Unfortunately, not all areas of the UK are as affluent as the media would like us to believe, with seaside towns often faring rather poorly during the lengthy British winter. In a bid to turn its fortunes around, the seaside town of Jaywick has decided to start harnessing the power of the ocean to mine cryptocurrencies. By teaming up with renowned artist Maël Hénaff, Jaywick is turning around the lives of its residents, one hash at a time.
Deploying Project “Democratizing Technology”
Hénaff’s project has been dubbed Democratizing Technology and it essentially involves creating floating mining rigs that capture the energy of tidal movements in order to power themselves. Hénaff has taught locals how to build these specialist mining rigs as well as maintaining them, calibrating them, and how to salvage old computers to build these impressive rigs. Considering that around 20% of the town are on benefits, the £0.90 generated per rig isn’t going to change the town into a crypto mining hub like Sichuan overnight, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Other Miners are Too Powerful
While the people of Jaywick are trekking into relatively uncharted waters for the UK, the small amount of hashrate coming from the Jaywick community is barely a scratch on the surface of the global crypto mining community. Bitcoin mining giant Bitmain is adding 600,000 brand new Antminer S17 Pro devices to its armory. Each one of these devices is capable of generating 56TH/s, giving Bitmain the chance to regain control over the Bitcoin mining world. Once these miners are switched on, the total network hash rate will climb, forcing the difficulty to increase. This in turn could be bad news for Jaywick miners, as their woefully underpowered rigs will start churning out less and less crypto every day.
It’s Not About the Money
For the residents of Jaywick, it’s not about the money being generated, but instead it’s the knowledge and skills they’re gaining through this project. By learning the core skills required to build, maintain and upgrade these crypto mining rigs, they’re learning valuable job skills that will give them a chance to move into the IT industry. Miners from Jaywick could use their newfound skills to get jobs with crypto mining giants such as Bitfury, Hut 8, Bitmain, and even CoinGeek. Not only this, but they could develop their own custom-built ASIC mining rigs that harness the sea’s tidal power in a more efficient manner – generating more hashes per second and in turn more money.
It’s amazing to see a community come together to learn about new technology and pick up the core skills needed. While this project might not transform the town overnight, it’s a step in the right direction for the unemployed people of the Jaywick.
