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Aluminum Plant in Russia Turned into Huge Bitcoin Mining Site ‘BitRiver’

In the cold and dry region of eastern Russia, a former Aluminum refining plant has transformed into one of the largest Bitcoin(BTC)trade mining sites in Russia.

The promising features of BitRiver have already started attracting many crypto stakeholders. Japan, China and the United States have already signed up for renting the site to mine digital coins.

The former aluminum plant was powered by a sophisticated hydropower infrastructure that made use of ample supply of water to produce cheap electricity. The Bratsk-based site can charge clients for power at rates much lower than those in the United States, which is extremely significant when it comes to Bitcoin mining.

Data Centers and mining sites are clustered with commodity hardware that run round the clock to mine Bitcoin (or perform other computationally intensive tasks). In most sites around the world, millions of dollars’ worth of fans have to be installed at these sites to cool the high-powered hardware which is not built for heat evasion by design. However, the temperature in Bratsk is very cold by nature and hence ideal for the commodity hardware. Crypto mining companies will be able to save power costs by choosing to run their operations at BitRiver.

As per the Russian law, no industrial unit can endorse crypto mining. The BitRiver mining unit therefore does not directly provide the mining facilities, but rather it provides the hardware and power to aid companies interested in Bitcoin mining.

Cheap Electricity for Crypto Mining

The data center was built by the Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska about five years ago. One of the major suppliers of electricity to the facility include En+. Deripaska and his family own a 45% stake in the company that supplies 100 megawatts of electricity, enough to supply power to 100,000 homes. As one of the largest hydropower plant in Russia, the BitRiver plant can sell an excess of energy to other industrial and residential units in the area.

Considering that the average price of electricity in the United States is about $0.12 per kWh, BitRiver is a lot better in terms of its pricing of electricity at an attractive rate of $0.055 per kWh, less than half than the American cost. Interestingly, BitRiver purchases the same units at a rate of $0.038 from the local suppliers.

Despite the fact that the price of Bitcoin is consistently dropping around the world (the current valuation stands at about $7,000), crypto miners are investing millions of dollars every year to create and operate sophisticated mining farms to reap the rewards of mining.

One prominent commentator on Bitcoin, Alistair Milne, said that the miners are not showing any signs of capitulation. “They are acutely aware of the upcoming halving and are apparently unphased by the recent dip”, proclaimed Alistair.

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