Powering bitcoin mining machines with literal garbage is an emerging trend in the mining sector as new companies crop up to harness this abundant and otherwise wasted energy resource. Contrary to the prevailing political narrative that Bitcoin production is destroying the planet, the efforts of these landfill miners demonstrate that nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, the net positive effects of these mining teams are enough to silence environmental critics forever. This article examines the early stages of companies setting up mining operations in landfills and looks at the potential opportunities this resource presents for Bitcoin.
Bitcoin’s Evolving Junk Trend
Most of the cases where polygons and bitcoin are discussed together usually involve very early adopters who mine absurd amounts of cheap bitcoin on their computers and then lose or dump their hard drives containing the fortune. One early bitcoin miner is even planning an expensive landfill mining project to extract half a billion dollars worth of misplaced digital gold. Another landfill made headlines due to its reaction to an exorbitant amount of “incompressible foam” that a bitcoin mining company tried to dump.
These crazy stories aside, today’s bitcoin miners are targeting dumps for power to mine new bitcoins, not to mine old bitcoins. Vespene Energy and XcelPlus International are two of the earliest entrants into this new segment of the bitcoin mining industry. I’ve heard that other similar projects currently being built in secret will join them after public announcements come in the next year or two. The White House in a recent study on the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining is directly recorded polygon-centric bitcoin mining efforts.
But not all approaches to landfill bitcoin mining are the same. Vespene, for example, “uses landfill methane to fuel bitcoin mining,” according to its website. As landfill waste is responsible for approximately 11% of global methane emissions, this business model can rapidly impact non-negligible methane emissions reductions at scale. In comparison, XcelPlus uses plasma gasification machines to generate thermal energy and also earns a disposal fee for the garbage it receives from landfills on top of its bitcoin mining rewards – a nice two-for-one deal!
Quantity of Global Garbage Supply
So how much is trash as a source for bitcoin mining? Short answer: a lot.
Here’s some information to detail how much trash the world has:
It is almost impossible to calculate exactly how many landfills exist in the world (Google, of course, is no help). But there is a garbage watch that allows you to calculate in real time how much garbage is created every day. Polygons can be an energy bonus for bitcoin miners.
North America has made headlines for becoming a booming mecca for bitcoin mining companies. So, for the purpose of this article, it’s important to note that there are over 3,000 active landfills and about 10,000 inactive landfills in the United States alone. Canada alone has about 3,000 landfills, according to a discussion paper published earlier this year. Both countries are among the top five countries producing total garbage. And both countries are ranked as the top two countries in terms of waste production per capita.
The line chart below visualizes the annual increase in the world’s total trash supply based on estimates from an article published by Smithsonian Magazine asking when the world will reach “peak trash.” The answer? Not soon.
Advantages of Polygon Bitcoin Mining
Garbage has some unique advantages as a fuel source that readers should not overlook. First, its abundance opens up huge opportunities for potential hash rate growth as landfill methane capture and plasma gasification infrastructure is installed. And the information presented in the previous section confirms the abundance of garbage. On the other hand, landfills are distributed globally – garbage is everywhere. Similar to the distribution of the Bitcoin network itself, miners can go almost anywhere to turn garbage into energy for bitcoin mining. Also, this form of energy is really trapped and wasted, making miners not the last resort buyer of this resource, but one of the only buyers. Abatement of methane in a landfill by other methods is limited.
Finally, and most importantly, bitcoin mining in landfills reinforces the eco-friendly narrative of bitcoin mining, which counters persistent criticism from climate activists. Some reports label landfills as “super emitters”. Landfills are the third largest source of anthropogenic methane in the world. Of the trillions of pounds of trash produced each year, some “extremely conservative” estimates suggest that only 33% of that waste is managed in any environmentally conscious way.
There is no better way for Bitcoin miners to consume literal garbage and reduce methane emissions. For example, XcelPlus clearly touts the pollution-reducing benefits of its form of bitcoin mining. According to its website, “The amount of energy consumed during the Bitcoin mining process is large, expensive and polluting… By passing waste coal, garbage and other hazardous waste streams through our XcelPlus Plasma gasifier, it can turn 50 tons of waste per day. energy.”
It’s not hyperbolic to say that this could be game for environmental criticism of bitcoin mining.
Garbage and the Future of Bitcoin
In the past few years, most of the headlines regarding miners’ use of captive energy resources have focused on traditional fuels such as solar, natural gas, and others. But the production of garbage is almost endless, and according to some analysts, “we are running out of space” to store it all. And now, bitcoin mining companies are building and deploying technology to use literal garbage as a source of energy for mining. Not only is it a somewhat infinitely renewable resource (an unconventional but imprecise use of the term), but powering the Bitcoin network with trash also mitigates bitcoin’s environmental criticisms, since the benefits of limiting trash emissions are indisputable.
Polygon mining fully showcases the skill and creativity of bitcoin mining, as magical internet money entrepreneurs harness energy resources that no one else can or will use. Soon, the infrastructure for the money badger will be backed by actual garbage, making the world’s largest decentralized financial network more sustainable than ever.
This is a guest post by Zack Voell. The views expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.