MARA Holdings vs AI 🦹‍♂️


The wind farms were not a part of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid, but instead they were located within the Southwest Power Pool.

Texas has been a haven for cryptocurrency tech companies, primarily because of the state's space, deregulated power market and friendly business climate. Historically, the facilities [crypto] use up a lot of power and have generated backlash from neighbors who have complained about the noise of the machines inside. 

"Crypto mining operations currently consume around 2.3 percent of US electricity, and it requires roughly 155,000kWh to mine one Bitcoin," notes the site Data Centre Dynamics. 

Bloomberg
The rise of AI, with its insatiable demand for electricity, dwarfed the needs of crypto and upended energy markets worldwide. 
Miners must now compete with much-larger tech firms for connections to electrical grids and power contracts. 
"Bitcoin miners are being forced to go look at marginal generation," said [MARA CEO] Fred Thiel. "The AI guys can afford to pay a much higher amount for energy than a Bitcoin miner. "MARA's plan to mine only when the wind is blowing makes economic sense because its mine will house last-generation computers that would otherwise have been retired," Thiel said. 

Two weeks ago, the Public Utilities Commission adopted a rule requiring crypto and other virtual currency miners within the ERCOT grid to register their locations, ownership information and electricity demands, to further ensure that they could be watchful of this emerging source of energy consumption.

Thiel's plan: "Leveraging renewable resources that would have otherwise been curtailed" while "reducing our bitcoin production costs through vertical integration, and demonstrating MARA's commitment to environmental stewardship."


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