Peter Wall: The Crypto-Mining Gold Rush

This week: Crypto-mining. If you’re looking at that lead sentence and thinking “WHAT?” you’re not alone. As you’re about to find out crypto-mining is the latest techno-fad and what some are calling a breakaway play for financing our digital future. It’s a story that came to us via our friend Peter Wall, who we last spoke to about digital nomads on a Bali beach. We checked in with him and found him in the wilds of Northern Canada tending a flock of high powered computers and fomenting the future of Block Chain. Peter’s now Vice President of Operations at Argo Blockchain, a burgeoning high-tech player in the world of crypto-mining. He explains exactly how crypto-mining works, why he’s involved, and goes onto put the whole crypto mining endeavor into context by comparing it to other currencies. If global currencies are intertwined and pegged to one another in order to establish a kind of global monetary equilibrium, what’s the arrangement with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and all other forms of cryptocurrency? How are we to know if anything is worth anything? And what exactly does a crypto miner mine? The very idea of crypto-currencies as little as 15 years ago would have elicited mockery and laughter. It still sounds far-fetched, but so must have Colorado when the gold miners of the 1850s set out to stake their claims. Instead of dynamite and pick axes, these crypto miners are armed with complex algorithms high-speed computers, and light-speed transaction capabilities. It all takes money and energy – and lots of it. It’s not an episode you can afford to miss.