The chief technical officer of stablecoin issuer Tether, Paolo Ardoino, recently had to respond to online claims regarding pictures of enormous industrial containers, which forced him to dismiss inquiries about where Tether is mining Bitcoin.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on August 26, Ardoino addressed the questions raised by the image he posted on August 24.Many people were confused by the image, which showed a canister with a modified Tether Energy logo.
He explained that the image depicts a control room at one of Tether’s Bitcoin mining facilities that it is currently finishing up and will shortly start using.Responding to many users who had asked about the location, Ardoino was certain that he would not reveal it.He did state that the location of the site is somewhere in South America, but he withheld any other information for security reasons.
“Where? In LATAM. We tend to not share exact locations to avoid personnel harassment, a valid concern given the amount of detractors obsessed with Tether,” he declared, admitting that it has led to many Tether skeptics questioning its legitimacy.
“You can almost hear some of them screaming: ‘NOOOOOOOO if you don’t tell us the address, zip code, surname of the cow that is eating the grass nearby, then it’s not real!!!!!‘”
He explained that it was a purposeful media decision to those who had questions about the photoshopped logo that appeared on the containers.
“We thought that the photo would have been shared on newspapers so the team wanted to brand it,” Ardoino noted. However, he believes having logos displayed at the mining sites would not be a wise approach from a security standpoint:
“Moreover, putting gigantic Tether logos would not be great from physical privacy of the site point of view.”
He anticipates operations to commence sometime in September.
“The site is progressing well, everyone in the team is super excited and working around the clock to start operations in the next few weeks,” he declared.
This follows reports that Tether is creating mining software with the goal of increasing openness inside the Bitcoin mining sector.According to an interview with Ardoino on August 17, Tether is developing a mining program called Moria that offers more thorough data analyses on the energy generation at Bitcoin mining facilities.Better analytics and performance evaluation in Bitcoin mining are required, according to Ardoino.He thinks Moria will help in assessing the site’s performance and surroundings.
“If energy used by the mining site is wind or solar, there are optimization parameters, like predicted speed of wind for a specific day or a specific hour of the day, that could be used to overclock some of the miners and boost the production.”he added.