A cattle ranch has created energy from cow dung to serve the Ethereum “buffalo plow”.
Not only raising cattle, Philip Hughes’ farm in the county of Denbighshire (Wales) also has a room for mining cryptocurrencies.
Hughes’ family has a tradition of breeding for generations. Now, he uses the farm to mine cryptocurrencies with a set of “buffalo plows” that use renewable energy from cow dung.
Mining coins with renewable energy
With six cylinder engines at 500 rpm, Hughes’ anaerobic digestion system can convert the methane that produces cow dung into electricity, the BBC reports.
Under hypoxic conditions, microorganisms will eat hydrogen and carbon dioxide in cow dung and release methane gas, which can be burned to generate heat. The residue left after the anaerobic stage will be used as fertilizer.
According to Hughes, about two-thirds of the electricity generated from the anaerobic digester powers the nearby cattle ranch and caravan park. The rest of the energy is used for “buffalo plow” rigs to mine Ethereum.
Hughes said Ethereum mining returns are pretty good, but “depending on the date the question is asked,” referring to the cryptocurrency’s unpredictable price movements.
From May to now, the value of Ethereum dropped from more than $4,000 to about $2,500, according to CoinDesk data on the evening of June 10.
Is it possible to mine coins with green energy?
Not only digging Ethereum at the farm, Hughes also came up with the idea of renting “buffalo plows”. Josh Riddett, a representative of the Easy Crypto Hunter miner provider, said that the cost to pay is about $ 25,400 for each “buffalo plow” set consisting of many computer graphics cards with strong configuration.
According to Riddett, Easy Crypto Hunter’s mining rigs have been installed in 42 different locations. They use forms of energy such as solar, wind, hydroelectricity and stored methane from anaerobic digesters
However, representatives of some small hydropower projects are concerned that cryptocurrency mining may have a negative impact on the environment. Meanwhile, the hydroelectric power plant operator said that the unstable value of cryptocurrencies makes it difficult to recover capital for the project. Some people said that crooks broke in and stole the mining rig.
Besides hydroelectric power, the initiative to use renewable energy (green energy) to mine cryptocurrencies is also controversial. According to the BBC, renewable energy for mining can be used for other purposes, such as powering electric cars or heating.
Financial economist Alex de Vries said that using green energy to mine coins is wasteful.
“The benefits these systems bring are very limited. Bitcoin can only process up to 7 transactions per second, while payment services like Visa can process 65,000 transactions per second if needed.” making them quickly become e-waste.
In the UK, the Association of Bioresources and Anaerobic Digestion of the country said that the number of energy plants mining cryptocurrencies is quite small.
While the future of cryptocurrency is unclear, several people have expressed interest in Hughes’ mining project. This farmer is fully aware of the risks of investing in assets whose value fluctuates, sometimes with just a single tweet from Elon Musk.
If the cryptocurrency market crashes, Hughes said he will use the computing power of the “buffalo” to serve other purposes, such as hiring filmmakers to render.
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According to Zingnews
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