A bitcoin mining facility in Grundy County was destroyed by fire Sunday evening.
Firefighters from Wellsburg, Holland and Grundy Center responded to a call at the MiningStore facility located eight miles west of Grundy Center at approximately 6:15 p.m. Sunday, according to Grundy County Emergency Management Coordinator Chase Babcock.
Babcock said when crews arrived on the scene the fire had already vented through the top of the hoop building on the property.
According to MiningStore’s website, the industrial-scale cryptocurrency mining facility, which uses energy generated from a partnership with the Grundy County Rural Electric Cooperative, had 1,700 crypto-mining computers with nine on-site engineers maintaining the on-site servers. Babcock said no injuries were reported at the scene.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that’s used by people to send money to each other without a bank or third party. Bitcoin transactions are verified and monitored by independent computers running a secure algorithm to solve blocks of numbers that represent groupings of transactions. These computers, or “miners,” race to solve each block with the payout being the next block of bitcoins, which is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The Gazette reported in 2022 that the Grundy County facility, which opened in 2020, was one of Iowa’s first bitcoin mining facilities.
The company’s founder and chief executive officer, J.P. Baric, said he chose to build in Grundy County because of low energy costs. In 2022, the facility used more electricity than all the residential customers in Grundy County, population 2,800, combined. Baric said the daily electricity bill was about $5,000.
A representative from MiningStore could not be reached for comment about the extent of the damage to the mining site or future plans for the location.
Firefighters from Wellsburg, Holland and Grundy Center responded to a call at the MiningStore facility located eight miles west of Grundy Center at approximately 6:15 p.m. Sunday, according to Grundy County Emergency Management Coordinator Chase Babcock.
Babcock said when crews arrived on the scene the fire had already vented through the top of the hoop building on the property.
According to MiningStore’s website, the industrial-scale cryptocurrency mining facility, which uses energy generated from a partnership with the Grundy County Rural Electric Cooperative, had 1,700 crypto-mining computers with nine on-site engineers maintaining the on-site servers. Babcock said no injuries were reported at the scene.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that’s used by people to send money to each other without a bank or third party. Bitcoin transactions are verified and monitored by independent computers running a secure algorithm to solve blocks of numbers that represent groupings of transactions. These computers, or “miners,” race to solve each block with the payout being the next block of bitcoins, which is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The Gazette reported in 2022 that the Grundy County facility, which opened in 2020, was one of Iowa’s first bitcoin mining facilities.
The company’s founder and chief executive officer, J.P. Baric, said he chose to build in Grundy County because of low energy costs. In 2022, the facility used more electricity than all the residential customers in Grundy County, population 2,800, combined. Baric said the daily electricity bill was about $5,000.
A representative from MiningStore could not be reached for comment about the extent of the damage to the mining site or future plans for the location.
