PRESS RELEASE - November 12, 2014
Bitcoin mining is no longer a hobbyist’s pursuit. With the soaring popularity of Bitcoin, mining enterprises are becoming increasingly large, professional, and centralized in the few corners of the world where electricity is cheap and the climate is temperate.
But where is electricity the cheapest? How much a miner spends on electricity is often the primary determinant if they will see a return on their mining investment.
For American miners, the “Promised Land” for Bitcoin mining is a small region in Central Washington State around Wenatchee, WA, where the price of electricity plummets to below 3 cents/kwh, a solid 8 cents/kwh below the national average. These rock-bottom electricity rates are what is attracting miners from all over the world to this remote area of Washington.
ASICSPACE is one of the many Bitcoin mining businesses who have moved from their roots to put their stake in the ground in Washington. “We started out hosting GPU miners for our customers in Portland, Oregon, but we have always had our eyes on Washington because of the cheap electricity” says Robert Van Kirk, Vice President of ASICSPACE. “We were paying 9 cents/kwh for electricity at our GPU mine, plus paying for cooling. Once we’re in the arid climate of Central Washington, we won’t even need regular air conditioning, as swamp coolers will work fine.”
ASICSPACE has begun construction on a 1.3 MW data center near Wenatchee WA, which is due to open its doors on January 15th, 2015. Once the data center is complete, ASICSPACE will join a growing list of businesses based in Washington which sell rackspace specifically geared towards the Bitcoin mining market.
Why, though, is electricity in Central Washington so inexpensive? The answer lies in the region’s natural resources: within 100 miles of ASICSPACE’s new mine, there are five large hydroelectric dams. Each dam churns out more energy than the entire Bitcoin mining network combined consumes. These concrete behemoths, built decades ago, require little maintenance and are partially owned by the local utilities, which is why power in Central Washington is not only the cheapest in the United States, but the entire Western Hemisphere.
It’s the cheap power and land of Washington which is allowing ASICSPACE to set industry-leading hosting and colocation rates for their customers. “We will sell capacity, month-to-month, at $95/kw/month” says Damir Kalinkin, ASICSPACE CEO. “For the quality of rackspace we are bringing online, this is the best price I’ve seen anywhere.”
Whether the new slew of hosting businesses in Washington will remain viable or disappear like tumbleweeds depends on the future of Bitcoin itself, which nobody can predict with certainty. One thing is for sure however: as long as there is a Bitcoin left to be mined, there will be a miner somewhere looking to capitalize on it, and with its cheap and green electricity, odds are good that that miner will be in the state of Washington.
To see ASICSPACE’s website and reserve capacity, please visit: http://www.asicspace.com/
