In a context where the ban on Bitcoin (BTC) mining in China has greatly affected the hash rate of the flagship crypto, the need to diversify the sources of mining and to further decentralize the activity has imposed itself on the actors of the industry. Even if currently, the United States has already filled the gap of the hashing power that was in China and that the activity has regained peaks, the question of its decentralization still arises. It is important for the sector to limit the impact of a possible occurrence of a similar phenomenon, by multiplying bitcoin mining sites in various jurisdictions. Knowing that the sites of abundant energy production are located in remote areas, Internet connectivity can be a big challenge for mining players who want to take advantage of these energy sources.
Improve connectivity in remote areas with power
Elon Musk’s Starlink could be the missing piece for decentralized Bitcoin (BTC) mining to reach parts of the world where energy is cheap but internet access is lacking. This is essentially what El Sultan Bitcoin, head of product marketing in Latin America at Ledn, developed in an editorial. It is a Canadian company specializing in the provision of financial services in bitcoin (BTC).
The company, created by Elon Musk, has made it its mission to develop its broadband Internet system around the world, especially in the least connected regions of the earth today, including South Asia and the East, and Africa. In total, 3 billion people do not benefit from quality access to connectivity.
While remote areas like Quebec in Canada and Sichuan in China produce excess affordable energy, they may be home to vast bitcoin mining farms, but when talking about remote energy production sites , Internet connectivity can be a big problem, when you know that traditional Internet access providers only supply very little power to remote areas.
“It’s not hard to imagine miners subsidizing Starlink costs in rural areas to harness wasted energy while still enabling internet connectivity, given that a bitcoin miner powers greenhouses in the country. -Down. If waste heat generation is subsidized to grow food and flowers in one place, so could the establishment of internet-based services in unconnected areas in exchange for newly mined bitcoins. It would also be interesting to see how this could help reduce network centralization by ISPs.”he wrote.
Affordable costs
You should know that Internet service providers generally do not supply remote areas.
In addition, 60% of all Internet traffic in the bitcoin mining industry is supplied by three service providers, according to DARPA, an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for research and development. new technologies for military use. Data that calls for more diversification of Internet access sources for mining players.
Additionally, El Sultan Bitcoin believes that for a multimillion-dollar mining operation, accessing an Internet service from Starlink shouldn’t be a big deal. Indeed, the importance of the revenues of the activity makes that the costs of connectivity appear minimal on the income statement. Note that the cost of the hardware needed to set up a Starlink access point in a remote area is around $600, plus a monthly subscription of $3,000.
For El Sultan Bitcoin, with its broadband internet deployment technology, Starlink can be a key player in efforts to drive the growth of decentralized Bitcoin (BTC) mining. This, by developing farms in remote areas where electricity demand is lower than production, but where Internet access is difficult.
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Far from having dampened my enthusiasm, an unsuccessful investment in a cryptocurrency in 2017 only increased my enthusiasm. I therefore resolved to study and understand the blockchain and its many uses and to relay with my pen information relating to this ecosystem.