Crypto mining overtakes Residential Electricity use in 2018 in Iceland Save for later Reblogpost

HS Orka hf, leading electricity provider in Iceland claims that the current supply of electrical power may not be enough to satisfy increasing demands mostly because of the recent hot new trend in the country, cryptocurrency mining. Iceland currently has a little less than 350,000 residents as of today, with a population density of around 3.2 /km2. Jóhann Snorri Sigurbergsson, Director of Business Development at HS Orka and former Vodafone executive estimated that by the end of this year, Bitcoin mining (including cooling) operations alone will approx. account for 840 gigawatt hours, which will by far overtake Iceland’s current residential electricity usage (700 gigawatt hours) by quite a lot.

In the recent years Iceland experienced and exponential growth in the number of active mining operations (both run by domestic and foreign groups). The trend in terms of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are currently on the rise, even though Bitcoin in the recent couple of months is not doing so well.

Other cryptos also gained interest with the broad community in Iceland and across the world since Bitcoin first hit its 6000 USD mark. The trend of Bitcoin and alike is an interesting one to witness, although as of yet, blockchain technology hasn’t achieved anything out of the box to really write home about.