
FILE PHOTO: A natural gas flare on an oil well pad burns as the sun sets outside Watford City, North Dakota January 21, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Cullen/File Photo
NEW YORK (Reuters) - MARA Holdings Inc., the world's largest publicly traded bitcoin miner, has begun producing power in the U.S. shale patch as part of a pilot program to fuel 25 megawatts of its mining operations with excess natural gas, the company told Reuters on Tuesday.
The move comes as intensifying competition for electricity between Big Tech's AI data centers has led the crypto industry, which is among the country's largest single-source power consumers, to shift business strategies and either market to AI or find ways around the power fight.