Taking the dedicated mining stage at Bitcoin 2022, Blockstream CEO Adam Back announced that his company, in partnership with Jack Dorsey’s Block, Inc., will be leveraging Tesla energy equipment for a $12 million bitcoin mining facility.
“The Tesla Solar PV array and Tesla Megapack will power Blockstream and Block’s open-source, solar and battery-powered Bitcoin mining facility,” according to a slide shared by Back during the presentation. “[The facility is] projected [to produce] 3.8 MW solar renewable power, 30 PH/s hashrate.”
A Tesla solar PV array would be a series of Tesla’s photovoltaic solar panels, while the Tesla Megapack is a large-scale, rechargeable lithium-ion battery.
Originally announced last year, the solar-powered bitcoin mining facility was described as a proof-of-concept to demonstrate that bitcoin mining can be conducted using renewable energy.
“The facility will be a proof-of-concept for a 100% renewable energy Bitcoin mine at scale, with the economics of the build out — including operational costs and returns on investment — made open to the public,” according to a press release from Block, which was called Square at the time.
Blockstream is one of if not the largest Bitcoin infrastructure companies, offering a Bitcoin mining hosting services, the Liquid Bitcoin sidechain, the c-lightning Lightning Network implementation, a Bitcoin blockchain satellite network and more. Block has numerous divisions focused on advancing the Bitcoin ecosystem as well. Both companies will be contributing $6 million to the project, per Back’s announcement.
With this latest update, Back emphasized that he sees the project as a way to prove to the world that Bitcoin solves energy crises, rather than create them.
“Bitcoin … can act as a baseload … it can actually make projects more profitable and result in a bigger power infrastructure for the world,” Back said. “Basically, Bitcoin should be the funding model to drive expansion of power infrastructure.”
Comments
Post a Comment