“It’s a system where participants are forced to waste resources to provide some level of security on the network. “Bitcoin mining is essentially waste by design,” said Alex de Vries, a Dutch economist, researcher and founder of Digiconomist, a site that tracks the environmental impact of cryptocurrencies. The process consumes a lot of electricity, and the computers generate a lot of heat, which means they require industrial cooling systems that need even more energy.īecause of this, the Bitcoin network currently consumes more electricity than many small countries, including the Philippines, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index. If a computer “wins” the game, it’s rewarded with a newly created bitcoin, currently worth about $40,000. The network is secured by “miners” who use powerful computers to compete in an enormous guessing game that ultimately verifies the transactions. Bitcoin mining is breathing new life into America’s aging fossil fuel power plants, creating a demand environmentalists say discourages investment in renewable energy sources at a time when shifting away from carbon-emitting sources of energy is essential.īitcoin and other cryptocurrencies use blockchain technology, essentially a shared database of transactions, where entries must be confirmed and encrypted. What happened at Scrubgrass highlights a growing trend within the crypto world that alarms some environmentalists. Write to Hae-sung Lee at Lee edited this article.According to the SEC filings, Stronghold plans to operate 57,000 miners by the end of 2022 - an expansion that requires buying up two additional coal waste power plants in the region. The company is building a plant in Gangwon province that will support around 100 roasting machines.īacked by its superior technology, Stronghold Technology has been an official equipment supplier for the World Coffee Roasting Championship (WCRC).
Generally, coffee shops receive shipments of mass-produced beans to brew coffee, but Stronghold Technology plans to roast beans that are tailored to individual coffee shops and send direct shipments. Moving forward, Stronghold Technology is preparing to shift its revenue model from selling roasters to original development manufacturing (ODM). For example, California-based coffee appliance firm Bellwether Coffee is developing its own technology, and Nestle and Panasonic are running tests to produce similar products. There are only a few competitors that possess a similar business model. The company is also in talks over a potential technical tie-up with Restaurant Brands International (RBI), the parent company of Starbucks and Burger King. So far, the firm has raised around 17 billion won ($15.2 million) from investors, including SoftBank Ventures, Korea Investment Partners, Intervest and Kolon Investment. Stronghold Technology aims to log 10 billion won in revenue with 10 percent operating profit this year.
STRONGHOLD COMPANIES UPDATE
The daily data from these roasters are collected on the company's cloud system and used to update the AI algorithm.įounded in 2010, the startup posted 7 billion won ($6.3 million) in revenue last year. For example, the company has sold around 2,000 roasters worldwide, including to the US, UK, Mexico, Australia, China and Rwanda. Stronghold Technology digitizes and saves this data to create an AI algorithm that optimizes the roasting process.
In order to produce high-quality coffee beans, it is essential to roast green beans by delicate and precise handling of the convection, radiation and conduction processes, alongside other controllable variables such as gas output. 6.Īccording to Woo, coffee flavors can vary in a thousand different ways depending on how the beans are roasted. "Roasting is an AI technology that evolves with data," said Woo in an interview with The Korea Economic Daily on Apr. The company aims to become the "Tesla of coffee roasters" – just as an autonomous vehicle is an AI machine running on interlinked sensors, algorithms and data communications, so are Stronghold's coffee bean roasters, according to the company's chief executive, Woo Jong-wook. is the first startup to have applied artificial intelligence technology to coffee roasting machines. South Korea-based Stronghold Technology Inc. Stronghold Technology Chief Executive Woo Jong-wook
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