Bitcoin lending platform BlockFi is now hosting bitcoin mining operations with Blockstream Mining, with plans to deploy miners at Blockstream’s facility in Adel, Georgia.
“As BlockFi looks to expand our offerings to the mining community and accumulate bitcoin on our balance sheet, mining directly to support the Bitcoin network provides a means to vertically integrate our supply chain while diversifying our revenue streams,” Joe Chu, the director of principal credit and mining at BlockFi, said in a release shared with Bitcoin Magazine.
Blockstream’s Adel facility offers 300 megawatts of power capacity for mining, along with cooling and air filtration technology that can offer more efficiency to bitcoin mining operations. It is designed to enable colocation services that allow institutional clients like BlockFi to forgo constructing and maintaining their own facilities.
It is an offering that has recently enticed other institutional additions to Blockstream Mining as well.
“In March, financial services company Galaxy Digital elected Blockstream to host its Bitcoin mining operations across North America, and energy infrastructure multinational Aker announced a partnership with Blockstream Mining to explore alternative energy Bitcoin mining,” per the release.
The news comes as the Bitcoin mining industry finds itself once again embroiled in debate over its energy use, with many within the industry emphasizing the renewable sources that can power the practice. For instance, Argo Blockchain and DMG Blockchain recently joined a group promoting bitcoin mining decarbonization. And Greenridge Generation announced that it would be a carbon neutral bitcoin miner by June 2021.
Meanwhile, recent research by Galaxy Digital found that the Bitcoin network consumes less than half of the energy consumed by the banking or gold industries.