The roar of the Zambezi is deafening as millions of gallons of water crash over rocks and tumble down rapids. But there’s another sound cutting through the trees of the Zambian bush – the unmistakable high-pitched whine of a bitcoin mine.
Engineers from Gridless create makeshift computer labs to maintain their bitcoin mines. In exchange, they are automatically rewarded bitcoin by the network.
We’re in the far north-western tip of Zambia, near the border with the DRC, and of all the bitcoin mines I’ve visited – this one is the strangest. Water and electronic equipment don’t usually mix well, but it’s precisely the proximity to the river that’s drawn bitcoiners here.
Phillip Walton’s mine is plugged directly into a hydro-electric power plant that channels some of the Zambezi’s torrent through enormous turbines to generate continuous, clean electricity. More importantly, for bitcoin mining, it’s cheap.
The company says there are plenty of places with so-called stranded energy that they can plug their bitcoin mine next to. Gridless already has six sites like this in three different African countries.
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