Iceland's Bitcoin mining group has become a local pillar industry

At Dealbook in Iceland, a young man named Nathaniel Popper is participating in a project called Cloud Hashing. Although the name sounds high-end and classy, ​​the actual work is just to transfer the computer he used for mining to Iceland and use Iceland's climate conditions to obtain a more efficient cooling system and cheap renewable energy.

In Iceland, where the secondary and tertiary industries are underdeveloped, Bitcoin is quietly changing this cold continent, and "mining" is gradually becoming a pillar industry in the local area.

At present, the system that Nathaniel Popper has set up includes 100 high-performance computers specially designed for mining calculations, and the array's cooling system directly injects cold air from the Arctic Circle into the computer room, which is cheap and sufficient.

The Cloud Hashing system carries a total of 4,500 customers’ mining contracts, accounting for 80% of the company’s mining performance, and the remaining 20% ​​is retained by the company itself. According to the transaction records of the company’s account, they control $4 million worth of Bitcoin.

In addition to low cooling costs, sufficient geothermal water reserves (used as water circulation for cooling systems) and super cheap electricity prices are also important factors in the rise of Bitcoin mining in Iceland. The local electricity price in Iceland is only $0.02-0.03 per kilowatt-hour, while in the United States, this price is usually as high as $0.07.

The Cloud Hashing project was first established by Emmanuel Abiodun, a programmer at HSBC Bank in the UK. With the help of some angel investors, he started mining operations in Iceland in February this year. The $4 million raised in the second round of fundraising will be used to set up another computing and storage center in Texas. However, the recent sharp decline in the value of Bitcoin has cast a shadow on the company's prospects, because according to the current currency value, the cost of equipment, energy, etc. invested in mining is far higher than the value obtained. At the same time, after the People's Bank of China regulated Bitcoin, South Korea and other countries have also begun to take measures to regulate Bitcoin transactions. It is unknown whether mining companies can survive this dangerous period normally.