US Senator Ted Cruz recently declared that Texas should use natural gas in order to mine Bitcoin instead of flaring it as it is done now.
He commented: “enormous opportunity for Bitcoin […] to capture that gas instead of wasting it.”
Cruz revealed that around half of the natural gas that is being flared in the US is being burned in West Texas: “It’s being wasted because there is no transmission equipment to get that natural gas where it could be used the way natural gas would ordinarily be employed.”
He further added: “Use that power to mine Bitcoin. Part of the beauty of that is the instant you’re doing it you’re helping the environment enormously because rather than flaring the natural gas you’re putting it to productive use.”
Cruz further went and said that:
“In five years, I expect to see a dramatically different terrain, with Bitcoin mining playing a significant role in strengthening and hardening the resilience of the grid. There are a lot of places on Earth where the sun shines a lot and the wind blows a lot, but there aren’t any power lines, and it’s not economically feasible to use that energy. The beauty of Bitcoin mining is that if you can connect to the internet, you can use that energy and derive value from those renewables in a way that would be impossible otherwise.”