Oman continues to grow its crypto mining business amidst a crypto bull market and possible Bitcoin ETF approvals in early January across the United States. Oman based Green Data City and Italy based Alps Blockchain, through its subsidiary Alps MiddleEast SPC, have agreed to develop a blockchain data center in Oman. The crypto mining farm will be installed in the Green Data City’s hub with a first phase of 6.5MW.

Alps Blockchain will start to deploy the containerized units in January 2024, and use the latest S21 machines released by Bitmain. Alps Blockchain has long been in partnership with Bitmain, the largest manufacturer of mining equipment in the global market.

The new S21 mining ASIC reaches an efficiency rating of 16 to 17 joules per terahash (J/TH), an unprecedented performance in the market. This performance reduces the energy needed to mine and to secure the Bitcoin network.

The location of the Blockchain Bitcoin mining datacenter is energy efficient given it is located in Southern Oman where the summer temperature stays below 29 degrees celsius, naturally decreasing the cooling requirements compared to the rest of the region. In addition, the presence of cold deep ocean water will bring natural cooling in the next phases of the development and further reduce the energy needed to operate the facility to a minimum.

In addition to the geographical advantages of the location, the partners have chosen Oman because of the long-term security provided by the Green Data City mining license, the stability of the Oman Government energy policies, and the large renewable energy development plans in the Country.

This announcement follows a previous agreement in October 2023 between China’s Bitcoin crypto mining and Blockchain hardware manufacturer, Canaan and Oman’s Green Data city to pilot phase of a new crypto mining operation in Oman. The new site would also be installed in the facility of Green Data City, and under the agreement, Canaan has the option to expand the total capacity to up to 100MW.

As part of the Oman’s strategy to build  crypto mining datacentres in Oman, the first phase of Asyad Group crypto mining center was launched in August 2023 in the Free zone in Salalah.

Built and managed by Exahertz, a subsidiary of Afaq Advance Technologies firm, the first phase was inaugurated during a ceremony attended by top Omani governmental officials. The ceremony was held under the auspices of Eng. Said Hamoud Al Ma’awali, Minister of Transport, Communications and Information Technology. It was attended by HH Sayyid Marwan Turki Al Said, Governor of Dhofar.

In the same month, Oman’s Green Data City and Abu Dhabi’s Phoenix Group signed an agreement to develop a 150MW crypto-mining farm in Oman. The new farm will be set up in Green Data City was noted that it will be operational by Q2 2024, becoming one of the largest crypto-mining data centers in the region.

The first Bitcoin was mined in Oman back in December 2022.