There’s a lot to discuss when it comes to the cryptocurrency sector. Price growth remains at the top of the list, with regulation coming in a close second. As for me, I’ve been looking into issues that have arisen from cryptocurrency farming. There’s one country, in particular, that is really struggling from this and that’s Iceland. Iceland cryptocurrency farming fears have been growing for a while now.

Iceland Cryptocurrency Farming in 2018

Reports have stated that the Nordic island nation is planning to use more energy in order to “mine” digital currencies, like Bitcoin (available on Coinbase), than it will to power its homes in 2018. For perspective, in 2016, Iceland was reported to have a population of 334, 252. It has most definitely grown since then, so one can only imagine how many homes and families will suffer from Iceland becoming heavily involved in cryptocurrency farming.

Bitcoin (available on Coinbase) has been around since 2009, but Iceland’s involvement with the virtual currency is still relatively new. However, the European country, defined by its beautiful landscapes, is wasting no time jumping on the Bitcoin (available on Coinbase) wagon. In fact, it has become an international hot spot for energy-hungry crypto servers. Over the past couple months, we have seen a variety of companies bombard Iceland with requests to start cryptocurrency farming in the country. How? By creating new data centers.

While that might sound promising, a chance for innovation, there are many who doubt Iceland will be able to keep it up. A number of analysts have stated their concerns that if Iceland continues to reel in companies making a pitch on the success of virtual currencies, they won’t be able to keep up with rising demands. After all, cryptocurrency farming requires an enormous amount of energy to operate the calculations which allow the miner to find the “hashes”.

Iceland is essentially worried that they will run out of energy to do all of this. According to the forecast of Johan Snorri, an Icelandic businessman, the country will witness a doubling of cryptocurrency farming energy consumption to 100 megawatts in 2018.

This is the thing about cryptocurrencies. While there are a number of advantages to using them or farming them, there are also a number of risks. For starters, Bitcoin (available on Coinbase)s are often used for money laundering and a variety of other scams – just ask Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak. As for farming cryptocurrencies, Iceland has shown us a massive downside to it. If you didn’t already guess, running out of energy because a country is focusing on somETHing that could still potentially be a bubble is definitely what I consider to be a downside.

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