Several Approaches Taken by Private Equity Companies in Bitcoin MiningRelated Firms

Blockchain News Report:
Bitcoin miners have caught the attention of private equity firms due to their data centers that can power artificial intelligence-related machines.
In an interview with CoinDesk, Adam Sullivan of Core Scientific revealed that private equity firms have taken several approaches to finance their artificial intelligence-related partnerships.
Sullivan stated, “Private equity is clearly now chasing the data center space; even private equity firms that may not have necessarily done data centers before are evaluating this space.”
Bitcoin miners can assist artificial intelligence companies by storing their machines in existing data center infrastructures instead of building their own facilities.
Sullivan said, “One of the biggest constraints currently is finding a facility that has more than 100 megawatts of power and has high-voltage substation transformers. These facilities are hard to come by, and that’s exactly what the standard has been for the past four years when locating Bitcoin facilities.”
Retainna Lin, the Global Marketing Manager of Bitdeer, told Blockhead at the inaugural SuperAI event in Singapore that the company is entering the field of artificial intelligence by utilizing CPUs that were previously used for Bitcoin mining, which are now redundant.
According to CoinDesk, JPMorgan Chase stated that this interest further validates the participation of Bitcoin mining in high-performance computing and may “usher in a new era of mergers and acquisitions for miners.”
Additionally, the Bitcoin halving event in April of this year has also attracted the attention of private equity firms.
Core Scientific explained, “The halving has also attracted the attention of private equity firms, who see this event as an opportunity to consolidate smaller companies and integrate their existing infrastructure into their own.”
Private equity firms are providing funding to Bitcoin miners to help them cover the costs of reconfiguring these data centers, which is very expensive.
Sullivan said, “Many of these Bitcoin mining companies are now working to build Bitcoin mining facilities, and these private equity firms are looking for potential returns and ways to extract economic value from some of these potential conversions (from mining to HPC).”
Powering these facilities also requires a significant amount of energy. According to Just Energy’s data, the energy consumption of all cryptocurrencies combined accounts for 0.4% to 0.9% of the world’s annual electricity consumption, which is equivalent to 120 to 240 billion kilowatt-hours per year. The energy usage of these figures exceeds the total of all data centers worldwide.
The energy sources for Bitcoin mining are fossil fuels (43%), hydroelectric power (23%), wind power (14%), nuclear power (8%), solar power (5%), and other renewable energy sources (2%). However, the cryptocurrency industry, as well as other sectors in the technology industry, are now reconsidering the increased utilization of nuclear power.
As a result, cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is now considering using nuclear power to supply electricity to its data centers due to the increased demand for its services. Although the exchange does not intend to build its own reactor, it is exploring partnerships with nuclear power suppliers that have small modular reactors (SMRs).
Vishnu Patankar, Chief Technology Officer of Kraken, explained, “With institutions entering the crypto asset class, activity happening on-chain, and a growing demand for reliable fiat on-ramps, enhancing our energy resilience means we strengthen the direct pathway into the crypto ecosystem, supporting its continued growth.”