It is assumed that Iceland’s crypto mining industry will move away from mining to “pure blockchain business”. This will happen according to the forecasts of a number of local industry insiders.
Halldor Jorgensson, chairman of the Reykjavik data center Borealis, said that the demand for local funds of crypto and blockchain is a “move to clean business”, instead of focusing on the mining of bitcoins.
According to Jorgenson, the madness in the area of mining bitcoins has decreased to a level that is “not as crazy as a year ago”, when the cryptocurrency reached a record high price for all time. Despite this, Jorgensson believes that the “wave” of bitcoin mining contributed to a faster growth of local energy and information technologies, this well-developed infrastructure is now expected to become an incentive for business related to the blockchain.
Iceland has become one of the leaders in mining due to its natural cold climate, as well as an abundance of economical renewable energy sources – mainly geothermal and hydroelectric power stations. One of the world’s five largest crypto mining farms is located in the country, whose operator Genesis Mining is reportedly the largest consumer of electricity in Iceland.
In February, Johann Snorri Sigurbergsson, business development manager for the local energy supplier HS Orka, predicted that the volume of crypto mining in Iceland is likely to double in 2018.
HS Orka CEO Asgeir Margreisson said in July that the industry of the crypto mining had pushed the “fourth revolution”, while the director of the Icelandic Institute of Intelligent Machines believes that the bitcoin miners are “the center for an industrial revolution that is still going on.”
However, Sigurbergsson also argued that bitcoin “probably will not be here in the distant future,” arguing that the data centers currently used by the miners will ultimately become new technological incubators.
Earlier this week, the Blockchain Bitfury Technology Group announced the launch of its new BTC equipment for mining with plans for the use of new machines in its mining centers in Canada, Norway, Iceland and Georgia.
