Lisa Barnard - Bitcoin
Photograph: Lisa Barnard01As part of her project *Bitcoin,* Lisa Barnard visited Genesis Mining in Iceland, which rents hashing power to crypto-miners.
Photograph: Lisa Barnard02While in Iceland, Banard also visited sites of geothermal activity, which provides cheap, clean energy to crypto-mining operations.
Photograph: Lisa Barnard03Most of Iceland's energy comes from geothermal power plants and hydroelectric dams that derive power from the country's underground heat and abundant water.
Photograph: Lisa Barnard04It makes the energy-intensive process of cryptocurrency mining more viable. Here, a man walks outside Genesis Mining's facility on a World War II-era airstrip near the Reykjavik airport.
Photograph: Lisa Barnard05Elias Inarsson is a technician and the head of maintenance at the Genesis Mining facility.
Photograph: Lisa Barnard06The facility, called Enigma, contains tens of thousands of GPUs stacked in rows. Genesis Mining states that the GPUs have as much collective computing power as a supercomputer.
Photograph: Lisa Barnard07The GPUs are cooled by hundreds of thousands of fans.
Photograph: Lisa Barnard08Ceiling turbines suck hot air generated by the computers from the building. Each rotates with the force of 60 spinning washing machines.
Photograph: Lisa Barnard09Each of Enigma's buildings spans nearly 13,000 square feet.
Photograph: Lisa Barnard10Powering all that hardware costs Genesis Mining more than $1 million per month.
Photograph: Lisa Barnard11A view inside Genesis Mining's Enigma facility.
Photograph: Lisa Barnard12Labeled tools neatly hang at Genesis Mining's facility.
Photograph: Lisa Barnard13A close-up view of Bitcoin mining hardware.
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