One of the largest oil companies enters Bitcoin mining
360 Energy converts waste gas into energy to power data centers and BTC miners.
More and more companies that were not born linked to Bitcoin are beginning to adopt it among their strategies.
Halliburton (HAL), one of the largest oilfield services companies in the world, announced this December 18, 2024 its partnership with 360 Energy, a company that transforms natural gas into an energy solution for various applications. Among them, Bitcoin (BTC) mining.
Halliburton, founded in 1919 and headquartered in Texas, United States, is responsible for the provision of services and products for the exploration, production and processing of oil and gas.
For its part, 360 Energy, also located in Texas, is dedicated to capturing natural gas that would otherwise be wasted natural gas extraction sites or oil fields. Part of that energy generation, 360 Energy uses to mine Bitcoin.
360 Energy uses a technology called «in-field computing» (field computing) that convert this residual gas in energy to power modular data centers and power compute-intensive operations, such as Bitcoin mining.
This technology carries out computing processes directly in the place where the energy resource is located. Natural gas is a byproduct that cannot be easily transported due to a lack of infrastructure or because processing costs are greater than its market value.
In these cases, the gas is burned (flaring) or released into the environment, which generates waste and emissions of greenhouse gases.
Instead of wasting that gas, 360 Energy uses it to generate electricity on site using portable generators and market it later. This electricity powers data centers or specialized equipment, such as hardware used by Bitcoin miners, ASIC (application-specific circuits), to perform their computational tasks.
From Halliburton, evidently, they have welcomed the beginning of invest in 360 Energy and its energy manufacturing technology that can be used, among other activities, for Bitcoin mining.
While Halliburton will not start mining on its own, financial backing for a company that yes it does and offering services to other miners implies a form of foray into BTC mining, hoping to receive returns from that practice through 360 Energy.
Corporate Bitcoin adoption grows
This alliance underlines a fundamental change in the corporate world: more and more companies that do not have a direct link to bitcoin are incorporating cryptocurrency mining into their business strategies.
The collaboration between Halliburton and 360 Energy not only highlights the versatility of Bitcoin mining as an economic activity, but also its ability to foster new corporate synergies.
Such is the case reported by CriptoNoticias of the company Cango (CANG). This Chinese company, mainly dedicated to automotive services, launched itself fully into Bitcoin mining since November 2024.
Cango’s income reports revealed that, during November alone and thanks to the extraction of BTC and the rise in the price of this currency, it earned almost 40 million dollars. This represented a profit almost 10 times higher to those obtained in the entire third quarter, which were around 4 million dollars.