JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, July 6, 2025

Bitcoin mining farm, Trinimine, in the works for T&T

by

Joel Julien
1176 days ago
20220415

Set­ting up a Bit­coin min­ing farm re­quires sev­er­al spe­cif­ic el­e­ments.

And luck­i­ly, T&T has them all.

Most of us are fa­mil­iar with fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions in­volv­ing cheques and cred­it cards from fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions such as banks, which all need to be ver­i­fied by the in­sti­tu­tions.

The same ap­plies to trans­ac­tions us­ing cryp­tocur­ren­cy.

How­ev­er, the ver­i­fi­ca­tion process of tra­di­tion­al trans­ac­tions is un­der­tak­en cen­tral­ly, while that of cryp­tocur­ren­cy is de­cen­tralised. This means that any­one, any­where in the world can be part of the ver­i­fi­ca­tion if they have the right equip­ment.

Bit­coin Min­ing Farms are glob­al­ly dis­trib­uted da­ta cen­tres us­ing com­put­ing pow­er to val­i­date trans­ac­tions of the Bit­coin Blockchain pro­to­col. This in­vest­ment pro­vides T&T with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come a new play­er in this new tech­nol­o­gy are­na.

The Bit­coin blockchain is by far the largest cryp­tocur­ren­cy blockchain, with a mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion val­ued at around US$ 900 bil­lion and 200 mil­lion trans­ac­tions a year.

“T&T has avail­able the core el­e­ments of pow­er ca­pac­i­ty, a com­pet­i­tive elec­tric­i­ty price and avail­able in­fra­struc­ture at Tamana In­tech Park” said Pro­fes­sor Jean-Fred­er­ic Mognetti

These three char­ac­ter­is­tics are the key dri­vers that will al­low T&T to make a par­a­digm shift to par­tic­i­pate in a new world econ­o­my.

Eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of this na­ture in T&T, would com­pete with projects of­fer­ing the same qual­i­ty of at­trib­ut­es as those in USA (Texas) and Cana­da (On­tario), he said.

The project, called Trin­imine, will be a large da­ta cen­tre with a ca­pac­i­ty of 300MW and an in­vest­ment of US $0.5 bil­lion.

The fa­cil­i­ty will be built out in phas­es, with the first phase be­ing 70 MW, oc­cu­py­ing 20 acres of land and with an in­vest­ment of US$ 100 mil­lion. This fa­cil­i­ty could be­come op­er­a­tional in 11 months af­ter a signed Pow­er Pur­chase Agree­ment.

The project re­quires the same con­di­tions of a sub­sidised en­er­gy price, grant­ed in the 20th cen­tu­ry, to at­tract man­u­fac­tur­ers to the Point Lisas in­dus­tri­al es­tate.

The same elec­tric­i­ty price at­trac­tive­ness to­day could re­sult in the de­vel­op­ment of the 21st-cen­tu­ry sec­tors of the fast de­vel­op­ing dig­i­tal econ­o­my.

Prof Mognetti added, re­gion­al­ly this project would be the first of its kind: “What T&T did with its en­er­gy was to build Point Lisas on sub­sidised en­er­gy for 20th cen­tu­ry in­dus­tries. Why not re­play the same game and use the same en­er­gy to sub­sidise an in­dus­try of the 21st cen­tu­ry”.

Such a project needs a sol­id and re­spect­ful fam­i­ly to make it hap­pen, and this is what the Trin­imine part­ner­ship boasts.

One of those part­ners is the ANSA McAL con­glom­er­ate. ANSA McAL is the par­ent com­pa­ny of Guardian Me­dia.

“Our re­mit is to look at new op­por­tu­ni­ties for the Group and this is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to di­ver­si­fy the cur­rent port­fo­lio with a 21st-cen­tu­ry ini­tia­tive. It is a com­plete­ly new area for ANSA McAL and T&T, and it fits nice­ly with the fi­nan­cial sec­tor that ANSA McAL is al­ready in”, said Dr Rikhi Per­manand.

Al­so part­ner­ing on the project are two in­ter­na­tion­al lead­ing com­pa­nies in their re­spec­tive ar­eas: Bit­fury and Coin­shares In­ter­na­tion­al.

Bit­fury based in Hol­land is a cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy pi­o­neer that reached a val­u­a­tion of US$1 bil­lion with­out be­ing list­ed on the stock mar­ket. This was achieved through its pro­pri­etary ASIC chip de­vel­op­ment, serv­er in­te­gra­tion, high-end da­ta cen­tre de­vel­op­ment and man­age­ment.

They are present in six coun­tries around the world, with an in­stalled – in op­er­a­tion and in de­ploy­ment – ca­pac­i­ty of, 1GW (1 bil­lion Watts) and a pipeline of projects, of 2 GW.

Coin­shares In­ter­na­tion­al is Eu­rope’s largest and longest-stand­ing dig­i­tal as­set firm found­ed in 2014, list­ed on the Stock­holm Nas­daq since March 2021 and with more than US $6.5B of as­sets un­der man­age­ment. Its mis­sion and its sec­tor spe­cial­i­sa­tion of­fers priv­i­leged ac­cess to in­vestors, who are ac­cus­tomed to, the risk, and re­turn char­ac­ter­is­tics of the sec­tor.

The three part­ners of Trin­imine are list­ed com­pa­nies in New York, Stock­holm and Port of Spain and post a cu­mu­lat­ed mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion of more than US$ 4 bil­lion.

Dr Per­manand added that the project fits per­fect­ly with the thrust of the Tamana In­tech Park.

“As you may know, the idea be­hind Tamana In­tech Park was to house tech­no­log­i­cal projects and op­por­tu­ni­ties. This fits very well in­to that vi­sion. The fit is al­so ide­al, be­cause there is plen­ty of space, and much more im­por­tant­ly it has a sub­sta­tion al­ready in place and ca­pa­ble of pow­er­ing the Phase 1 re­quire­ment of 70MW. So, it is a plug and play op­por­tu­ni­ty, which would al­low us to get to mar­ket very quick­ly,” Per­manand said.

“How­ev­er, this is not a done deal. And the op­por­tu­ni­ty must be grasped now as this ex­ist­ing win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty can close quick­ly,” Mognetti said.

The tech­nol­o­gy part­ner Bit­fury, as an in­te­grat­ed op­er­a­tor, is man­ag­ing a very crit­i­cal re­source - ASIC chips, which are un­for­tu­nate­ly in com­pe­ti­tion for their al­lo­ca­tion.

T&T ranks well on pa­per but faces al­ter­na­tive al­lo­ca­tion op­tions. If it is not T&T, North Amer­i­ca will wel­come with opened arms, these semi­con­duc­tors and their servers sup­port­ed by at­trac­tive elec­tric­i­ty prices.

Phase 1, will im­me­di­ate­ly pro­vide T&T with a glob­al vis­i­bil­i­ty of 0.7 per cent of the glob­al com­pu­ta­tion ca­pac­i­ty.

This will in­crease to two per cent when the project of 300MW is ful­ly de­ployed.

This fig­ure has to be com­pared in re­la­tion to T&T‘s Nat­ur­al Gas pro­duc­tion, which rep­re­sents 0.03 per cent of the glob­al pro­duc­tion.

Fi­nal­ly, what makes the project even more at­trac­tive is that oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion, such as Bar­ba­dos and the Ba­hamas, have al­ready start­ed mod­i­fy­ing their reg­u­la­tions to fa­cil­i­tate this dig­i­tal as­set econ­o­my and are at­tract­ing in­ter­est from for­eign com­pa­nies.

“This project is to­tal­ly aligned in terms of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion for us as a pri­vate-sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tion and fits very well with the long-term view of what the gov­ern­ment wants. So, it’s a great fit,” Per­manand said.

“I think it’s an ab­solute game-chang­er for us as a busi­ness, and for us as a coun­try be­cause it’s a re­al par­a­digm shift in what we do. It’s tak­ing the nat­ur­al as­sets that we have and us­ing them in a dif­fer­ent way to gen­er­ate wealth for the in­vestors and for the cit­i­zens of T&T. This is the type of ini­tia­tive that we need to be look­ing at for fu­ture growth,” he added.

Mognetti, who is French, and has lived and worked in T&T since 2006, con­clud­ed with the well-root­ed com­mon sense of the farm­ers of the Alp moun­tains:”In the coun­try where I grew up, it is well known that it is dur­ing the sum­mer pe­ri­od that one fix­es up the roof, not un­der one me­ter of snow! What is not done in due time is paid with in­ter­est and even cu­mu­la­tive one if one pro­cras­ti­nates to do what needs to be done.”


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored