Miami Aims To Lure Chinese Bitcoin Miners But Will They Bite?

Miami aims to lure Chinese Bitcoin miners to the state as they are seeking a safe climate for their mining activities due to the ban in China as we reported in our recent Bitcoin news today.

BTC miners from China are looking for a new home as the government crackdown heated up and the Miami mayor hopes to lure them to his bitcoin city but he won’t be in power forever. Miami aims to lure them due to the cheap electricity costs because Chinese miners account for 65% of the network’s hash rate but as the government pulls the plug on the industry, the mining farms consider moving out abroad.

Mayor Francis Suarez welcomed the persecuted Chinese miners to Miami and to all those that are tired of dragging computers from different places in China and get threatened by a government crackdown which is why Suarez promises near-limitless supplies of cheap nuclear energy:

“The fact that we have nuclear power means that it’s very inexpensive power. We understand how important this is […] miners want to get to a certain kilowatt price per hour. And so we’re working with them on that.”

Electricity per kilowatt-hour costs 10.7 cents in Miami which is lower than the national average of 13.3 cents while the US government thinks that nuclear energy is a much more reliable source as well as one of the most environmentally friendly. Suarez advertised Miami as the Bitcoin City and uploaded a BTC whitepaper to the city’s website and a county commissioner dangled the campus dedicated to BTC before the audience at the Bitcoin conference earlier this month.

Suarez’s pitch hasn’t convinced Chinese BTC miners yet and Max Hu of the mining company Power360 said that Miami’s electricity price is uncompetitive. Kazakhstan for example charges between $0.03 and $0.033 kWh so powering the fans that prevent the machines from burning up in Miami’s hot heat will add to the costs as he said. Ben Gagnon who is who is the chief mining officer at Canadian BTC mining Bitfarms said that Miami contains a few of the factories or abandoned military bases that the miners in China used and turned into mining farms. The founder of Aixa8 Ventures Wayne Lin who invested in BTC mining believes that these setbacks aren’t enough to rule Miami out:

 “I wouldn’t want to spend millions of dollars setting up my facility if the policies could change suddenly.”