Crypto mining comes in many shapes and sizes, from mega mines under the hot Texas sun to small facilities nestled in the snowy Alps of Italy.
CoinDesk reporters traveled across Europe, Asia, and North America to catch the diversity of crypto mining farms. Mining is an infamous industry, largely because miners tend to be overly secretive. Safety concerns as well as regulatory insecurity have made this industry wary of the limelight. The fact that many miners started out as maverick contractors connecting directly to hydroelectric plants in China has not helped the industry's reputation.
As a result, the image often conjured up when thinking about crypto miners is one of huge facilities burning fossil fuels or siphoning electricity off the grid, which is far from the truth. Public discussion of crypto mining is naturally based on this picture, incomplete as it may be.
There is no doubt that crypto mining requires energy. Miners transform it into hashes, or algorithmically generated strings of letters and numbers. These represent the "guess" each mining team makes when trying to "find" a new block of bitcoin. The best miners can generate over a hundred terahashes per second (TH/s). The latest model from Bitmain, the largest mining-savvy hardware manufacturer, can achieve 1 TH/s. (A terahash equals 1 trillion hashes. A petahash represents 1 quadrillion hashes. An exahash represents XNUMX quintillion hashes.)
Today's industry employs a patchwork of approaches to this task, and has grown in innovation and sophistication over the years.
This photo essay is intended to inform the talk of crypto mining by teaching its modes of existence, many of which run on renewable energy.
Kryptovault, Honefoss, Norway
Electrical substation that supplies power to a bitcoin mining farm in the suburbs of Hønefoss, Germany. (Eliza Gkritsi)
Just one hour from Oslo, the capital of Norway, is Hønefoss (fourteen inhabitants). When CoinDesk visited in late February, it was an unusually bright day for winter, and the snow was slowly melting. Cold weather is ideal for a crypto mining farm as it reduces the cost of cooling the machines.
Retired Bitmain ASIC at Kryptovault facility in Norway. (Eliza Gkritsi)
Oslo-based Kryptovault operates a forty-megawatt (MW) crypto mine in the suburbs. Of that capacity, only eighteen megawatts are currently running, director Kjetil Pettersen told CoinDesk in a roundabout way. The company decommissioned its Bitmain Antminer S9s in late 19 and is replacing them with newer, more energy-efficient SXNUMXs.
This is a common practice among crypto miners: as new machines come online, older models cannot sustain their profits unless the operation has access to very hot electricity. economic.
Kryptovault installed sound panels, seen on the left, at its Hønefoss mine after protests from neighbors. (Eliza Gkritsi)
Due to the facility's close proximity to the residential neighborhood and protests from neighbors, Kryptovault had to spend just under €2 million to install noise cancellation panels.
Wood drying in a container using the heat produced by bitcoin mining rigs at the Kryptovault mining farm in Norway. (Eliza Gkritsi)
Heat is pumped from the room where the bitcoin mining ASICs work to the bins where the wood is dried at the Kryptovault mining farm in Norway. (Eliza Gkritsi)
Piles of wood waiting to be dried outside the Kryptovault mining farm in Norway. (Eliza Gkritsi)
The Kryptovault mine also donates a byproduct of bitcoin (BTC) mining to a local business for free: heat. A forestry company uses the excess heat from the calculus to dry the wood that it sells later. The heat from the mining platforms is pumped into containers outside the facility where the wood is dried.
South of Spain, PoW Energy, PoW Containers, Meatze
Solar panels power mining rigs in a container. (Eliza Gkritsi)
We drove from the Spanish capital to the south of Spain for about 4 hours to visit the PoW Containers mining farm. We drove through countless fields of almond and olive trees, made multiple turns on rural roads, including a long dirt road, to reach the solar-powered mine.
This general purpose solar farm has a maximum capacity of ten MW, and the bitcoin mine consumes about five hundred kilowatts (KW), a small fraction. The mine is a hedge for the farm that otherwise has only one option: sell power to the grid, said Jon Arregi, creator of Meatze and Proof of Work Containers, two companies that build modular container mines and incorporate them into sites throughout Europe. Similarly, at night, the mine draws its power from the grid.
On the left, the electrical transformer that directly supplies the mining container. On the right, in a small mining operation in the south of Spain. (Eliza Gkritsi)
Electricity from the solar farm is converted from low to high voltage and pumped directly into machinery, Arregi said.
The mining machines, which produce around 12 petahashes/second in total, are housed in an unmarked container to prevent prying eyes – safety is a huge concern in an industry where an individual machine can cost upwards of €10,000. This particular mine is rarely visited except in emergencies, and it is far from any residential facilities, making security even more of a challenge.
Bitcoin mining ASIC submerged in immersion coolant at a facility in southern Spain. (Eliza Gkritsi)
To prevent the machines from overheating under the hot Spanish sun, the PoW company uses immersion cooling. This technology consists of putting the machines in drawers and then filling the drawers with a specialized mineral oil. When the machines are running, hot oil rises to the surface and then cools as it passes through a series of pipes, touching separate pipes through which cold water flows. The cold oil is then pumped into the caisson.
Blockchain HIVE, Boden, Sweden
Moving through HIVE Blockchain's Ethereum mining facility in Boden, Sweden feels like teleporting between the Arctic and a tropical beach every few meters. (Sandali Handagama)
In March, CoinDesk visited one of the largest HIVE Blockchain (HIVE) crypto mining farms located in Boden, a military town in northern Sweden. The sprawling 6,000-square-foot facility, housed in what was once a military helicopter hangar, is now home to more than 15,000 mining rigs. When CoinDesk visited, the facility was further expanded and will soon house more than 17 machines and 000 graphics processing units (GPUs). Most of the machines are AMD RX120.
The sprawling HIVE Blockchain facility in Boden, Sweden was once a military helicopter hangar (Sandali Handagama)
The 30 MW facility draws its power from two nearby hydroelectric plants. Most of its power is purchased from Vattenfall, a state-owned Swedish multinational. Ether (ETH) accounts for approximately 80% of the cryptocurrency mined from the facility. The rest is bitcoin.
Boden's HIVE facility draws its power from two local hydroelectric producers, including Vattenfall, one of Sweden's largest state-owned power companies. (Sandali Handagama)
The HIVE facility draws its power from two local hydroelectric producers, including Boden, the regional power producer. (Sandali Handagama)
The Boden crypto mining farm is an impressive maze of machinery, arranged to optimize cooling systems and pressure conditions for high efficiency. As we moved through the facility, the temperature changed drastically every few feet, as if we were teleporting between the Arctic and a tropical beach each time. The area just outside an opening through which warm air exits the facility is called a "snow-free" zone and is the only tract of space on the property that is not covered by ice or a layer of snow.
In addition to mining ethereum, the Boden HIVE Blockchain facility also hosts ASICs for mining bitcoin. (Sandali Handagama)
Boden's HIVE facility is home to around 15 mining rigs, most of which mine ether for cryptocurrencies. (Sandali Handagama)
The facility is constantly evolving to improve mining efficiency, an HIVE representative told CoinDesk. The team is always testing new machines, replacing old platforms with newer ones, looking for ways to pack more machines into a smaller space. “We even used the exact same tune twice,” the representative stated.
Boden's HIVE Blockchain facility is a complex maze of machinery and wiring, optimized for efficiency. (Sandali Handagama)
HIVE blockchain is a publicly traded company, with mining facilities in Sweden, Iceland, and Canada. Boden Ether Mining Farm was established in 2017.
Alta Novella, Borgo d'Anaunia, Italian Alps
Alta Novella, a small hydroelectric plant owned by a northern Italian municipality called Borgo d'Anaunia, recently began mining bitcoin. (Sandali Handagama)
After a short scenic train ride south from the famous alpine ski resorts of northern Italy and a 20-minute drive over icy mountain roads, we arrive at Alta Novella, a small hydroelectric plant owned by the town of Borgo d'Anaunia. , which is home to about 2.500 people.
Alta Novella recently became the first bitcoin mining farm run by a municipality in Italy. Hiding against a wall behind the power plant turbine are 40 ASIC miners. Borgo d'Anaunia's thousand-year-old mayor, Daniele Graziadei, convinced his constituents to invest in the miners to diversify the plant's income.
The Alta Novella Hydroelectric Power Plant houses 40 ASIC miners in the turbine room. (Sandali Handagama)
Municipal workers run the power plant while tech startup Alps Blockchain maintains the miners. (Sandali Handagama)
The plant draws water from a small river. Depending on the flow of the river, the plant can produce from 600 to 600 kilowatt hours. If the total production of the plant reaches XNUMX KW, about a fifth goes to the miners.
This winter, the rain has been scarce. During periods of low production, small factories like this one used to shut down because they couldn't break even. But Graziadei told CoinDesk that thanks to the miners, the factory can stay...