Since Governor Andy Beshear passed two laws in March of 2016 to encourage miners to establish roots in Kentucky, the number of mining rigs arriving in the state has increased by the truckload.
Senate Bill 255 extends the clean energy-based incentives to miners who provide a minimum capital investment of $1 million, while Kentucky House Bill 230 provides miners a number of tax breaks.
Kentucky and mining-focused businesses have reaped benefits from the legislation. Kentucky accounted for 18.7% of the United States' total total hashrate, second only to New York, according to data from a subsidiary of the Digital Currency Group.
A miner can add new blocks of verified transactions to the Bitcoin ledger. In order to make money from their efforts, miners need expensive equipment and low-cost electricity. About 19 million of the 21 million total supply have been mined in the past 13 years.
Belfry, Kentucky, a town with less than 500 people, is the location of Blockware Solutions' flagship mining facility.
It is my hope that the region will benefit from this type of mining. It would mean the world if our families could save money.
Blockware's Kentucky flagship location is comparable to the size of a warehouse club and is one of three planned sites in the state, according to Mason Jappa, the company's CEO.
The fact that an energy grid exists is awesome, but there aren't many energy consumers like us in the region, so if we can take down large amounts of energy.
He said that the data center will be able to power a small rural town of 5,000 people annually with 20megawatts.
Jappa said that they found the perfect cocktail of everything they needed: political stability, low-cost energy and support in the local economy.
The abandoned coal mines are not the only places getting a face-lift. Nick Hansen, the CEO of Luxor, said that empty real estate across the country, from steel mills in Illinois to forgotten warehouses in Oklahoma and parts of the Midwest, is being utilized.
Most of these places have the power capacity built-in so it's perfect for miners to come in and use them.
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