Wholesaler SunnySide Digital operates the 35,000 square-foot facility taking in the equipment from a mining client. The outdated machines are among several hundred-thousand it expects to receive and refurbish around a major quadrennial update in the Bitcoin blockchain.
In Bitcoin mining, specialized machines are used to validate transactions on the blockchain and earn operators a fixed token reward. Anonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto baked in the once-every-four-years halving to maintain the hard cap of 21 million tokens. Next month’s event is the fourth since 2012 and the reward will drop to 3.125 Bitcoin from 6.25 now. Bloomberg News
There are miners in the US opting not to sell their hardware and instead transfer the equipment to regions with lower electricity costs and third-party data centers. Nuo Xu, who has two sites in Texas, is traveling this month to Ethiopia, Nigeria and a few other countries to scope out locations for about 6,000 older computers.
“Ethiopia is really becoming a big player in the digital mining ecosystem,” said SunnySide’s Kulyk, who added his company is negotiating a deal to help move between 20,000 and 40,000 rigs to the east African nation.