Large Immersion Cooled Crypto Mining Farms to Extract Bitcoin in Middle East Desert
Marathon Digital Holdings (a U.S. based crypto mining company) and Zero Two, an emerging blockchain infrastructure developer, are launching what they claim will be the Middle East’s first immersion Bitcoin mining operations.
Marathon, in a release announcing the project, announced that the partners had formed a joint-venture called Abu Dhabi Global Markets. The venture will develop and operate two new digital asset mining sites with a capacity of 250 Megawatts.
The 200 MW facility is to be built in Masdar City – Abu Dhabi’s capital and sustainability hub. An announcement revealed that the other 50MW crypto farm would be located at the Mina Zayed port zone.
The sites will use excess energy to increase the base load of Abu Dhabi’s grid and ensure its sustainability. Both companies stated that they intend to offset non-sustainable electricity with clean energy certificates.
The construction of the crypto-mining farms has already begun and mining equipment is on order. The two sites will have a hashrate combined of 7 EH/s. They are expected to be online by the end of this year.
Before launching the project, Marathon Digital launched a pilot to test the feasibility of a large crypto-mining operation in Abu Dhabi. The hot desert climate makes air-cooled mining impossible.
Initial results from the pilot show that mining in the UAE can now be done thanks to a custom-built immersion solution for cooling the ASIC miner, as well as proprietary software optimized to maximize their performance.
The ADGM joint-venture will have 80% equity owned by Zero Two, and 20% by Marathon. Capital contributions are expected to reach $406 million in 2023. Analysts recently forecast that increasing regulatory pressures, increased energy costs and tax may lead to a new migration by crypto miners.
