Bitcoin bonanza trickles down to aquaculture
January 4, 2018
By
Liza Mayer
A bitcoin mining operation in Manitoba is helping nurture plants and fish growing in an aquaponics system in Manitoba, Canada.
‘Mining operation’ for the cryptocurrency supplies heat to aquaponics farm The Myera Group, based the town of St François Xavier, is primarily a bitcoin mining operation. But the large amounts of heat its 30 computers generate have inspired company president Bruce Hardy to use it instead of paying for air conditioning to cool them off.
Thus was born a makeshift greenhouse on the second floor of the company’s 20,000-square-foot building, growing lettuce, basil and sprouted barley.
A pump waters the plants with wastewater from tanks located on the first floor in which around 800 Arctic char swim and breed. The wastewater from the tanks is rich in nitrates, a great fertilizer for the plants upstairs, reported CBC News.
About one-quarter of the second floor is currently filled with computers and plants, but Hardy is still experimenting with using the heat from bitcoin mining in different ways, the report added.
