing by
Mark Porter)
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