Due to delays, a Bitcoin company is now looking at Aug. 1 to begin operations at a mine outside of GulfQuest National Maritime Museum of the Gulf of Mexico.
The delay was caused by fabrication issues related to a shipping container the Daphne-based company, Distributed Ledger, wanted to use to house the computers that would be mining the coins on the museum’s footprint, Marketing Manager Josh Dunn said in a phone interview.
“Unfortunately, we had some issues with the shipping container, but those are over now,” Dunn said. “It was on the fabrication side.”
With the issues resolved, Dunn said the company is looking at an Aug. 1 deadline to get the operation up and running. Although, he acknowledged it’s not a hard deadline. Dunn originally said the mine would be open around July 4.
Back in May, the Mobile City Council approved a contract with Distributed Ledger to allow the company to use property near GulfQuest and Cooper Riverside Park to install a Bitcoin mine. In exchange for the land, the company would give the city-owned museum a percentage of the coins mined from the facility. The museum is entitled to 20 percent of the coins generated by the mine.
The operation would run all day and night, out of a shipping container and would use 100 small computer terminals, or miners, to find Bitcoins by solving equations. There are more than 2 million Bitcoins remaining in existence. Bitcoin is a digital, decentralized currency that fluctuates in value.
