Fintech merchant services provider and crypto mining firm The OLB Group, Inc. has signed a long-term lease on a 10,000 square foot warehouse in Bradford, Pennsylvania. The building can store as many as 2,000 Antminer machines and is situated in an industrial park near the city’s regional airport as a means of limiting the noise the machines produce and affecting nearby residents.
The OLB Group is Bringing Crypto Closer to Home
The facility will be fully powered by natural gas. OLB has also said it will be utilizing debt financing as a means of getting the funds it needs to purchase additional machines down the line. In a statement, OLB explained:
We are very pleased to be taking this next step in building the foundation for our planned aggressive development of our bitcoin mining operation. Our first facility in Bradford is currently operating on natural gas. This second facility will be powered from the power grid. This blended power solution lays the foundation to establishing a sustainable, cost-efficient bitcoin mining operation. With room to install up to 2,000 bitcoin mining machines in this second facility, this data center will eventually meet the challenge of minimizing our carbon footprint and operating a cost efficient and profitable operation.
The news comes following a year of relative shakiness for those involved in the crypto mining sector. Bitcoin and crypto mining have taken a lot of flak over the past 12 months from high-end industry experts such as Elon Musk, who initially decided that all Tesla vehicles could potentially be purchased with bitcoin. However, he later rescinded this decision, claiming that miners were not using the energy available to them well, nor have they worked to control their emissions.
Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” fame has also rung in, stating that he wouldn’t be buying any more crypto mined in China given that the nation did not invoke environmentally friendly extraction processes. Many environmentalists are concerned about the potential damage that bitcoin mining can do to the planet, though it seems like the practice is going to live on for some time given that there is still quite a bit of revenue to be enjoyed.
Growing Its Practice and Breadth
OLB works to deliver cloud-based merchant services to provide an array of comprehensive digital commerce solutions to more than 10,000 tech clients in all 50 states. The firm utilizes the services of DMint – a subsidiary of OLB Group – to mine bitcoin using natural gas and other sustainable energy. The firm is looking to deploy as many as 1,000 ASIC mining computers by the end of the year.
There are more opportunities for crypto miners in the U.S. and elsewhere since the summer of 2021, when China – which housed approximately 65 to 75 percent of the world’s mining projects – decided the practice was suddenly illegal.
Source: https://www.livebitcoinnews.com/olb-group-opens-major-crypto-mining-facility-in-pennsylvania/