As Crypto Mining Grows, Data Centers Begin Accepting Bitcoin 94
miller60 (554835) writes "Citing strong demand from cryptocurrency miners, data center and colocation providers are beginning to accept Bitcoin as payment for large chunks of data center space. It's a sign that the data center industry sees an emerging opportunity in catering to the hosting needs of crypto miners, who typically seek high-density space with cheap power. While many web hosting companies accept Bitcoin, larger data center players have been slower to embrace cryptocurrency. Utah-based C7 Data Centers says it's accepting Bitcoin because of surging demand. The Utah-based company says it now hosts about 4.5 megawatts of mining gear, just down the road from the NSA data center." On-topic: Dish Networks has recently become the biggest company to accept Bitcoins.
What a dumb waste of energy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Lots of places "accept" bitcoin now (Score:5, Insightful)
No one seems to mention that they accept bitcoin like they accept VISA cards. All of these places actually want dollars. Any bitcoins they accept through a payment provider are instantly converted to dollars by that provider and that is what they really want. In that scenario, it is failing to pick up as a currency, but is gaining some ground as a money transfer device. The downside is that now instead of just the third party payment provider, there is a third party payment provider plus the bitcoin network.
It seems to me that this is only maintainable while new coins are being mined. Once the mining approaches 0, people will start wanting a transaction fee to process the networks transactions. At that point it can't possibly be cheaper than the traditional payment processing networks. I don't believe in bitcoin as the lasting cryptocurrency. Unfortunately (or fortunately), as bitcoin is the dominant one, if it falters and fails, it will be a long time before anyone would trust another cryptocurrency even if the bugs are worked out.