Within the warehouse structure are clinically clean, bright white corridors containing rack after rack of servers storing data and providing processing power for everything from car manufacturers to Hollywood special effects firms.
Iceland, with its 100% renewable energy, perma-cool temperatures and data cable connections to both sides of the Atlantic, is a "sweet-spot" location for companies to base their massive power-consuming, heat-producing machines. Among them are bitcoin miners.
Bitcoin mining - the process of solving complex mathematical equations with a computer in order to generate the cryptocurrency - is designed so that the cryptographic algorithms become ever-more complicated as more computers join the network.
With the vast amounts of computing power now required to generate bitcoin, mining companies are moving their operations en masse to Iceland in an attempt to cut costs and make their endevours profitable within this new technological arms race.
Verne Global has experienced exponential growth since setting itself up in Iceland, according to CEO Jeff Monroe, doubling in size each year that it has been operational.
"It just so happens that Iceland has an abundance of dual source energy in the form of geothermal and hydroelectric energy," Monroe told IBTimes UK on a recent visit to the firm's Iceland data centre.
Read More.......
