Argentina’s state-owned energy company, YPF, has taken a pro-crypto stance and started supplying energy to a crypto mining company for its operations. While the name of the international crypto mining firm was not disclosed, this step may be the first of many where the state and the crypto industry join hands.
Earlier this year, YPF announced the development of a 1 megawatt (MW) pilot for crypto mining, further promoting sustainability in crypto. According to the national news agency, Télam, this pilot enabled crypto mining operations to utilize energy generated from waste gas left over from oil production. Additionally, the company also aims to commence its second crypto mining pilot of 8MW toward the end of 2022.
YPF Luz CEO Martín Mandarano noted that they “started to develop this generation pilot for cryptocurrency mining with a vision of sustainability and business from flare natural gas, which cannot be harnessed during exploration and at the beginning of the production of an oil field.”
Why crypto mining needs to become sustainable
Earlier this year, we saw that the energy crisis combined with the ongoing bear market triggered a series of involuntary shutdowns of crypto mining rigs. A report from Bitdeer, a company that provides computing power-sharing services, pointed out how old bitcoin mining rigs were either closed down or sitting on the verge of shutdown due to lack of profitability.
Following this, Texas Bitcoin miners were left with no option but to shut down operations due to a heat wave. In July, many Bitcoin mining farms in Texas were shut down as the energy crisis intensified, Bloomberg reported.
“There are over 1,000 megawatts worth of Bitcoin mining load that responded to Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)’s conservation request by turning off their machines to conserve energy for the grid. This represents nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin mining load in Texas and allows for over 1% of total grid capacity to be pushed back onto the grid for retail and commercial use,” Lee Bratcher, president of the Texas Blockchain Association, told the news agency.
