The "mining" cryptosystem startup Trésorio is proposing to heat buildings in exchange for storage space at its computer servers.
"Reuse the hot water leaving the cooling system"
Metz could benefit from a rather rare heating system in France. With the help of Dalkia (a subsidiary of EDF), a local start-up specializing in cryptocurrencies seeks to renew the heat emitted by its computer servers to industrial, agricultural or even residential buildings. "The idea is to reuse the hot water leaving the cooling system to fuel the heating of other buildings," says Jonathan Klein, co-founder of Trésorio, a company created in 2016 in Lorraine.
And indeed, grouped in 250m ² of warehouses, a hundred servers run at full speed, 24 hours a day, requiring more than 5000 liters of water continuously. "The heat emitted by 3 m² of warehouse alone would heat a municipal swimming pool ... In contact with a server the water instantly goes from 5 to 20 degrees!", Says the entrepreneur of 27 years. With this discovery, Trésorio intends to take advantage of this to find new storage space and accelerate its growth.
Win-win exchange
In exchange for a free space in a building, Trésorio would heat it for free, while paying the necessary electricity for its servers. A win-win agreement, which has already seduced more than one.
The start-up has planned to test next month this device in a hospital in Metz - whose company preferred to keep the name confidential - then in a tire factory. Tresorio will install in these buildings a computer cabinet (see our photo opposite) with a heating power of 10 kW, capable of heating a space of about 100 m². "In the long term, beyond cryptocurrency mining, our servers will be praised for their technological power, because we will need more and more machines to operate connected objects, artificial intelligence or for example to sequence DNA in laboratories, "confided Jonathan Klein.
"Great idea, isn't it ?"
This seems like making the best of a bad situation. Wouldn't stopping proof of work be a better solution? Mining is an inefficient form of heating. We should be working to become more efficient, not on becomming reliant on it.