A US based company – Stronghold Digital Mining is trying to ward off criticism of Crypto mining for aggravating problems of environment by excessive consumption of electricity.
The mining of crypto giant Bitcoin guzzles enormous amount of electrical energy. It is a matter of concern for the sustainable future of crypto assets.
According to an estimate of University of Cambridge, annual power consumption used in the mining of Bitcoin is more than 130 TWh (Terawatt Hours) per year. This power consumption by Bitcoin mining is more than electricity consumed by nations like Finland or Argentina.
Stronghold Digital Mining claims to provide solution to this problem by extracting electrical energy from Coal ash. Most of the ongoing innovations in the field are directed towards bringing down the consumption of electricity.
The huge amounts of electricity required to mine crypto coins has been in controversies since a decade now owing to the notable growth of this industry. The question that hits us hard is that whether the whole system behind creation of crypto assets worth the potential environmental costs.
But the company based in western Pennsylvania believes that they have developed an environment friendly method to mine crypto assets.
Coal ash is the byproduct left over from burning coal to produce electricity. Stronghold Digital Mining uses leftovers of old coal power plants to produce electricity.
Stronghold processes this coal ash at a waste coal processing facility and sends the crushed coal ash to a boiler building where it is burned to generate the electricity.
This electricity in turn is used to power hundreds of computers engaged in mining of Bitcoin. “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.
On the other hand, Coal ash is a byproduct left after burning coal to produce electricity. This has adverse environmental effects especially to the groundwater as it is loaded with carcinogenic impurities and heavy metals.
Bitcoin is the world’s largest and fastest growing digital currency. It is issued through a process called mining. And uses ‘Proof of Work’ consensus mechanism. It requires a large number of computers to solve complex mathematical puzzles to verify the new block to be added within a time frame of ten minutes.
The requirement of many computers arises on the basis of the fact that the probability of solving the puzzle first is 1 in 3 lakh attempts. The relatively new validation process is based on Proof of Stake which is comparatively is low on consumption of electricity.
