Wasted Energy Solved: Listen on Bitcoin.com

The interview opened with a trip down memory lane

Sergii talked about his lifelong passion for entrepreneurship. He told the story of selling razor blades to the neighbors when he was just seven. His father would buy them in bulk, and Sergii would ask if he could “use” some. He was actually selling them to the neighbor, who rarely got to the city to buy his own.

Seventh grade brought another memorable venture into business for Sergii. At his middle school, he began selling cell phone SIM cards. Living in a small farming village in Ukraine, families did not regularly travel to the city. Sergii’s resale of SIM cards won him many props from peers at school.

When Sergii was 20, he started his first business in the U.S. His first firm was a translation agency (given his college degree in linguistics). Later, he started a marketing agency. After that, he started an import/export firm.

It was when he was working in import/export that his business partner said to him one day, “we have a client who needs to buy a lot of GPUs.” At the time, Sergii didn’t even know that it stood for “graphic processing units.” He replied, “let me figure it out.”

And he did.

Learning about Bitcoin was exciting for Sergii

His next business venture was a hardware company devoted to providing Bitcoin miners with the sophisticated software they needed.

Business got to the point where, with so many clients, demand was high for hosting services. So EZ Blockchain started providing those, too.

Later, there were so many hosting clients that EZ Blockchain needed to source more and cheaper power.

Bitcoin Energy Consumption

Once EZ Blockchain had made a stand in Bitcoin mining, access to electricity was a new focus. The most important competitive edge a mining firm could get was access to cheaper energy because energy requirements for Bitcoin mining are high.

That same, high energy consumption has environmental advocates up in arms today. Some say that cryptocurrency has no long-term viability with its volume of emissions. The global Bitcoin industry’s C02 emissions now exceed 60 million tons, up 20 million tons from just two years ago.

And Bitcoin miners are far from the only companies under growing environmental pressure. EZ Blockchain looked, then, to another industry with the idea of a shared solution.

The Oil and Gas Industry

The oil and gas industry (OAG) has its own environmental concerns, too. OAG companies have been facing mounting pressure from governments as well as investors to reduce emissions.

One of the practices under particular scrutiny is that of natural gas flaring.

The gas released as a byproduct of oil drilling—and especially fracking practices—is often flared (or burned) away at a loss to the OAG companies, because the natural gas infrastructure does not extend to the majority of the 9,000+ producers in the United States.

OAG companies don’t like flaring natural gas any more than environmentalists do. If they had access to the necessary infrastructure, they would prefer to sell that natural gas so it could be used.

EZ Blockchain saw the stranded gas as an energy-rich opportunity where everyone could win.

The EZ Blockchain Cryptocurrency Mining Container

The EZ Smartgrid is a natural gas crypto mining system you will see installed at drilling sites around North America. The system includes natural gas generators connected to mobile data centers designed for high-functioning computation.

The natural gas that would otherwise be flared is instead turned into electricity on-site, with no new infrastructure required. The drilling company doesn’t even need access to the local grid.

That stranded natural gas powers Bitcoin mining operations inside the mobile data centers, meaning more affordable energy for EZ Blockchain and a new, reliable revenue stream for the oil producer.

Low volumes of natural gas that never justify a pipeline can amply power these Bitcoin operations. The result is a win-win for everyone.

Listen to the full episode and interview with Sergii Gerasymovych on Bitcoin.com.