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The popular payments company, formerly known as Square, is venturing into the Bitcoin mining business, as confirmed by the boss in a tweet on January 14.
Block’s general manager for hardware, Thomas Templeton, stated that the firm was hiring a team in an effort to make mining “more distributed and efficient in every way, from buying, to set up, to maintenance, to mining,” before adding:
“We’re interested because mining goes far beyond creating new Bitcoin. We see it as a long-term need for a future that is fully decentralized and permissionless.”
We’re officially building an open bitcoin mining system ✨ https://t.co/PaNc7gXS48
— jack⚡️ (@jack) January 13, 2022
Bitcoin Mining Business
The Bitcoin mining ambitions were initially unveiled in October when Dorsey said that the firm was considering building a Bitcoin mining system “based on custom silicon and open source for individuals and businesses worldwide.”
Block wants to make Bitcoin mining accessible to anyone from their homes. The new system aims to solve problems with access to mining hardware, reliability, noise, and power consumption issues. Templeton elaborated:
“We want to make mining more distributed and efficient in every way, from buying, to set up, to maintenance, to mining.”
Templeton added that there are a number of “customer pain points” and “technical challenges” to overcome within the mining community.
He also stated that the company was open to making a new ASIC (application-specific integrated circuits), open-source miner firmware, and other system software offerings.
Dorsey, who believes BTC will replace the USD, departed Twitter in November to work more closely with Bitcoin. On January 12, CryptoPotato reported that the BTC bull had started a new fund to provide legal defense for Bitcoin developers.
Mining Ecosystem Latest
China’s loss in banning Bitcoin mining has been America’s gain. The U.S. now controls the lion’s share of the Bitcoin network hash rate, according to Cambridge University.
According to its mining map, which hasn’t been updated since August, the United States accounts for 35.4% of the global hash power. That figure is likely to be substantially higher now, considering the crackdowns that have been going on in other countries.
Environmentalists always cry foul when crypto mining is mentioned, but the majority of it in the U.S. is conducted with renewable energy, so in effect, the mining ecosystem is much greener now than it was when China dominated.
Featured image courtesy of CNBC
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