Jack Dorsey’s payments company, Block (formerly known as Square), announced last Thursday that it was building an open bitcoin mining system.
The announcement was made by Thomas Templeton, chief hardware officer of Block, in a series of tweets. In it, he indicates that the company will strive to make it easy for everyone to buy a mining device.
Responsible mining
“Our desire is to make mining more distributed and efficient at all levels, from purchase to installation, including maintenance and mining itself,” he explains. “What interests us is that mining goes far beyond the creation of new bitcoins. We see it as a long-term need for a fully decentralized, permissionless future. »
He says Block will focus on making the mining process reliable and accessible to more people. Furthermore, the company wants to focus on performance that has a good balance, especially on topics that concern cryptominers, such as lower power consumption and higher hash rates.
“From what we’ve heard, common issues are with heat dissipation and dust. Almost daily, systems become non-functional, requiring tedious reboots,” he describes. “We want to build something that just works. »
Bitcoin mining uses custom PCs (or cryptomining rigs) to solve cryptographic equations and store that data on a blockchain. Initially, the interest of mining is above all to accumulate cryptocurrencies without having to pay for them. But mining requires state-of-the-art hardware with a powerful graphics processing unit (GPU). And this hardware is becoming more and more expensive to obtain and operate.
Thomas Templeton clarifies that Block plans for its bitcoin mining process to be decentralized and to be built in an open manner in collaboration with its community.
Block and cryptocurrencies
Block began expressing interest in the construction of a bitcoin mining system in october last. However, it is not yet known when this system will be put into service.
Bitcoin has been part of Block’s history for several years. It was indeed in 2018 that the payments company announced the Cash application, allowing its users to carry out transactions with cryptocurrency. In addition, Block now holds nearly 8,027 bitcoins, or about $43 million.
Jack Dorsey is also a strong supporter of cryptocurrencies. In 2018, he claimed that bitcoin would be the “internet currency” in the near future.
The cryptocurrency craze is affecting more and more tech companies as this market grows and gains in popularity. According to experts, 90% of the world’s population is expected to adopt cryptocurrencies within the next decade. And in fact, this market has grown over the past few years: for example, it went from $1.44 billion in 2020 to $1.63 billion in 2021.
Source: ZDNet.com