Cyber correspondent, BBC World Service
The Zambezi roar is deafening as millions of liters of water collapse over the rocks and crash.
But there is another sound that breaks through the Treas of the Zambian bush – the unmistakable tall whimpering of the Bitcoin mine.
“That’s the sound of money!” He says the smiling Phillip Walton is examined by a shipping container with 120 computers dealing with complex budgets checking Bitcoin transactions.
In exchange for the network, they automatically reward Bitcoin.
At the far northwestern top of Zambi, we are near the border with Drc, and all the mines of Bitcoin I visited – this one is the strangest.
Water and electronic equipment usually do not mix well, but the proximity of the river, which is drawn here, is Bitcoiners.
The Phillip mine is connected directly to the hydroelectric power plant that chanks some of Zambezi’s torrents through huge turbines to create continuous, pure electricity.
Even more important for Bitcoin mining – it’s cheap.
So cheap, it made a business sense of Phillip’s company headquartered in Kenya, to withdraw his shipping container full of sensitive computers for Bitcoin mining over the uneven narrow roads 14 hours from the nearest capital to set up here.
Each machine earns about $ 5 ($ 3.90) per day. More if the price of coins is high, less if it falls.
Occasionally, Phillip looked at his smart clock – the initial screen that shows the constantly changing line of Bitcoin value.
There are currently about $ 80,000 per money, but Phillip says I can earn even when Bitcoin’s value becomes low thanks to cheap electricity on the site and partnership they have with energy companies.
“We recognized that, in order to get a better economy of mining, we had to work with the energy company here and give them a share in revenues. And so the reason we are ready to go here somewhere is so far away that it allows us to get a cheaper strength effectively,” he says.
The Zengamina Hydro -Power plant is huge, but it is technically a mini -grille – an independent island of power for a local community.
It was built in the early 2000s thanks to $ 3 million collected from charities.
The British-Quadmbi Daniel Rea leads the place after his missionary family led a construction project, primarily to power the local hospital.
Now it provides power for about 15,000 people in the local area, but the project failed to put an end to the end because of the slow community assume.
Allowing Bitcoiners to set up a trade here was a transformation into the business.
“We spent every day over half of the energy we could generate, which also meant that we did not make money from paying our operational costs. We need the main user of power in the area and there was a partnership that changes the game with Gridless,” says Daniel.
The Bitcoin mine now makes up about 30% of the plant revenue, which allows them to reduce prices to reduce the local city.
Bitcoin and her economy, of course, are far from the minds of people in Zengamina.
The city itself is a few kilometers from the plant and contains no more than a few dozen buildings similar to the sheds that have fallen cross roads.
Only one store has a refrigerator and a dozen children to the audience around the municipal computer, alternately chose a song that will throw out, which is why adults go through as they pass their day.
Although the hydroelectric plant came online in 2007, it took a few more years to connect it with a local city and then more time to connect individual homes and companies.
So, some people like Barber Damian are still enjoying the news that they are revived just a year and a half ago.
“Until I got power, I had nothing and couldn’t do anything. When I got strength, I bought everything at the same time.”
She’s not kidding. At night, his tiny barber is a lighthouse with a TV that plays music videos, wires of Christmas lamps and buzzing of his hair. Like moths, young people hang out in his barber shop like a youth hostel.
“Getting power has changed my life,” smiling. “The money I now earn from the barber shop helps me pay for my school fees again.”
Accepting electricity is a large measure for Damiana. At home, it divides one bulb between the two rooms that make up a small house.
Elsewhere in Tumba and Lucy Machayi, they sit at the intersection, watching the world pass.
Like many young people, they are glued to their phones.
“Before the city got power, it was basically just a bush,” Lucy says.
The small electricity they used from small solar panels, they say.
“No refrigerator, without TV, no mobile phone network,” Tumba says.
“Electricity has completely changed people’s lives here,” Lucy adds.
“We can collect our phones, we have a network. We can communicate with each other.”
Here many people know or take care of the Bitcoin mine who played a role in helping hydro-billets to continue things.
But she will soon watch that tank pierce her journey through the city on the way to another place.
Zengamina Hydro provided a large investment to help them expand to multiple villages and join the national network.
Soon the excess energy that the mine has been borne to sell back to the national network, and Bitcoin mining will no longer be profitable in Zengamin.
Phillip and Team are Sanguine about it and insist that this is good news. They will have a successful several years here and are in the end happy that Zengamina helped. And of course he made money in Bitcoin.
The company says there is a lot of space with so -called stranded energy that they can grow a bitcoin mine next to.
Gridless already has six such places in three different African countries.
North of Zengamina, another Bitcoin mine bite excess energy from the hydroelectric factory managed by the Virung National Park in Congo. It helps financing preservation projects, says the park.
But Gridless is now planning an ambitious next move – to build its own hydro – scratches from scratch to Mina for Bitcoin and bring electricity to rural areas.
Janet Mingi co -founder says the company is occupied by raising tens of millions of dollars for the project.
They focus on the so -called hydroelectric models of Rijeka, such as Zengamin, and the continent has an abundance of “unused hydroelectric power plant,” he says.
“Consumer model focused on consumers is crucial for a scalable, affordable and sustainable approach to energy that meets the needs of African communities,” she explains.
The company is not a charity organization and believes that ensuring long -term economic sustainability for developers and investors can only be done through bitcoin.
Finding locations for a new plant or for the touch of existing is an easy part.
The company continues to face the resistance of some authorities and companies that Bitcoin see as an energy greeting and selfish use of electricity that rural people can use otherwise.
But the company insists that the incentive is to always sell the highest customer and that they say it will be a local community.
History tells us that without an incentive or rules, Bitcoin mining on the scale can burden public energy networks. In Kazakhstan in 2020-2021. The mining flourishing increased the energy consumption in the country by 7% before the government stuck and bordered the wings of the growing industry.
In the United States – the new Mecca Mining Bitcoin Mining – Conflicts between Rudar, locals and residents were common when electricity is high demand.
Authorities have created agreements with some mining giants to ensure that they exclude their warehouses full of computers at a time when the network needs to be balanced.
For example, the Greenidge Gas power plant in New York, which was renovated in the Mina Bitcoin, was a mandate to be powered by mining in January in January to deliver electricity to the net during cold cracking.
Agreements like these will have to be widespread if President Donald Trump’s ambition to “minister, coins and make in the US” is achieved.
The impact of the industry on the environment is also the main concern. Bitcoin mining is estimated to use as much energy as a small country like Poland.
However, according to researchers at Cambridge University, which is estimated annually on Bitcoin’s energy consumption, a shift takes place to a more sustainable energy combination.
Setting up like this Zengamin are a small part of the overall mining image.
But they are also a rare example of a controversial industry that creates much more than only digital coins.
