Repeated blackouts in several parts of Cuba have reportedly made operating cryptocurrency mining rigs impossible - and mining unsustainable.
Many Cubans have lost thousands of dollars that they had invested in crypto mining equipment and graphics cards, according to a report by CubaNet.
Numerous young Cuban entrepreneurs saw crypto mining as a way to earn these assets, which would provide them with valuable benefits, including online purchases abroad, as well as sending remittances and payments for services, among others.
Per one such investor, however, the renewed energy crisis and blackouts in Cuba have had a devastating result for this industry, saying that,
"Mining becomes more difficult or almost impossible every day, since deciphering a block can take days with the equipment turned on without interrupting the process and that in Cuba today is impossible.”
Raydel González, a young computer scientist and a miner, went on to say that, he and "many others, had invested a lot of money in cryptocurrency mining equipment that is not cheap," but that,
"With the arrival of the blackouts, cryptocurrency mining in Cuba is impossible to sustain."
Blackouts are not a new issue for Cuba and had been a cause for a number of protests. Energy and Mining Minister Livan Arronte Cruz stated, as Retuers reported in July this year, that "the operating reserves that we have in the electrical system are insufficient to cover the demand, making effects on service inevitable."
Mining consumes a lot of power, and some searched for alternatives such as battery-powered voltage converters - however, so far "the variants are not profitable or simply not sustainable," found the report.
Miner Eduardo Gómez, who claims to have invested more than $5,000
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