Skip to main content

One of Russia’s largest oil producers creates a Bitcoin mining farm in Siberia

 

Gazprom Neft, one of the largest oil producers in Russia, is getting into mining — for Bitcoin, that is.

Recommended Videos

According to a report from Coindesk, the oil drilling giant has opened a crypto mining farm that runs on gas energy. The crypto farm is located in the Khanty-Mansiysk region of northwestern Siberia. It is utilizing gas from a nearby oil field as an energy source, which is turned into electricity for the mining process using its own power plant.

While Gazprom Neft will not be doing the mining itself, it reportedly plans to open up its resources to miners and piloted a small-scale mining operation with the mining company Vekus this fall. Gazprom Neft aims to increase the size of the mining farm, although it has not revealed how large it plans for the farm to grow.

Bitcoin mining is the process of creating new Bitcoin. Mining has to be done using specialized computers, with miners solving a computational problem in order to chain together blocks of transactions (the so-called blockchain), for which they are rewarded with fresh Bitcoin. According to a BBC report, the energy consumption associated with mining Bitcoin is equivalent to seven gigawatts of energy, approximately 0.21% of the world’s energy supply, or the equivalent of the power consumption of Switzerland.

Details of the new Bitcoin mining farm

The Siberian Bitcoin farm solves two problems at once. The first is that it provides a new means of generating large amounts of almost free electricity for the energy-intensive process of mining cryptocurrency. The second problem it solves is that it helps deal with a byproduct of the oil drilling process, which can result in fines. The extraction of oil also results in the release of CO2. Instead of wasting this gas, using it to generate electricity is a valuable method of repurposing it.

In one month, 49,500 cubic meters of natural gas have reportedly been used to mine 1.8 Bitcoin. At current trading prices, that is equivalent to more than $52,000. That’s not a bad return on investment — especially now that it sounds like a lot of the necessary infrastructure has been set up.

Luke Dormehl
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
This modular Pebble and Apple Watch underdog just smashed funding goals
UNA Watch

Both the Pebble Watch and Apple Watch are due some fierce competition as a new modular brand, UNA, is gaining some serous backing and excitement.

The UNA Watch is the creation of a Scottish company that wants to give everyone modular control of smartwatch upgrades and repairs.

Read more
Tesla, Warner Bros. dodge some claims in ‘Blade Runner 2049’ lawsuit, copyright battle continues
Tesla Cybercab at night

Tesla and Warner Bros. scored a partial legal victory as a federal judge dismissed several claims in a lawsuit filed by Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind the 2017 sci-fi movie Blade Runner 2049, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit accused the two companies of using imagery from the film to promote Tesla’s autonomous Cybercab vehicle at an event hosted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Studios in Hollywood in October of last year.
U.S. District Judge George Wu indicated he was inclined to dismiss Alcon’s allegations that Tesla and Warner Bros. violated trademark law, according to Reuters. Specifically, the judge said Musk only referenced the original Blade Runner movie at the event, and noted that Tesla and Alcon are not competitors.
"Tesla and Musk are looking to sell cars," Reuters quoted Wu as saying. "Plaintiff is plainly not in that line of business."
Wu also dismissed most of Alcon's claims against Warner Bros., the distributor of the Blade Runner franchise.
However, the judge allowed Alcon to continue its copyright infringement claims against Tesla for its alleged use of AI-generated images mimicking scenes from Blade Runner 2049 without permission.
Alcan says that just hours before the Cybercab event, it had turned down a request from Tesla and WBD to use “an icononic still image” from the movie.
In the lawsuit, Alcon explained its decision by saying that “any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account.”
Alcon further said it did not want Blade Runner 2049 “to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons.”
But according to Alcon, Tesla went ahead with feeding images from Blade Runner 2049 into an AI image generator to yield a still image that appeared on screen for 10 seconds during the Cybercab event. With the image featured in the background, Musk directly referenced Blade Runner.
Alcon also said that Musk’s reference to Blade Runner 2049 was not a coincidence as the movie features a “strikingly designed, artificially intelligent, fully autonomous car.”

Read more
Apple TV+ just got a price slash that’s tough to resist, and it won’t last long
The Apple TV main screen.

Apple has just quietly announced that it will be slashing the price on its Apple TV+ offering for a limited time deal.

While Apple prices the service at a standard $9.99 per month usually, it has just cut that way down to $2.99 per month.

Read more