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33 sats \ 5 replies \ @kr 29 Mar 2023 \ parent \ on: Irish farmers turning cow poop into BTC bitcoin
no, they didn’t mention it in the video.
the main point i was trying to make was that manure is needed to maintain healthy soils, so i was trying to figure out how they could keep their soil healthy while also removing the thing that keeps soil healthy.
many factory farms (this didn’t look like one from the video) don’t keep cows on pasture and therefore need to dispose of manure somehow, so this might be a good use case for them… but they’ve got the worst soil of all farms, pretty much devoid of life and a big negative externality that often goes unaccounted for.
also happy to see new experiments like this, would love to visit the farm and get a deeper understanding of the process.
i think they were using cut grass and the manure
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Gotcha, and agree that this seems like the typical Irish farm that's necessarily focused on revenue generation rather than doing what's right for the environment. (again, not to criticize - this is just the reality). I grew up about 50 miles from the farm in the video and my brother is a farmer who is doing some experiments in regenerative farming. I'll be curious to see what he thinks of this.
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nice, would be interested to hear what your brother thinks too!
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Well, I asked him and he's quite positive on anaerobic digester use for electricity. He's not well informed on bitcoin or mining though.
I'd love to know the portion of time these guys sell back to the grid vs mining, and how much that might change as this becomes more and more prevalent.
Then again, the UK (where this farm actually is), doesn't seem too well set up to produce cheap electricity anytime soon, unless they really get their shit together, so it could be viable approach for years to come.
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interesting, thanks!
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