Constant outages have ruined investments in crypto-currency mining in Cuba

The outages also affect telecommunications, leaving some of these operations that rely on off-grid power plants without the internet needed to perform mining tasks.

Crypto-currency mining in Cuba is not viable under current conditions.

Crypto-currencies have reached a notable level of functionality in Cuba, as citizens use them as an alternative to obtain services that they would not otherwise be able to get, including international purchases, cell phone and internet charging services, and even sending and receiving money transfers. However, crypto-currency mining is struggling to reach the same level of popularity.

While crypto-currency mining was once considered a smart investment by Cubans, this idea has been demolished by the current state of the Cuban power grid, which puts mining operations at risk due to the constant outages the country faces. Raydel González, a small crypto-currency miner who built his own platform, explained to local news site Cubanet the difficulties a miner faces in the country today. He explained: said::

Like many others, I had invested a lot of money in cryptocurrency mining equipment that is not cheap. With the advent of power outages, cryptocurrency mining in Cuba is not viable.

Other miners, like Eduardo Gomez, have purchased power plants to keep their operations running, but the scarcity of gas has also made it difficult to sustain these operations that run on off-grid power. Eduardo Gomez explained that he is still not able to earn income from a $5,000 investment.

Telecommunications also affected

But even the miners who have managed to run their operations off the grid by securing a constant flow of gas to feed their plants are affected by the problem. Indeed, the outages also affect the local telecommunications network, which cannot be operated with the limited facilities available to Etectsa, the local Cuban telecommunications company.

The problem was reported in June, when company officials were already dealing with similar problems. At the time, an anonymous Etecsa worker said::

Etecsa’s generators are running out of fuel to support so many hours of outages. The plants are not able to produce all the power needed to keep so much equipment running for so long and that is why everything is malfunctioning.