Joe Tidy
Cyber corresponding, BBC World Service
Bbc
Gridless engineers create fortune computer laboratories to maintain their bitcoin mines
The roar of the Zambezi is deafening while millions of gallons of water crash on rocks and tumble the rapids.
But there is another sound that crosses the trees of the Zambian bush – the unmistakable homogeneous groan of a bitcoin mine.
“It’s the noise of money!” Said a smiling phillip Walton while examining the shipping container with 120 computers that actively crickle complex calculations that check Bitcoin transactions.
In exchange, they are automatically rewarded by Bitcoin by the network.
We are in the far northwest of Zambia near the border with the DRC, and all the bitcoin mines that I have visited-it is the strangest.
Water and electronic equipment generally do not mix well, but it is precisely the proximity of the river that is drawn here.
The Phillip mine is connected directly to a hydroelectric power station which channels part of the zambezi torrent through huge turbines to generate continuous and clean electricity.
Most importantly for Bitcoin extraction – it’s cheap.
So cheap, it has a sense of businesses for the Kenya company in Phillip, Gridless, to drag its shipping container full of delicate Bitcoin mining computers through the narrow mute roads at 2 p.m. from the nearest big city to settle here.
Each machine earns about $ 5 (£ 3.90) per day. More if the price of parts is high, less if it drops.
Sometimes Phillip takes a look at its intelligent watch – the home screen showing the corrugated line in constant evolution of the value in dollars of Bitcoin.
Currently, it is around $ 80,000 per part, but Phillip says that they can make a profit even when the value of Bitcoin is low thanks to cheap electricity on the site and the partnership they have with the energy company.
“We recognized that to obtain a better mining economy, we had to associate ourselves with the electricity company here and give them a share of income. And therefore the reason why we are ready to come here somewhere so distant, this allows us to effectively obtain a cheaper power,” he said.
Zengamina’s hydroelectric plant is enormous but technically, it is a mini -grid – an autonomous island of power for the local community.
Bitcoin mines without grid use excess electricity of renewable energy factories
It was built in the early 2000s thanks to $ 3 million collected by charity donations.
The British-Zambien Daniel Rea runs the site after his missionary family managed the construction project, mainly to feed the local hospital.
Now, it provides power to around 15,000 people in the region, but the project has not been able to reach both ends due to a slow community.
Allowing Bitcoins to settle here has been transformational to the company.
“Each day, we earn more than half of the energy that we could generate, which also meant that we do not gain this to respond to our operating expenses. We needed a great power user in the region and this is where the partnership that changes the situation with Gridless came,” said Daniel.
Bitcoin mine now represents around 30% of factory revenues allowing them to reduce prices for the local city.
Bitcoin and its economy are of course far from the minds of the inhabitants of Zengamina.
The city itself is a few kilometers from the factory and does not include much more than a few dozen buildings in the shape of a swivel hangar on a cross road.
A single shop has a refrigerator and a dozen children crowd around a common computer in turn to choose a song to burst, which makes adults grimacted as they go.
Most of the money needed to build Zengamina Hydro has been given by British churches
Although the hydroelectric factory was put online in 2007, it took a few more years to connect it to the local city, then more time to connect houses and individuals.
Thus, some people like Barber Damian still appreciate the novelty of being wired only a year and a half ago.
“Until my power, I had nothing and I could do nothing. When I got power, I bought everything at the same time.”
He is not kidding. At night, its tiny hair salon is a power headlight with a television playing clips, Christmas light strings and the buzz of its hair clipper. Like butterflies, young people hang out in their hair salon like a youth hostel.
“Getting power has changed my life,” he smiles. “The money I now earn from the hair salon helps me to pay the tuition fees again.”
Kissing electricity is a commercial decision for Damian. At home, he shares a bulb between the two rooms that make up the small house.
Elsewhere in the city, the sisters Tumba and Lucy Machayi sit on the crossroads watching the world pass.
Like many young people, they are glued to their phones.
“Before the city has power, it was just the bush,” said Lucy.
The small electricity they had used from small solar panels, they say.
“No refrigerator, no television, no mobile telephone network,” said Tumba.
“Electricity has completely changed people’s lives here,” adds Lucy.
“We can load our phones, we have a network. We can communicate between us.”
Tumba and Lucy Machayi remember when they had no electricity in the city
Few people here know or care about the bitcoin mine that has played a role in hydro-plain help to get things done.
But soon they will watch this container make their way through the city en route to another place.
Zengamina Hydro obtained a significant investment to help them develop more villages and join the national grid.
Soon, the excessive energy that the mine harvested will be sold to the national network and the mining Bitcoin will no longer be profitable in Zengamina.
Phillip and the team are optimistic about it and insist that this is good news. They will have had a few years successful here and, in the end, they are happy to have helped Zengamina. And made a well -tidy profit in Bitcoin of course.
The company says there are many places with so -called blocked energy that they can plunge their Bitcoin mine next.
Gridless already has six sites like this in three different African countries.
North of Zengamina, another Bitcoin mine stimulates excess energy from a hydroelectric plant led by Virunga National Park in Congo. This helps finance conservation projects, says the park.
But Gridless now plans an upcoming ambitious movement – to build their own hydro -plates from zero to mine for bitcoin and bring electricity to rural areas.
The co -founder of the company Janet Maingi said that the company was collecting tens of millions of dollars for the project.
They focus on so-called standard hydroelectric models as in Zengamina and the continent has an abundance of “unexploited hydroetic potential”, she says.
“A consumer-focused adaptive energy model is essential for evolving, affordable and sustainable energy access that meets the needs of African communities,” she explains.
The company is not a charity and estimates that guaranteeing long -term economic viability for developers and investors can only be carried out via Bitcoin.
Finding locations for a new factory or to exploit existing things is the easy part.
The company always faces the resistance of certain authorities and companies which consider Bitcoin as an energy and selfish use of electricity which could otherwise be used by rural people.
But the company insists that the incentive is always to sell to the highest buyer and who, according to them, will always be the local community.
History tells us that without incentives or rules in place, the exploitation of Bitcoin on a large scale can exert pressure on public energy networks. In Kazakhstan in 2020-2021, a mining boom increased energy consumption in the country by 7% before the government is repressed and cuts the wings of the emerging industry.
Giant bitcoin mines like this in Kazakhstan dominate the cryptography mining industry
In the United States, the new Mecca of Bitcoin Mining – conflicts between minors, residents and residents were common when electricity is in great demand.
The authorities have created agreements with certain mining giants to ensure that they fuel their warehouses full of computers at times when the grid must be balanced.
For example, the Greenidge power plant in New York, which was renovated to operate Bitcoin, was mandated to supply mining in January to provide electricity to the network during a cold snap.
Agreements like these will have to be widespread if President Donald Trump’s ambition for Bitcoin is “exploited, hit and made in the United States” must be carried out.
The environmental impact of industry is also a major concern. It is estimated that Bitcoin extraction uses as much energy as a small country like Poland.
But according to researchers from Cambridge University who makes annual estimates on Bitcoin energy consumption, there is a change to a more sustainable mixture of energy.
Installations like this Zengamina are part of a small part of the global mining image.
But they are also a rare example of a controversial industry creating much more than digital parts.
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