One of the world’s largest industries — oil and gas — is converging with magic internet money infrastructure, but bitcoin’s prolonged market selloff has taken some of the shine off of these monumental partnerships. Some cryptocurrency traders are even facetiously asking[1] if energy will be a new bullish narrative for Bitcoin, bringing wind to fill its metaphorical sails as the leading cryptocurrency sits over 50% below[2] its record price highs from late 2021.
Jokes aside, the “energy narrative” for bitcoin mining is real and gaining momentum as a growing list of mining companies and energy producers join forces. Assessing the short-term price implications of these partnerships are well outside the scope of this article, but the long-term benefits for bitcoin mining as an industry and the broader bitcoin economy are enormous. This article overviews the partnerships that are leading the merge between bitcoin mining and oil companies, and it offers some summary analysis into the specifics of why these corporate unions matter.
North American Mining Partnerships
In the news media and general discourse, the focus on partnerships between miners and oil companies has primarily centered on North America. Most of this attention is being paid here for good reason as several of the biggest names in the oil industry are working with North American miners.
In 2021, ExxonMobil reported annual revenue of more than $285 billion[3] with global daily production during the same period reaching more than two million[4] barrels per day of oil and gas. This titan of the oil industry is also reportedly[5] working with a bitcoin mining company in North Dakota to turn otherwise wasted gas into energy for mining operations. This news spread like wildfire through the Bitcoin community when it
