As the value of bitcoin soars and concerns rise about the energy-intensive process needed to obtain it, cryptocurrency entrepreneurs in the US believe they have found a solution in flared natural gas.
Profitably creating, or mining, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies requires masses of computers dedicated to solving deliberately complicated equations — an endeavor that globally consumes more electricity than entire nations, but for which these start-ups say the jets of flaming gas placed next to oil wells are perfect power sources.
“I think the market is enormous,” said Sergii Gerasymovych, CEO of EZ Blockchain, which has six different data centers powered off natural gas in the US states of Utah and New Mexico, as well as in Canada.
Photo: AFP / Matt Lohstroh / handout
Across the country, companies like EZ Blockchain are setting up shipping containers where racks containing hundreds of computers mine cryptocurrency, fueled by natural gas from oil wells that otherwise would be burned in the open.
Interest in their work has grown over the past year. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies like ethereum and dogecoin have seen meteoric price spikes since the COVID-19 pandemic turned the global economy on its head and mainstream companies began to embrace the technology.
A backlash has formed against the digital assets’ energy usage, fueled by concerns it relies on carbon-emitting power sources that contribute to climate change.
Photo: AFP / Matt Lohstroh/ handout
This week, Tesla Inc boss Elon Musk criticized bitcoin’s power consumption, particularly of energy produced from coal, and said he would no longer accept the cryptocurrency as payment for his electric vehicles.
While entrepreneurs in the fledgling industry say that using natural gas that is otherwise wasted represents a solution to these concerns, its ability to actually cut emissions remains to be seen, said Tony Scott, managing director of analysis at oil and gas research firm BTU Analytics.
“In the grand scheme of things and relative to other load, yes, it’s small,” Scott said. “They are creating economic value; they’re not necessarily significantly changing the emissions profiles.”
Huge numbers of processors worldwide are dedicated to the task of mining bitcoin. The activity uses 149.6 terawatt-hours per year, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index (CBECI). That is slightly less than all the electricity consumed by Egypt.
As the most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin is undoubtedly valuable, trading at about US$50,000 in the middle of this month from less than US$10,000 a year earlier, giving miners incentive to find the cheapest source of power to increase their margins.
Enter flared natural gas. Oil producers flare natural gas if they cannot find a way to process it, which, with prices low and pipelines complicated to build, can be the case worldwide.
“Miners tend to be based around areas where there tends to be surplus power. What is new ... is this whole concept of taking gas flaring,” said Jason Deane, bitcoin analyst at Quantum Economics.
Flaring combusts many of the greenhouse gases in natural gas, but the International Energy Agency said that the approximately 150 billion cubic meters of natural gas flared worldwide in 2019 put out about the same amount of carbon dioxide as Italy.
Using flared gas to power the application-specific integrated circuits that mine bitcoin does not end emissions entirely, but is more efficient than flaring it and puts energy that is otherwise wasted to use.
“We come in, they’re making zero for their gas, we say: ‘Hey, we’ll come in [and] take the gas off your hands, give you a little something,’” Giga Energy Solutions cofounder Matt Lohstroh said.
“We’ll be able to reduce your emissions you’re putting out, combust it, create economic value on our end,” he added.
Natural gas’s edge is in the cost of power. CBECI estimates that the average global power cost for bitcoin mining is about US$0.05 per kilowatt hour. Lohstroh said that natural gas power could bring the kilowatt hour cost to below US$0.018.
Interest has grown in diverting flared gas to cryptocurrency mining, and not just because the digital assets are growing in value.
“There’s more scrutiny on issuing new flare permits and I think these producers are realizing that,” said Britt Swann, who is leading holding company Ecoark’s expansion into cryptocurrency mining.
“They are willing to play ball and figure out a way to use that gas without necessarily wanting any value for it,” Swann said.
Where companies differ is over what to do with bitcoin and other digital assets once they get it.
Ecoark intends to convert it into dollars, but Lohstroh plans to hold the bitcoin he mines, which he believes will one day underpin a new global financial system.
“No need to sell the most valuable asset in the world that’s underpriced,” he said.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS