Over the years, Bitcoin has been scrutinized for the amount of energy use. China has been renowned for producing cheap power for bitcoin mining. An American company called Layer1, based in San Francisco wants to change that. Co-founder and CEO Alexander Liegl announced on the 14th of October that they would bring wind-powered and solar-paneled bitcoin mining rigs to West Texas next year. The company is raising $50 Million at a $200 million valuation.
“The United States’ hash rate share is currently below 5 percent,” Liegl said. “Our goal is to bump that up to at least over 15 percent.”
The problem is that Texas is hot. Air-cooled miners would burn up. They had to find a way to liquid-cool the miners, which is why mining is more favorable in cold places, such as Norway, Quebec or even china. Layer1 has created proprietary mining equipment, that runs on megawatts.
Texas has a significant advantage as a cryptocurrency mining location. Since energy prices are among the lowest in the country. 16% of the power in Texas comes from wind, according to the Department of Energy.
Layer1 has raised funds for its first operation from Peter Thiel, Shasta Ventures and other cryptocurrency investors.
Layer1 first launched in 2018, as a sort of activist fund for cryptocurrencies. They had a privacy-focused project called Grin. It will be exciting to see how this project continues to develop early in the coming year,