The small country of Iceland is on the news again. After the county went onto the spotlight two years ago after a dominant display by the Men’s football national team at the FIFA Euro 2016 grand stage and subsequently at the 2018 FIFA world cup, they are now on the spotlight for their crypto industry. Iceland is expected to move away from crypto mining to shift to pure blockchain businesses. This is according to forecasts by industry insiders in that locality who had an interview with news site Red herring. Chairman of the Borealis data centre based in Reykjavik told Red herring that local crypto demand, as well as demand for blockchain activities, is shifting towards the pure blockchain business rather than focusing on bitcoin mining.
According to Jorgennson, the craze around bitcoin (BTC) mining has fallen to a level that is way below what it was a year ago. When crypto had hit an all-time high. Despite the bitcoin price slow down as well as the decline of mining activity, the bitcoin mining wave that had been experienced much earlier contributed to the faster growth of local energy and data industries. These industries whose infrastructures are well developed are expected to provide a big boost to blockchain related activities.
The tiny country of Iceland has become one of the leaders in the crypto mining industry due to the country’s cold climate as well as the availability of cost-efficient sources of renewable energy. These energy sources are mainly geothermal as well as hydroelectric. This tiny country is impressively home to 5 of the world’s largest crypto mining farms operated by Genesis mining which is reportedly the single largest electricity consumer in Iceland. Johann Snorri Sigurbergsson, the business development manager of a local energy supplier, HS Orka predicted that the volume of crypto mining in Iceland was likely to double in 2018.
CEO of HS Orka, Asgeir Margeirsson said back in July that the country’s crypto mining had pushed the fourth revolution, while the country’s director of Icelandic Institute for intelligent machines stated that bitcoin miners were key to the Icelandic industrial revolution which in his opinion was still underway. The business development manager at HS Orka, Johann Sigurbergsson, however, stated that the bitcoin mining data centres would probably not remain for long since those data centres would eventually be used as the country’s new technology incubators.
This goes to show the commitment of the Icelanders towards developing new technology and getting ahead of the curve in that regard. Just last week, Blockchain tech group Bitfury, announced intentions to set up new machines in its mining centres in Iceland as well as in Canada, Georgia, and Norway.
