Crusoe Energy has just raised $505 million with the aim of expanding its flared gas extraction business to reuse it to mine Bitcoin (BTC), rather than waste it.
Develop recycling of excess gas for Bitcoin mining
Crusoe Energy Systems is a US company that converts unused flared natural gas for Bitcoin (BTC) mining. This avoids wasting this energy source.
The US company announced that it has raised $350 million in a Series C round led by G2 Venture Partners, a US fund that invests exclusively in companies with technologies that transform traditional industries in innovative and sustainable ways.
In addition to the Series C round, Crusoe Energy also secured $155 million in financing from SVB Capital, Sparkfund and Generate Capital. This makes a total of $505 million available to develop the business.
As a reminder, a Series C round of funding is a round of funding in excess of €100 million, and the purpose of the round is to continue to grow the company, buy out competitors, recruit qualified personnel and gain market share.
The untapped natural gas company says the fundraising will enable it to finance the recruitment of an additional 100 employees to the company’s 157.
Crusoe Energy also wants to expand its Bitcoin mining and cloud computing operations in the US and abroad.
Global warming issues
Gas flaring is the burning of natural gas waste through flares that cannot be easily moved or stored. While this may seem strange because the energy is wasted, from the point of view of the gas companies it is much more economical than trying to actually use the gas.
Open flared gas is therefore a major environmental problem as it wastes energy and causes carbon pollution. Instead of flaring the excess gas, Crusoe Energy wants to use it to create electricity to power nearby Bitcoin mining machines. In this way, the energy is recycled and not wasted.
More and more companies in the energy sector, aware of the issues related to global warming since they are on the front line, want to convert the energy not used to mine cryptocurrencies. This is the case of oil giant ExxonMobil, which could use its surplus energy to mine Bitcoin (BTC)
Bitcoin has been heavily criticised by environmentalists for its impact on the environment, as the mining process is said to use very power-hungry machines. In reality, however, this impact should be put into perspective, as Bitcoin (BTC) mining only accounts for 0.08% of global carbon emissions.
More and more initiatives are tending to use green energy to mine Bitcoin, and the activity of Crusoe Energy is proof of this. Using excess gas to mine Bitcoin is cleaner than burning it and putting more carbon emissions into the air.
