A lot of Dutch farmers are looking into mining cryptocurrencies

I was absolutely amazed yesterday when my neighbour came over for coffee. Here in The Netherlands most farms are still family operated and very small. This is not comparable to the large farms in the US at all.

His farm is very progressive and innovative. The versatility of his farm (flowers, grain, beets, chickens, calves) enables him to operate mostly closed loop and he has solar panels on every inch of the roofs of his buildings. He does most of the work with only a handful parttime employees and he has a lot of help from his family.

We started talking about Coinbase and cryptocurrencies in general. He said that he and his brothers are thinking about setting up a small mining operation, because a lot of his solar energy is now going back to the energy grid without making him any money. He wants to use the excess heat that comes with mining for preheating the water for his calves. He just wants to see what mining can do for him until he has other uses for the excess energy.

It turns out that there's a big Whatsapp group with farmers that want to do the same, with plans, drawings, calculations and the like. It seems that everything gets thoroughly thought out.

But I never expected cryptocurrencies to be this mainstream this fast. It's amazing.