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Cryptocurrency Miners Are Using Old Tires to Power Their Rigs (vice.com)
Christopher Malmo, writing for Motherboard: An entrepreneurial cryptocurrency mining company has just announced an unusual deal: it has partnered with a tire-based waste-to-energy company in the United States to power its mining computers. Standard American Mining and PRTI, a tire "thermal demanufacturing" company based in North Carolina, are powering graphics cards-based mining equipment to earn a range of alternative cryptocurrencies like Ethereum. Basically, they take used tires and heat them to a precise temperature, resulting in components like steel (from belted tires), carbon black, and a burnable fuel. That fuel is the energy source driving turbines to make electricity, which powers an onsite cryptocurrency mining farm. Taking advantage of an underutilized electricity source to run computers isn't groundbreaking, but the unusual set-up shows that cryptocurrency mining is now profitable enough to justify finding quite unconventional sources of cheap or new energy generation.
We can blame this on hyperspeculation in the value of cryptocurrencies. When these currencies become insanely valuable, it becomes profitable to get energy to mine them from insane sources.
Recall hyperinflation of the German Mark in the 1920s. At one point its value was so low that it made more sense to burn the notes than to use them to buy firewood. How long before it becomes profitable to burn actual bank notes to make electricity to mine bitcoin?
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