Jack Dorsey’s Block and crypto firm Blockstream plan to mine bitcoin at Tesla’s solar plant in Texas.
The electric car manufacturer’s 3.8MW solar PV and 12MWh Megapack will power the mining facility, Adam Back, chief executive of Blockstream, said at the Bitcoin Conference 2022 in Miami. Such facilities can store energy and stabilise power output from intermittent wind and solar generations.
The move came after Block, which is formerly known as digital payment company Square, secured a purchase of Intel’s bitcoin mining chips. Buyers of the chip can potentially either make their own mining rigs or receive an assembled machine from the chip maker.
Dorsey revealed the plan to decentralise bitcoin mining and make the token’s network more secure with Block earlier this year.
The central and western parts of Texas are among the regions with rich wind and solar power resources. Bitcoin miners have flocked to the region, setting up mines and expanding transmission capacity in the past year. — David Pan, (c) 2022 Bloomberg LP
