Cash crops: Dutch use bitcoin mining to grow tulips

The bitcoin logo on a smartphone in a greenhouse heated with bitcoin miners near Amsterdam. A Dutch flower growing business is using Bitcoin mining machines to warm their greenhouse in order to grow tulips and other flowers for the export market. The Bitcoin machines in turn are powered by solar energy in which the farmer and the Bitcoin business owners say is better for the environment. — AFP

AMSTERDAM: Tulips and bitcoin have both been associated with financial bubbles in their time, but in a giant greenhouse near Amsterdam the Dutch are trying to make them work together.

Engineer Bert de Groot inspects the six bitcoin miners as they perform complex sums to earn cryptocurrency, filling the air with a noisy whine along with a blast of warmth.