What Happened: Jack Dorsey’s digital payments company Square Inc SQ and Bitcoin infrastructure startup Blockstream have joined forces to build a 100% solar-powered Bitcoin mine.
According to a press release shared by Blockstream earlier this week, Square will invest $5 million in the facility while Blockstream will provide the infrastructure and expertise to build and manage the project.
The facility will be built at one of Blockstream’s mining sites in the U.S., and the companies intend to share the project's economics with the general public.
“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 ROI—made open to the public,” said Blockstream.
“We hope to show that a renewable mining facility in the real world is not only possible but also prove empirically that Bitcoin accelerates the world toward a sustainable future.”
Square and Blockstream will also provide a freely accessible dashboard showing real-time metrics of the project’s performance over time, including power output and Bitcoin mined.
Why It Matters: The focus on “clean energy” to mine Bitcoin was accelerated after Tesla Inc TSLA stopped accepting the cryptocurrency as a means of payment, citing concerns over its impact on the environment.
Not long after, the Bitcoin Mining Council was formed as a result of a meeting hosted by MicroStrategy Incorporated MSTR CEO Michael Saylor between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and several leading North American Bitcoin miners.
Yesterday I was pleased to host a meeting between @elonmusk & the leading Bitcoin miners in North America. The miners have agreed to form the Bitcoin Mining Council to promote energy usage transparency & accelerate sustainability initiatives worldwide. https://t.co/EHgLZ9zvDK
— Michael Saylor (@michael_saylor) May 24, 2021
The goal of establishing the Council was to promote energy usage transparency and to accelerate sustainability initiatives worldwide.
Read also: Bitcoiners 'Intensely Skeptical' Of Elon Musk Leading Bitcoin Mining Council
Musk tweeted that the initiative was “potentially promising”, however, Bitcoiners were not convinced that he was the right person to lead the clean energy Bitcoin mining debate.
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