No - we're not taking crazy pills.

ARK Invest has just released a report that suggests Bitcoin mining could, in fact, be good for the environment.

Here's how:

The way that solar farms work (we have just learnt), is that they generate as much electricity as possible, which then gets stored, and eventually used.

Due to what's know as 'clouds n' stuff,' the amount of solar energy generated can fluctuate pretty significantly.

Sometimes, solar farms will generate more energy than can be stored or consumed.

And, large-scale storage can be damn pricey!

Herein lies the opportunity.

One thing we know about Bitcoin mining rigs is that they consume a lot of energy.

(It's one of the main arguments against wide scale adoption).

According to ARK's report, if a Bitcoin mining rig was connected to a solar farm, any time that farm was to get up over a certain storage threshold, the mining rig could be activated.

The (clean) energy put into BTC mining, could then pay off some of the storage costs.

By balancing the solar loads, it makes the argument for solar adoption all the more convincing.

So the theory is: as BTC mining reduces solar energy storage costs → more companies will want to turn to solar → and more BTC is mined cleanly.

If nothing else, it sure is an interesting idea!