Bitcoin could save Eskom

NO PAIN, NO GAIN: OPPORTUNITY STILL EXISTS

- Ciaran Ryan

If you had mentioned bitcoin mining to a power utility five years ago, you would have been laughed out of the boardroom. There's not much to laugh about now.

Carel de Jager, CEO of Silver Sixpence and a former Eskom engineer, ran some simulations to quantify what impact bitcoin mining would have had on Eskom's balance sheet. The figures are staggering.

Starting on 1 April 2020 and running three million bitcoin mining machines until the end of 2024, Eskom would have cranked out more than 406,000 bitcoin (BTC) – sufficient to pay off a new 2,000MW power plant costing about R31 billion in 279 days, and leave it debt-free.

This is somewhat less than the 506,137 BTC owned by MicroStrategy, or the 574,083 owned by BlackRock's newly formed exchange-traded fund, but would still make Eskom one of the largest single producers and owners of BTC in the world.