CASPER, Wyo. – The lands of Wyoming have been mined for generations, so it seems fitting that a whole new mining concept is starting to take hold.
Last year, three Casper entrepreneurs with years of experience in the oil and gas industry launched Highwire Energy Partners, a company that takes advantage of Wyoming’s oversupply of natural gas to mine cryptocurrency. .
The concept of cryptocurrency is still confusing and foreign to most people. In short, cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, is a digital asset that can be used for purchases. There is no physical money involved and the currency is completely decentralized.
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The process of mining cryptocurrency is extremely energy intensive. Mining involves using a range of very powerful computers to solve random “problems” to verify bitcoin transactions. The miners send their checks to the network pool and are then rewarded with cryptocurrency.
“They’re basically buying our computing power,” said Will Reese, who partnered with Kris Holbrook and Wayne Neumiller on the new business.
“It’s a huge network of computing power, and that’s part of Bitcoin’s intrinsic value,” he said. “It’s the strength and security of the underlying network that ultimately comes from miners like me or like the big farms in the US or around the world.”
Being able to operate cheaply and efficiently is the key to profitability, and this is where Wyoming’s abundant gas supply comes in handy.
“They use a significant amount of energy, and the trick with mining Bitcoin all over the world is finding an economical source of energy,” Reese said.
The concept of Highwire is to draw directly from natural gas that would be flared or in wells intended to be closed. To do this, Highwire brings custom huts of around 14 × 14 directly into the well and powers them using a natural gas-powered field generator in that well.
They say the concept adds value to Wyoming’s gas economy by adding value to wells that otherwise might never have been profitable.
“If you need to build a multi-million dollar pipeline, you need a number of really good wells to justify it,” Reese said. In many cases, it is not economically viable to operate a particular well in the pipeline, but Highwire can take its equipment and tap directly into the mouth of the well. Additionally, gas which is a byproduct of oil wells can also be used to mine cryptocurrency rather than just being burned.
“I think that’s one of the beauties of Bitcoin, that the network itself can monetize energy that we just can’t put on the market can’t use efficiently right now.”
Reese says they operate cryptocurrency units in several locations in Wyoming, and the company recently secured leases on unused gas wells in South Dakota at basement-level prices.
“I think it’s a very good solution, a very young solution for the oil and gas industry,” Reese said.