A crypto mining farm (or at least an alleged one) caused a fire in a three-story building in Thailand recently, reports PCGamer.
Initial findings say that the fire caused around 2 million baht ($60,000) worth of property damage. Nobody died or was injured in the fire, though it did take firefighters some time to fully extinguish the flames, as per local reports in the Chiang Mai area.
Photos of the scene were uploaded to ChiangMaiCityLife, where you can check it out. Based on the pictures, it looks like the facility was a Bitcoin mining farm, judging by the hardware which looks a lot like ASIC miners.
There's no telling, however, if the farm also housed GPU mining gear that likely featured high-end, current-generation graphics cards. But one thing is for certain: almost all of the equipment is now beyond salvaging.
Authorities didn't share what exactly caused the fire, but it raises questions regarding cryptocurrency mining's reputation for consuming a lot of power.
Thailand itself is considered among the first Asian countries to enact laws regarding digital currencies, according to Law Asia. Officially, the nation regulates the offering and trading of digital assets, so it cannot be said for certain if the burned-down farm was illegal.
Nevertheless, this incident showcases just how much digital currencies have taken over the world. Mining farms have been popping up in a lot of countries making millionaires (or even billionaires) out of their owners, solely due to how profitable cryptocurrencies have become.
Bitcoin, considered the world's biggest (and most valuable) digital currency, sits at over $47,000 at the time of this writing. Ethereum sits at solo second with its value roughly at $3,800.
Despite digital currencies being largely volatile by nature, many people are still investing in it lately because of the sudden boom-one that has gone on for over a year now.
Crypto Mining And Its Power-Guzzling Nature
The cryptocurrency farm fire in Thailand could have been caused by anything. But it is always a possibility that it caught fire, given just how much electricity crypto mining hardware pulls on a normal day.
Bitcoin mining is perhaps the biggest culprit out there. According to Business Insider, global Bitcoin mining operations use up 0.5% of all the power generated on Earth. It sounds a bit small just reading about it, but wait until you get some perspective.
That 0.5% is reportedly 7 times the power consumption of the entirety of Google. It is also as much electricity as what the entire state of Washington consumes in a year, and one-third of all the power being used for residential cooling in the United States.
It is this single reason why a lot of countries, most notably China, have gone through great lengths to ban the trade of Bitcoin and other digital currencies. A single mining farm has too much of a carbon footprint, which screws up a lot of global pro-climate initiatives.
Not to mention, that much electricity going into a mining farm is a definitive fire hazard at all times.
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Written by RJ Pierce
