Mining rigs refer to any piece of equipment fully or partially dedicated to mining cryptocurrencies. This could be specialized hardware with a dedicated graphics card or a personal computer with available capacity that can be used as mining equipment.

A crypto mining rig typically consists of a CPU or GPU for high computing output, a motherboard, a considerably sufficient amount of storage capacity and memory (RAM). The mining process is highly energy-intensive, depending on the mining algorithm and power consumption of machines.

Mining and Bitcoin Circulation

Bitcoin mining involves repeatedly solving a complex series of mathematically intensive puzzles requiring high computing power for a mining reward of 6.25 BTC. Cryptocurrency mining has mainly become competitive as many mining farms continue to spring up; hence, crypto miners employ dedicated hardware with several graphics cards as mining difficulty increases with more cryptocurrency mining rigs available on the network.

Cryptocurrency miners may then choose to sell their mining rewards( i.e. Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency) at the current market price, thereby increasing the circulation of Bitcoin in the crypto market.

Why is crypto mining so energy-intensive?

The difficulty of mining cryptocurrencies increases as the competitiveness of the mining community continues to grow. Mining cryptocurrency is only profitable when the rig can complete as many mathematical iterations as possible in a shorter time, hence, the need for a vast number of high-computing dedicated hardware assembled in remote locations. Given the processing power and continuous work being carried out by these machines, they require a constant power supply for cooling purposes, consequently driving up electricity costs.