Peter Thiel Backs $200 Million Valuation for Renewable Bitcoin Mining in the US

That's according to Layer1 co-founder and CEO Alexander Liegl, which plans to bring wind-powered bitcoin mining rigs to West Texas early next year.

"We think electricity directed to the bitcoin mining network is certainly a net positive for society."

The company is vertically integrated, in that it plans to run its own bitcoin mining facilities in the United States, using mining rigs that the company designed and built in-house and running its own power procurement.

The company has co-founders with prior expertise in hardware and mining, such that they believe they can execute a sophisticated strategy that makes mining in the U.S. profitable again.

"The last seven years we think of as mining 1.0," Liegl said, with firms doing little more than racing to deploy the most capital.

Texas has a major advantage as a cryptocurrency mining location, with energy prices among the very lowest in the nation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency.

"Bitcoin mining is pretty compelling to people out there because it's pretty analogous to how oil and gas works."

Air-cooled miners in Texas would burn up, he explained, so they had to devise a way to liquid-cool the miners.

That's what Layer1 has created with its proprietary mining equipment, each unit of which runs on two megawatts of power.

"With this funding, we are positioned to own the whole Bitcoin mining stack by designing, producing, and operating our entire mining infrastructure, including proprietary: ASIC chips, liquid-cooled mining containers and power procurement and development."