A company in the UK has its sights set on opening the largest Bitcoin farm in the world. Bladetec has gathered a team of investors who are willing to back the project with start-up capital of $14 million. The company would be opened in the Southeastern region of Britain, in Surrey, Suffolk, and London.
Energy solutions
While crypto farms have raised concerns about energy usage in the past, Bladetec has actively sought a solution for that before even raising funds. The farm has partnered with windmills in order to provide cheap, clean power for the industry.
The deal has locked in electricity rates below market price, but power will still be the main cost to the farm, with an average energy requirement equal to that of about 9,000 homes. Other miners have set up shop in cooler locales, or regions with cheaper electricity across the board, such as Iceland, China, and Canada. Bladetec’s new campus will be in three facilities, totaling about 3,500 square foot and housing 2,000 machines.
Crypto mining entails units with high processing power racing other entities on a network in order to solve cryptographic puzzles. The solutions of those puzzles are then verified by all the miners on the network, and transactions are added to the open ledger that is blockchain. The miner who solves the puzzle first is rewarded with Bitcoin.
Profit model
The startup funds for Bladetec’s farm are to operate the facilities for two years, after which, the operation will close and the Bitcoin mined there will be sold or invested for profit. Bladetec says that they should be able to mine around 1,300 Bitcoin in two years. If market rates stayed the same as they are today, that would be about $10 million.
You may have noticed that those figures appear to amount to a $4 million loss, but Bladetec founder John Kingdon is banking on the market’s volatility. Back in 2017, Bitcoin traded as high as $20k but has dropped to its current rate of ~$8200. Once the farm closes, the mining equipment will be resold, so some of the startup money will be gained back that way.
