I kid you not, this is not a clickbait I swear.
There are actual, real-world farmers running cryptocurrency mining rigs powered by cow poop.
When I stumbled upon an article pointing this out, I was fairly certain it was a clickbait but I still decided to click on it just to make sure and as it turns out, it's wasn't clickbait after all!
Thanks to Josh Riddett, director at Easy Crypto Hunter there are now farmers using fecal matter to produce electricity who are earning an additional income by mining cryptocurrency instead of simply selling the power to the grid for a few cents. Some few years back, renewable energy production was quite profitable because of many government subsidies but this is not the case anymore as these subsidies kept decreasing in count and amount, year by year.
Today, selling power from renewable energy sources to the national grid can get you about ten cents per kilowatt depending on where you're from, while the same energy put to use through mining rigs returns a much more satisfying yield.
By running a cryptocurrency mining rig instead of simply selling the power the grid, renewable energy producers end up earning a lot more.
B-but how can poop turn into power?
Simply put, a big six-cylinder engine turns methane from decomposing cow manure into electricity in a process called anaerobic digestion. In an airless environment, microbes break down the manure to produce methane, which is then combusted to produce heat and electricity. The power generated can then be used to power up the farm and run a few carbon-neutral cryptocurrency mining rigs which work around the clock to mine crypto.
Is this enough to make Elon and the like shut up about how crypto mining is bad for the environment?
Probably not but it's a good starting point.
Maybe El Salvador's plan to mine crypto using power generated by volcanos has the potential to pipe down the environmentalist arguments against mining.