JAMESTOWN – Applied Blockchain Inc. will construct three more buildings to house computers used as cryptocurrency mining machines at the Jamestown site, said Jeff Nicholas, the company’s executive vice president of real estate development.
Applied Blockchain, which is headquartered in Dallas, is building a cryptocurrency hosting facility about 7 miles north of Jamestown near the substation owned by Otter Tail Power Co. The hosting facility is co-located with the substation.
Plans in September called for Applied Blockchain’s hosting facility to provide 100 megawatts of capacity in early 2022.
Nicholas said at the Jamestown/Stutsman Development Corp.’s annual meeting on Wednesday, April 27, that the company plans to scale capacity up to 200 megawatts after the construction of three more buildings to the south of the current buildings.
The facility in Jamestown has 30 full-time employees. He said 25 of the 30 employees are from Jamestown.
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Applied Blockchain is a publicly-traded builder and operator of next-generation data centers across North America, which provide substantial compute power to blockchain infrastructure and support Bitcoin mining, according to the company’s website. Applied Blockchain's hosting facility mines Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrency assets.
Cryptocurrency is a digital currency that can be used for payments or held as an investment similar to the stock market. Cryptocurrency is not a government currency and doesn’t have a central bank, interstate rates or a long history of exchange rates against other currencies.
Cryptocurrencies are stored in virtual wallets such as Klever, a multi-cryptocurrency wallet.
Cryptocurrency can be purchased and sold on exchanges, and each cryptocurrency system is separate and not interchangeable other than through these exchanges.
Cryptocurrency transactions are recorded and kept through a ledger called blockchain. Each block is connected to those before and behind it, making it more difficult for hackers to tamper with the blockchain because the block containing the record and all other blocks linked to it would need to be changed to avoid detection.
Nicholas said the project for the first 100 megawatts of capacity cost about $35 million.
The facility includes eight buildings with a total square footage of about 65,000 square feet. Each of the first four buildings is about 33 feet by 280 feet and each of the second set of four buildings is about 33 feet by 205 feet. The eight buildings will host anywhere between 30,000 to 35,000 mining machines.
Nicholas said the three additional buildings will be the same amount of lineal feet as the first eight buildings and will house the same amount of computers.
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A ribbon-cutting ceremony is planned for Thursday, May 5, at Applied Blockchain’s hosting facility.
