One of the largest Bitcoin miners in the world, MARA Holdings Inc. has acquired a wind farm to provide energy for its operations. It is planned that 114 megawatts of the station's capacity will be used for cryptocurrency mining when the wind is present, and the equipment will be suspended during periods of its absence. This was reported by Bloomberg.
In a statement to the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the company said it had acquired a wind farm in Hansford County, Texas, from a joint venture between National Grid Plc and the Washington State Investment Council. The amount of the deal was not disclosed, and its completion is scheduled for 2025. The company intends to acquire more power plants in the future.
“We can move the market to where the electrons are, as opposed to moving the electrons to where the market is,” said Fred Thiel, MARA's director, who also noted that the company will operate only 30% of the time.
Mining companies, such as MARA, have faced challenges due to the growing demand for electricity caused by the rapid development of artificial intelligence. Large tech corporations such as Google, Meta, and Microsoft can afford to pay much more for energy, forcing miners to look for alternative ways to solve this problem.
“Bitcoin miners are being forced to go look at marginal generation,” said Thiel. “The AI guys can afford to pay a much higher amount for energy than a Bitcoin miner,” Thiel noted.
The MARA director said he was not worried about possible regulatory obstacles to the acquisition of the wind farm. He gave an example that the situation is different from Amazon's attempt to get more power from a nuclear power plant for its data centers, which was rejected by the US energy regulator. Using wind farms only during windy weather, he said, makes economic sense because the company's centers are equipped with modern computers that might otherwise be idle.
Earlier, the value of Bitcoin reached $100,000 for the first time in the history of the cryptocurrency. This was facilitated by Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election. In addition to this, the United States is also considering buying 1 million bitcoins for the government reserve.