Dutch farm uses bitcoin mining to grow tulips

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WIN-WIN SITUATION: A company that mines bitcoins uses the heat generated by its computers to heat a greenhouse, helping to reduce natural gas costs

Tulips and bitcoin have both been associated with financial bubbles in their day, but in a giant greenhouse near Amsterdam, the Dutch are trying to make them work together.

Engineer Bert de Groot inspected the six bitcoin miners as they made intricate sums to earn cryptocurrency, filling the air with a loud groan accompanied by a puff of heat.

The heat warmed the greenhouse where rows of tulips grow, reducing farmers’ dependence on gas, the price of which has skyrocketed since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Photo: AFP

The servers are in turn powered by solar power from the roof, reducing the normally huge electricity costs for mining and reducing the impact on the environment.

Meanwhile, farmers and De Groots company Bitcoin Brabant are earning cryptocurrency, which is still attracting investors, despite a recent market crash.

We believe that with this way of heating our greenhouse, but also earning bitcoin, we have a win-win situation, flower grower Danielle Koning, 37, told reporters.

The Dutch love of tulips caused the first stock market crash in the 17th century when speculation in bulb prices caused prices to skyrocket, only to crash.

Today, the Netherlands is the largest tulip producer in the world and also the second largest agricultural exporter after the United States, with much of it grown in greenhouses.

However, the lowland country is keenly aware of the effect of the farming industry on climate change, while farmers grapple with high energy prices.

Meanwhile, cryptocurrency mining requires huge amounts of electricity to power computers, impacting the environment as part of global efforts to combat climate change.

De Groot, 35, who only started his business earlier this year and has 17 clients including restaurants and warehouses, said it made bitcoin and tulips a perfect complement.

This operation is actually carbon negative, as are all the operations I basically build, said long-haired de Groot, sporting an orange polo shirt with his company logo. Actually improved the environment.

He also sells tulips online for bitcoins through a company called Bitcoinbloem.

The collaboration began when Koning saw a Twitter video De Groot had made about bitcoin mining and called him.

There are now six servers in their greenhouse, the exact locations of which Koning has asked to keep secret to prevent thieves from targeting the 15,000 euro ($15,812) machines.

The Konings company owns half of them and keeps the bitcoins they produce, while De Groot is allowed to keep its three servers there in exchange for monthly visits to clean the servers’ fans of dust and bugs.

With a difference of 20°C between the air entering and leaving the machine, this provides the heat necessary for the growth of the tulips and the drying of the bulbs which produce them.

The most important thing we take away from this is that we save natural gas, Koning said. Second, well, we earn bitcoins by running them in the greenhouse.

Huge energy costs caused some Dutch agricultural businesses that often rely on greenhouses to stop growing this year, while others even went bankrupt, Koning said.

Meanwhile, philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who developed the idea of ​​the unpredictable but historic black swan event, compared bitcoin to the Tulipmania that engulfed the Netherlands nearly 400 years ago.

This saw the prices of a single light bulb soar to more than 100 times the average annual income in the era before the bubble burst in 1637, causing banks to fail and life savings to be lost.

The cryptocurrency sector is reeling from the collapse of a major exchange with bitcoin worth around US$17,170 per unit, down from a November high of US$68,000. last year, but De Groot is not worried.

I have absolutely no concerns about the long-term value proposition of an immutable monetary system, he said. Bitcoin will last forever.

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