A Pennsylvania entity named Stronghold Digital Mining generates power to mine Bitcoin with waste from burning coal.
One of the judgments aimed at Bitcoin is that the currency is not friendly with the earth, given the vast amount of energy needed for carrying out mining activities. Elon Musk warned the world about this issue last year when he said that Tesla would no longer accept digital currency as long as mining does not comply with greener solutions.
According to Reuters, an entity located in western Pennsylvania revealed the implementation of a new way to put crypto mining to work while also cleaning its pollution area.
Using waste from decades-old coal-fired power plants, Nasdaq-listed Stronghold Digital Mining generates power that powers hundreds of supercomputers dedicated to Bitcoin mining.
Stronghold CEO Greg Beard highlighted that the Bitcoin mining network is the most prominent decentralized computing platform worldwide. This network devours tremendous energy, so a plan for co-locating Bitcoin mining and a power plant is a coherent plan.
Coal Waste is a Valuable Source to Conduct Mining Activities
A product that comes from burning coal is coal ash, and it helps generate mining power. This waste can filtrate into groundwater and harm streams, including heavy metals that could be carcinogenic and toxic for human consumption.
This project collects coal ash from a neighboring mine and processes it at a coal tailings processing plant. The coal ash gets separated from the waste and crushed before going to a boiler building, where it gets burned to generate power that helps boost the company’s Bitcoin mining activity.
Many people are currently mining BTC using unorthodox ways to improve their activities. A cryptocurrency user created a 6kW solar-powered Bitcoin mining rig, which reviews a Coinshares study revealed on January 25, 2022, claiming that BTC represented only 0,08% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions; so the environmental damage would not represent such a threat.
However, there is still a lot of attention over the problem. Last year a New York State legislation brought a package of prohibitions for mining activities until its environmental damage gets evaluated.
New York Alerted About the Risks of Crypto Mining Last Year
The New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) sent a letter last year to various financial institutions in the United States of America talking about Bitcoin mining and climate change’s risks for the world. This information got revealed by the media BeInCrypto and U.Today.
Signed by Superintendent Linda Lacewell and addressed to the representatives responsible in charge of these entities, the letter specifically pointed at cryptocurrency mining as one of the risks. The report also mentions that the power used to keep up with the Bitcoin network goes in parallel with the total electricity consumption of Venezuela.
By. Jenson Nuñez
