North Dakota officials plan to spur the development of the local cryptocurrency industry with large-scale investments.
What Happened: North Dakota government officials attended the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami hoping to attract cryptocurrency miners to the region, promising to help them produce the "cleanest crypto on the planet," according to a Thursday Cointelegraph report.
The trip cost the North Dakota Commerce Department $35,000, and the agency said that it expects a minimum return of 20,000% from its presence at the conference.
North Dakota's Commerce Department announced that it has secured $3 billion of crypto investment and expects to secure another $3 billion in projects soon. The state hopes to reduce its reliance on agriculture and oil by attracting firms mining cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) by leveraging its natural resources, with no tax breaks or funding involved.
North Dakota's cold and dry weather would help hardware in mining farms and decrease cooling expenses, while cheap electricity allows for a further increase in profits. The region's officials also promise the availability of large quantities of clean energy.
Each year, natural gas that is uneconomical to pipe off in order to sell it is burned off in the United States in great quantities — resulting in pointless pollution and wasted energy. Now, cryptocurrency miners have started setting up local mining farms to make use of this energy, North Dakota's commerce commissioner James Leiman said:
“We can take other people’s liability or trash, if you will, and make it our treasure. That’s why North Dakota is a highly specialized location for some of these crypto miners. Plus, there’s a low price of electrons compared to the rest of the country. There’s also access to abundant gas reserves. The sky’s the limit, in my opinion, for the crypto industry.”
