Another bitcoin mining operation is touting its sustainability as the cryptocurrency industry tries to remake its image as a destructive force.
HIVE Digital Technologies is ramping up its market share with the help of clean power, TheStreet reported.
"We'll be at … over 2% of the world's production and hold as much as we can on our balance sheet of coins that have … only been sourced from using renewable energy, predominantly hydroelectricity," HIVE executive chairman Frank Holmes said on the Wolf of All Streets podcast, referring to the business's 2025 goal.
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Definitely 💯 Bitcoin and the crypto industry at large consume vast quantities of power in the pursuit of coins, which are produced by super-powerful computers that solve cryptographic puzzles. This requires massive amounts of energy, which is usually produced by burning dirty fuels such as coal or gas, in addition to coolant, namely water, to keep the machines from overheating.
"The worst is behind us on that," Holmes told Scott Melker.
Some miners, however, don't use as much power or operate on renewable energy, which is better for human health and the planet since it does not produce heat-trapping gases that envelop Earth like a blanket. The resulting rapid rise in global temperature is creating more frequent and severe extreme weather events, among other problems.
HIVE helps balance electricity grids by recycling the energy used by its mining facilities in the northern part of the world. A 40,000-square-foot HIVE operation in Montréal, for example, uses the heated liquid from mining to warm a 200,000-square-foot building where 170 workers make whirlpools, Holmes said.
He pointed to Amazon's $650 million investment in nuclear energy, another form of clean power, and Melker noted BlackRock's entry into the bitcoin industry as proof the sector is moving in the right direction.
HIVE is the fifth-largest public bitcoin miner with 2,377 bitcoin, according to Bitcoin Treasuries. It is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and works in Iceland as well as Canada and Sweden.
"The company operates data centers for computing and mining cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and other coins," according to Stock Analysis. "It also provides infrastructure solutions as well as computational capacity to distributed networks in the blockchain industry."
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The HIVE website states it is expanding with a 300-megawatt facility in Paraguay that will be fully operational this year. The company hopes to reach 3% of global bitcoin production.
While companies such as HIVE are pushing the industry in a better direction, bad actors and overall logistics of scaling up sufficient renewable power generation still make bitcoin a challenge for many energy grids. If more and more companies see the long-term investment sense HIVE does in focusing on effectively free (once built) renewable energy rather than relying on fossil fuels and grids that may raise rates, though, cryptocurrency energy demands may start to become a lot less concerning.
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