Two sites owned by the American company Compass Mining, in Georgia, will close because of too expensive energy.
The world of cryptocurrencies is not immune to the energy crisis. It begins to cause closures of mining farms.
This is the case of two sites owned by the American company Compass Mining, in Georgia, which will close because of too expensive energy, reports the specialized media. CoinDesk. These are mining farms in which customers can take part directly in the cryptocurrency mining activity and this concerns 5000 machines in total. All of this is going to die out, due to the very sharp rise in electricity costs in the State of Georgia.
+50% on the price of electricity
Indeed, on site, the price of electricity has increased by more than 50%. And to this is added the fall in the price of cryptocurrencies since the beginning of the summer, which means that it is no longer profitable to mine bitcoins. Compass Mining finds itself a little surrounded on all sides, because in parallel, the group had also bet big on Russia, where important mining projects had been programmed. There obviously, and given the geopolitical context, we should not count on it too much.
All this had also caused the departure of the former boss of Compass Mining, and caused a 15% reduction in its workforce. This site closure in Georgia is therefore a new episode that is very complicated to manage, which highlights the impossibility of separating the cost of energy and the profitability of mining activity. So initially, Compass Mining has planned to transfer all or part of its Georgian machines to Texas, where the group already has a large site.
Towards greener farms?
But this site itself is experiencing problems with the electricity supply, so much so that they have had to use gasoline generators. This also says a lot about the future of the industry, which more than ever has every interest in migrating to clean farms (see our article on this subject), powered by solar, biomass and other green energies. Because they have the advantage, in addition to a much better carbon footprint, of being off the electricity grid and therefore of not depending on anyone.