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Bitcoin mining has become more difficult since its inception. - 2
Marathon Digital Holdings is among the biggest miners.
With only a few Bitcoins (BTC) remaining to mine and the next halving making it all the more hard to mine, the race among the crypto miners is likely to pick up pace soon. However, the environment must not be avoided. Mining requires energy which eventually emits carbon that is harmful to the atmosphere. Clean energy is a way to reduce it and crypto miner Marathon Digital Holdings believes highly in it.
A Symbiotic Relationship
The company’s chief growth officer Adam Swick recently explained the current relationship between Bitcoin mining and energy in today’s world. He says, “There is more of a symbiotic relationship between an energy producer and Bitcoin miners, rather than a customer-seller relationship.”
Abu Dhabi reached out to Marathon Digital, as Adam told the news website, to fill the seasonal energy gap due to high power consumption by the city’s air conditioners. Bitcoin miners can easily compensate for energy generation and consumption mismatches.
Excess energy can cause a power grid to overheat which could damage it extensively. On the other hand, a deficit could fail to meet the region’s demand.
Bitcoin mining has become more difficult since its inception. There was a time when crypto miners simply received 50 BTC for adding a block. It has gone down to just 6.25 BTC today. However, the price rose to a new high, making the rewards even in context to fiat value.
Halving, the process that causes rewards to be cut in half, also affects the price, analysts believe. It has attracted more participants to take part in BTC mining. Thus, adding up more machinery and increasing hashpower globally. A million Bitcoin miners are active across the globe according to the available data.
Marathon Digital Holdings is among the biggest miners, Riot Platforms remains the leader in the sector. To this date, the former holds the most, 13,396 BTC, today. Meanwhile, the latter is the biggest in terms of energy capacity. Its Rockdale facility can process 750 MW of power. They are developing another mine reportedly with a capacity of 1 GW.
Energy-intensive processes render crypto mining harmful to the environment. The sector is responsible for about 0.3% of global carbon emissions. A United Nations University study debates the potential of Bitcoin mining taking the carbon emissions above the goal of the Paris Agreement to halt anthropogenic climate warming below 2°Celsius.
The interview also talks about how mining equipments have changed over time. Fans-cooled machines have moved to hydro-cooling or immersion-cooling. It requires a machine to use closed-loop systems circulating coolant or submerging it into the liquid.
It has reduced noise pollution which was a larger problem in the past. The humming noise or drone caused by fans in a facility can generate up to 90 decibels of sound, sufficient to cause hearing loss. This might be the reason miners prefer to set up their shops in countries like Iceland to use the abundant hydropower there.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2023/11/20/bitcoin-mining-can-balance-energy-mismatches-in-power-grid/