A warehouse prevailing near the midst of Iceland’s breathtaking lava fields at an anonymous location is believed to be the ground zero in the digital gold rush for cryptocurrencies. This fact is burning brightly, even brighter than the electricity in most of the Icelander’s homes. The amalgamation of the two extensive features of natural fire and ice makes Iceland unique and heavenly. It has already become an eye-catching location for shooting among the directors, being the primary locating for the epic fantasy series, Game of Thrones.
Beside that Iceland also facilitates unique feature of cheap renewable energy as well as free air conditioning which is making it a more optimum location for virtual mining of cryptocurrencies with the use of supercomputers that occupies a lot of electricity and emit a large amount of heat and noise. The dinner from shelves and shelves of computers whirring in the interior of 400-square-meter (4,300 square foot) warehouse is already giving tough competition to the Jets during its takeoff.
However, dollars or euros, bitcoins are not issued by the government they are made by mining or they are created in computer farms or warehouses. Bitcoin transactions are extremely complicated in which the supercomputers consist of six graphics card and they are being loaded with hundreds and hundreds of calculations of complex algorithms. After so much of complex work and calculations, a bitcoin exchange is being rewarded.
Iceland: Cheap and cool
The head of operations at Genesis Mining said that
“It’s possible for everyone to do it at home. There is no one stopping you (and) there are no technical limitations”.
As in the previous year, we saw a sudden and huge rise of all the virtual currencies along with the Bitcoin, which was fetching almost at $20,000 per unit. In December, the amateur and even the professionals both of them jumped into the race. Users mining from home usually uses an old computer as they have no other options and sometimes if they are lucky enough they get to have a fraction of Bitcoin or two very often.
Genesis Mining being a professional should invest a good amount to build and equip a facility like this home mining with an area one-third of an Olympic-size pool which might have a great chance of catching a part of the 12.5 bitcoins per ten minutes.
They will have the freedom to choose where the operations are to be set-up and their decision regarding this will have a huge impact on their profit margins as the price of electricity and cooling of computers varies from place to place. Iceland has caught the eyes of the miners due to its cheap electricity which has a benefit of generating electricity from clean geothermal energy.
The cost of electricity in Iceland is literally the half of that of the average in EU, currently, stand at 0.065 euros ($0.081) per kilowatt per hour before tax reduction. These facts make Iceland a competitive nation in Europe after Serbia, Macedonia, and Bosnia.
Iceland also has a plus point that its average temperature is about five-degree Celsius that is about 41 Fahrenheit. This implies that the supercomputers can be run with complete efficiency without the use of huge air conditioners that consumes a large amount of power or electricity. Even The Director of business development at Iceland’s power company HS Orka, Johann Snorri said, “The power efficiency is really good in Iceland because of the natural cooling.
The sudden rise in Demand
As the number of firms in Iceland is rising it will definitely increase in the rise of demand of electricity in Iceland. For example, the Genesis Mining which was previously based on Bosnia is now to set-up many shops in Iceland. Even Sigurbergsson said, “ The demand has been increasing exponentially, especially the last three months”.
The price of Bitcoin has dropped down from its peak of $20,000 to $9000, as a result, the demand is rising more. The analyst also says that this price decline is also the main cause of worry for the miners for their operating costs.
Salter who is afraid of the growing competition of the virtual currency said that the price decline of Bitcoin isn’t a good indication of how the bitcoin industry is doing right now. Salter won’t be much afraid or have a competition from the neighbors as Sigurbergsson said HS Orka that they won’t be able to supply all the demand from miners wanting to set up their operations. Salter also added that his firm is in a great position now as they have the freedom to choose or pick whoever they want to do business with.
Iceland’s three largest bitcoin farming companies will consume more than the nation’s 350,000 inhabitant’s electricity as estimated by HS Orka. Another thing to worry for the miners is the thieves that are being attracted even to the virtual gold. An estimated worth of 1.6 million of Euros was stolen during the span of December 2017 and January 2018, which is really a thing to worry.
