A new partnership between Blockstream and the Australian investment bank Macquarie Group wants to open a climate-neutral mining location in the USA.
Mining forms the backbone of Bitcoin. Not only does it ensure the inflow of new BTC, it also secures the network against external attacks. With increasing popularity and rising prices, the activities related to the mining of digital gold increased – and with it logically also the power consumption. Bitcoin is therefore repeatedly criticized and has to put up with questions about its sustainability. The debate last flared up again in May when Tesla boss Elon Musk announced on Twitter that Bitcoin payments were being suspended at the car manufacturer due to environmental concerns. And the previous mining hotspot China jumped on the bandwagon and gradually restricted mining activities under the pretext of climate neutrality in the Middle Kingdom.
Since the last debate, however, it has been shown that miners are increasingly trying to shake off their image as climate-damaging energy guzzlers. The latest example of this is a partnership between Blockstream and the Australian investment bank Macquarie Group. The US company supplies Bitcoin mining equipment to institutional and corporate customers. Blockstream also offers hosting services where it provides mining equipment and then hands it over to the customer. Like the provider in a Press release stated on Thursday that the aim of the cooperation is to open a new “climate neutral” mining site in the United States.
“Bitcoin Mining Can Drive Clean Energy Transition”
Blockstream’s most recent partnership follows a series of collaborations that the mining hardware provider announced earlier this year. The company was in the focus of reporting around the beginning of June when the payment service provider Square invested US $ 5 million in a solar-powered mining facility. Previously, the news about the cooperation between the mining provider and the Norwegian energy company Aker caused a stir. Back then, Blockstream CIO Chris Cook said:
Ultimately, we hope to demonstrate how bitcoin mining, coupled with renewable energy, can help drive the clean energy transition.
Blockstream CIO Chris Cook.
This green trend reversal has been observed for some time – also beyond the mining sector. For example, the US investment company Viridi Funds launched an ETF at the end of July that invests exclusively in climate-neutral stocks of mining companies and semiconductor companies.
If you want to know more about the actual environmental impact of mining, check out the July issue of Cryptocompass recommended. In it, we subjected the most popular allegations against the digital prospecting process to a detailed fact check.