As Bitcoin industry seeks more energy, crypto miners explore green power

The industry's increasing enthusiasm for finding clean power comes at a time when renewable energy has become a staple in utility grids around the world as the technology improved and costs fell

Vakhtang Gogokhia’s plan to extract cryptocurrencies from the netherworld of cyberspace relies on a strategy familiar to many old-school manufacturers who use a lot of energy -- the cheaper the fuel, the better.

That’s why Gogokhia, who heads a startup called Golden Fleece, put a cargo container with Chinese-built computers inside a dilapidated Soviet-era tractor factory in Georgia, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of the Black Sea. The site made sense for running servers 24 hours a day because it has access to low-cost electricity generated by water flowing from the nearby Caucasus Mountains. There also are plans for solar