For the most of us, Iceland is a mountainous landscape, or the Blue Lagoon springs place. However, the crypto enthusiasts have a different sight for the country as it proves to be a haven for the data centre and best suitable for crypto mining. The credit goes to Iceland’s cheap and plentiful renewable hydro and geothermal power and relatively stable temperatures, which on most days provide natural cooling for the hosted equipment. Most of the energy sources come from the renewable sources which are powered by the island's volcanoes.
Iceland's government are afraid of the fact that if the cryptocurrencies fail to bring the boom to the economy which they are expecting the damage would be serious. This concern is manifest as the country is still recovering from the huge financial crash that crippled its economy just a decade ago.
According to the Finance minister, Bjarni Benediktsson, even if the country is considered a remote volcanic island with not a big significant number of inhabitants, the crypto threat “cannot be excluded as a risk factor.”
It becomes easier for the crypto miners to prosper the operation due to the easily available natural energy resouces as the ‘mining’ of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and Ethereum is extremely energy-intensive.
But Iceland’s crypto industry is expected to move away from crypto mining and shift to “pure blockchain businesses.” This comes from the forecasts made by some local industry insiders to a news site Red Herring.
The bitcoin mining is less on demand as the interest is shifting towards pure blockchain business, said by the chairman of Reykjavik-based Borealis Data Center, Halldór Jörgensson.
He further added the frenzy around Bitcoin (BTC) mining has declined to a level that is “not as crazy as it was a year ago,” when the cryptocurrency has hit its all-time price high. The bitcoin mining adoption has contributed to the faster growth of local energy and data industries, and now they are expected to provide a boost to blockchain-related businesses.
The CEO of HS Orka, Asgeir Margeirsson, stated that the crypto mining industry has accelerated “the fourth revolution,” He further added, Bitcoin “probably won’t be here far into the future,” claiming that the data centres that are currently used by miners will eventually become new technology incubators.