Iceland refuses new miners due to a lack of resources

Since Tuesday, the country's energy services have stopped accepting requests for power for mining

08.12.2021 - 13:20

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What’s new? The Icelandic electricity company Landsvirkjun is cutting the amount of electricity for some industries, including aluminum smelters and bitcoin miners, Bloomberg reports.

Material on the Bloomberg website

Why did the company make such a decision? A representative for the company said that it has to limit the power distribution to miners indefinitely because of a shortage of water in the hydropower station reservoir and problems with supplies from external sources.

What was the background to the restrictions? Iceland has been spending a lot of electricity on mining since the cryptocurrency's introduction. First, three major bitcoin mining companies set up operations in the country in 2012. For a long time, the miners have been trying to realize the prospects of environmentally friendly cryptocurrency mining, but the project has been moving very slowly.

Later in 2013, the Cloud Hashing cryptocurrency mining service moved 100 miners to Iceland. In addition, in 2017, the Austrian company HydroMiner invested about $2,8 million in its project to install mining facilities at Icelandic power plants, reports The Verge. Such activity has depleted Iceland's resources, as has the energy-intensive mining industry.

Material on The Verge website

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