Saudi-backed company harnesses waste energy to mine bitcoins

Saudi-backed company harnesses waste energy to mine bitcoins

In the frozen north of Canada, shipping containers housing bitcoin farms hum with activity, converting unused energy into profit.

Tens of thousands of ‘stranded’ gas wells lay unused due to the logistical difficulties of extracting energy and transporting it from the remote wilderness to induct it into the power grid.

Chief executive of Saudi-backed PermianChain and Brox Equity Mohamed El-Masri spoke to Al Arabiya English about how his company is harnessing waste energy to help the environment, and potentially benefit local communities.

“Bitcoin that’s being mined on site in these remote areas can be put back into the local community to build hospitals, community centers, so there’s a lot of wasted resource that could be monetized and put back into the economy,” he said.

“There is a net benefit at the end of the day, and you’re not eliminating the environmental concerns here, but you’re significantly reducing them.”

PermianChain and Brox Equity harness stranded energy and use it to power around 400 bitcoin rigs, with Brox operating the sites and PermianChain providing the technology and managing the mining.

The rigs are computers that perform complex mathematical tasks to produce bitcoins. The costs of powering them traditionally prohibit how much profit can be generated.

Companies like PermianChain are