Listening to Sébastien Gouspillou share tales from the previous eight years of his worldwide life as a Bitcoin miner, it’s troublesome to consider he’s telling the reality.
Every of his tales come throughout as works of fiction wherein he, typically compelled by little greater than blind religion and a need to make the most of low-cost power for Bitcoin mining, comes out on prime after struggling by means of soul-shaking trials and tribulations.
And what’s maybe most mystifying is that he tells many of those tales whereas smiling from ear to ear, beaming with a sure radiance that comes from having an indefatigable spirit (aside from when he tells components of the tales the place others are harm, wronged or killed; at these factors he grows somber).
To rapidly present an outline of his journey, since 2017, the 55-year-old citizen of France and co-founder of BigBlock Datacenter, a Bitcoin mining firm, has traversed the planet. From former Soviet states to Africa to The Center East to South America, he’s been looking for stranded power for this firm’s operations, witnessing each the perfect and worst of what humanity has to supply within the course of.
Gouspillou has develop into most well-known for serving to to ascertain a Bitcoin mining amenities in Virunga Nationwide Park within the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the place a number of the operation’s proceeds have gone again to each the park for its conservation efforts in addition to to bettering the the lives of these in communities that encompass the amenities.
Gouspillou has additionally seen how Bitcoin mining is furthering efforts to impress rural Africa. After what he’s seen on this entrance, he believes that we can not stay in a world with out Bitcoin mining at this level as a result of “it’s just too useful,” as he places it.
However Gouspillou hasn’t at all times been a Bitcoin believer, nor a profitable entrepreneur. Earlier than discovering Bitcoin, his skilled life was extra run-of-the-mill, as he held plenty of salaried positions in a handful of fields that appeared notably much less thrilling than operating Bitcoin mining operations in a number of the most off-the-beaten-path areas of the world.
Gouspillou’s Life Earlier than Bitcoin
Earlier than falling down the proverbial Bitcoin rabbit gap in 2015, Gouspillou had plenty of totally different jobs starting from working for an actual property developer to working for a forestry firm in Asia to importing dry cleansing machines for corporations as massive as Euro Disney.
“I’m not a scientist or an engineer,” Gouspillou instructed Bitcoin Journal.
“I’m a businessman, and my training is in marketing and sales. It was hard for me to understand Bitcoin at first,” he added.
He first heard about Bitcoin in 2010 when his childhood pal and now co-founder of BigBlock Datacenter, Jean-François Augusti, started mining it.
Gouspillou dismissed his pal’s efforts again then; he felt Augusti was losing his time mining bitcoin.
5 years later, although, Bitcoin piqued Gouspillou’s curiosity, and he spent most of 2015 researching it. Towards the latter a part of that yr, he approached Augusti with a brand new perspective on Bitcoin and proposed that they begin mining collectively.
Shortly thereafter, the 2 arrange newbie operations in a small industrial area they rented. And by June 2017, they’d moved their operations to a former Alcatel (a former French telecommunications tools firm) manufacturing unit Orvault, a small city exterior of Gouspillou’s house city of Nantes.
The Early Days Of BigBlock Datacenter
At this level, Gouspillou and Augusti had formally included BigBlock Datacenter and commenced receiving funding from exterior buyers.
The facility in Orvault was their first operation, whereas the second was in Odessa, Ukraine. What the 2 areas had in widespread was entry to low-cost energy.
In Odessa, Gouspillou and Augusti had a container with 200 S9 ASIC miners that they maintained on their very own.
“The operation was very small compared to what we have now, but, at that moment, it was very big to us because we were alone to do the work,” recalled Gouspillou.
Other than the technical challenges that got here with studying the way to function a bitcoin mining farm, Gouspillou and his associate bumped into different hurdles, as effectively.
“It was very difficult to work in Ukraine at that time, because people in Europe and in the banks used to say, ‘Are you crazy? It’s a terrorist state — there’s only mafia in this country,’” recalled Gouspillou.
Because it turned out, the dangerous guys within the nation didn’t simply embrace members of the mafia however corrupt authorities officers, as effectively.
“We had big issues with the government, particularly the Secret Service, the SBU,” mentioned Gouspillou.
“They came one day to seize our farm, and we got shut down for three months. We negotiated and gave them eight bitcoin. That was the price to let us work,” he added.
“Soon after we reconnected the ASICs, though, it was too late. The price of electricity had doubled. So, we left to go to Kazakhstan by 2018.”
Gouspillou and Augusti have been two of the primary foreigners to start mining in Kazakhstan. They arrange store on the identical lake as Valery Vavilov, founder and CEO of Bitfury, and his staff and mined there earlier than falling sufferer to a different shakedown.
“We lost a lot of machines in Kazakhstan,” mentioned Gouspillou.
“The mafia took the machines, and then they sequestered me overnight after a meeting and asked me to buy the machines back from them,” he added.
“Between this and the price of bitcoin crashing in 2018, I lost 20 kilograms in one year.”
Gouspillou and his associate left Kazakhstan quickly after to arrange a small operation in Siberia, Russia (which has develop into even smaller lately).
Gouspillou remembers effectively the toll that every one of this took not solely on him however on his household, as effectively.
“My wife said, ‘Why don’t you change your work? Why don’t you return to a normal job? Your fucking bitcoin is destroying us,’” he recalled.
“I was in my late 40s, not very young, and maybe it was not the right moment to be taking so many risks,” he added.
“But I didn’t want to stop. Jean-François and I continued to be very confident about the price of Bitcoin rising again one day.”
Alternative In The Congo
By 2019, rise once more it did, assuaging a few of Gouspillou’s monetary ache within the course of.
“The price saved us because we had the capacity to pay back our investors for some ASICs we lost because of the mafia,” mentioned Gouspillou.
Gouspillou and Augusti have been in a position to purchase a brand new fleet of ASICs whereas the value of the machines was very low, which helped to make their operations very worthwhile shifting ahead, particularly because the 2020 bitcoin bull run accelerated.
And the winds of destiny actually shifted when Gouspillou first met Prince Emmanuel de Merode of Belgium, a conservationist and anthropologist who works to guard Virunga and set up peace within the DRC.
“In 2020, he asked me to create a mining farm in Virunga,” mentioned Gouspillou.
“It was the best moment of the life of the company, because we became profitable on our facilities around the globe and well-known when we took this opportunity in Virunga,” he added.
“Before Virunga, we were mining. With Virunga, we implemented mining that was socially useful.” (Extra on how mining in Virunga is “socially useful” later within the piece.)
This isn’t to say that beginning the farm within the Congo was straightforward, although.
Gouspillou described how there’s been preventing on this area lengthy earlier than he and Augusti introduced their first container of ASICs there, and the preventing has solely intensified since.
“I am supposed to go to Virunga next week, but I have to wait because there is a deep war in this region at the moment,” defined Gouspillou.
Regardless of the battle, Gouspillou, Augusti and the 2 different staff members that based the Virunga farm have had notable success within the area. They began with two containers crammed with 700 ASIC S9s. These machines have been powered by hydroelectric power from a plant on the Luviro River, near Ivingu, since that point.
Mining bitcoin with a low price of electrical energy within the area rapidly made the operation worthwhile, which not solely made Gouspillou’s buyers glad however Prince de Merode, as effectively.
Prince de Merode had invited Gouspillou and his staff to Virunga to help his work in preserving the park. The association regarded like this: Initially, Gouspillou and his staff introduced in two containers — one owned by BigBlock Datacenter and one owned by the park. BigBlock Datacenter paid the electrical energy prices for his or her container however managed each. (Now, there are 10 containers within the park, seven owned by BigBlock Datacenter and three owned by the park.)
The income from the bitcoin mined by the park went/go to the park to assist protect it. The mining farm additionally started using locals who would in any other case need to resort to burning bushes in efforts to provide coal that they may promote.
The advantages of creating this plant within the area are illustrated in a brief documentary Gouspillou confirmed at Adopting Bitcoin El Salvador 2023 (1:29-7:05 within the following video):
Extra just lately, Gouspillou and his staff realized that they may use the warmth produced from the mining to dry fruits in addition to cocoa beans, that are used to make chocolate.
Whereas the mining farm at present employs 15 individuals full time, the fruit and cocoa drying efforts have created one other 50-60 part-time jobs for these residing across the farm. Gouspillou sees the potential for these operations to scale up within the close to future.
“With the fruits, we can imagine creating 100 to 300 jobs for people,” he mentioned.
However within the breath after Gouspillou mentioned the potential within the area, he additionally touched on the hardships, a few of which have each been heartbreaking and have made scaling troublesome.
Hardships
Because the onset of operations within the DRC, Gouspillou has misplaced plenty of staff members to each violence and acts of God.
One younger man named Moise was killed and washed away in what Gouspillou described as “a rush of water that came down from the mountains.”
(Gouspillou and his staff additionally needed to restore the various ASICs that have been broken throughout this occasion, lots of which have been new S19s.)
Then, in one other tragic occasion simply six weeks later, members of his staff have been ambushed, leading to 5 deaths.
He described the scenario mournfully:
“When the team members leave the farm to go back home, one of their options is to take a plane from the park,” he started.
“But sometimes they don’t have enough gas or kerosene, so we have to take a car 30 kilometers to get to a small airport in the jungle, and the road we have to take is dangerous,” he added.
“One of our technicians, the wife of the cook at the farm and the three others in the car were killed by the Mai-Mai (a rebel group in the region).”
Gouspillou and his staff took these deaths exhausting. The technician, a younger man named Jones who was additionally a supervisor on the farm, had been with the staff for 4 years.
“He started at the lowest level and in three years became the boss of the farm,” mentioned Gouspillou.
“We were very close to him. I knew him very well since the beginning; I hired him,” he added.
What’s extra, Prince de Merode has misplaced upwards of 30 rangers from his staff that shield the farm resulting from violence over the course of the 4 years the farm has been up and operating (and 200 since Prince de Merode has been the pinnacle of the park).
The violence is one thing that by no means will get straightforward to take care of, in keeping with Gouspillou.
“You have something like 300 different gangs in the region,” he mentioned.
“When we started in 2020, Emmanuel told us it had gotten calmer as compared to previous years. However, since then, it’s gotten worse every year,” he added.
How Bitcoin Mining Transforms Areas In Africa
Regardless of the difficult circumstances, Gouspillou stays optimistic. He’s seen the constructive results Bitcoin mining has had not simply within the DRC, however subsequent door within the Republic of the Congo, the place Gouspillou and his staff now function, as effectively.
BigBlock Datacenter has constructed one in every of their latest amenities in Liouesso, a city within the north of the nation. In this area, there’s hardly any trade, partially resulting from a scarcity of electrification, however that’s altering as a result of mining operations.
“When you give money to the producer of electricity, you change the life of a region,” Gouspillou defined.
“In the town, they have a 20 megawatt power plant, but they only use two to three megawatts to feed the town. So, we built a 12 megawatt farm there,” he added.
“For the electricity provider, this is very important. We are a big client for him. He can now pull the lines to bring electricity to some small village because he has some money.”
The impact that Gouspillou described is similar as what’s occurring in Kenya, Botswana and Malawi, the nations wherein Gridless, one other Bitcoin mining firm, operates. Like BigBlock Datacenter, Gridless purchases extra energy from hydroelectric energy vegetation in rural Africa, giving power suppliers a brand new stream of income, permitting them to increase their operations additional into the countryside. This course of offers some African communities entry to electrical energy for the primary time.
Gouspillou described the way it’s nearly a no brainer to benefit from this extra energy, as many hydroelectric vegetation in Africa are constructed to provide extra energy than they’re able to dishing out.
“You have so many big hydro power plants, and they don’t have the lines to distribute this electricity,” mentioned Gouspillou.
“In Cameroon right now, a big dam built by EDF (Électricité de France, France’s national power company) produces 80% more electricity than it distributes,” he added.
“When you create a big power plant, it’s normally too big — wherever you build it — because there’s no benefit to building too small. Building a 200 megawatt plant costs doesn’t cost double what building a 100 megawatt plant costs.”
Gouspillou went on to explain how he suggested Nemo Semret, the primary Bitcoin miner in Ethiopia, who now helps oversee the nation’s large-scale, state-sponsored mining operations.
“I gave him some advice on how to make mining containers four years ago, and now the country is mining with 600 megawatts,” Gouspillou mentioned. “There’s huge potential for expansion there, too.”
Beyond furthering the electrification of rural Africa, Gouspillou’s mining efforts are having different notably constructive impacts on their surrounding communities, as effectively.
Group Affect
BigBlock Datacenter’s new farm in Liouesso at present employs 15 full-time technicians and 10 service workers together with cooks, assistants, laundry workers, cleansing and grounds upkeep workers and drivers. And it plans to launch operations for fruit drying within the second half of 2025.
“There we have enormous drying capacity: enough to employ over 100 people,” Gouspillou famous.
Greater than offering group members with jobs, although, Gouspillou and his staff have made different investments locally.
Various workers for the principle farm within the DRC have youngsters who attend a college within the area, which is 5 kilometers from the farm’s camp. BigBlock Datacenter has supplied a Toyota bus to make sure faculty bus service because the first arrange operations there.
The youngsters and academics as soon as walked this distance daily.
To assist reduce this burden, Gouspillou first lent the group members his automobile in order that they may drive the space as an alternative of strolling it. And, extra just lately, he’s introduced in a bus to assist transport the group’s residents to and from the varsity in bigger numbers.
Moreover, BigBlock Datacenter has additionally made enhancements to the varsity itself.
“They did not have electricity in the classrooms, so we installed it,” mentioned Gouspillou, who added that they’ve additionally financed the repainting of the varsity.
“These are very cheap investments and they make a big difference for the teachers and students,” he added.
Aujourd’hui, visite de l’école primaire.
y’a d’la joie. pic.twitter.com/arUeBc5nji— Seb Gouspillou (@SebGouspillou) January 15, 2025
Translation: “Today, a visit to the primary school. There is joy.”
Gouspillou contextualized his contribution by sharing that different corporations which have come to the area have made related investments for egocentric functions, seemingly attempting to downplay his contribution.
“Oil corporations do it, too, as a result of they need to compensate for the air pollution they create by doing good deeds,” he defined.
The distinction with BigBlock Datacenter is that it does not burn fuel or pollute the surroundings. It mines bitcoin utilizing renewable power. So, as I perceive it, Gouspillou and his staff are giving again as a result of they suppose it is the correct factor to do.
It grew to become clear to me that he’s developed deep bonds with the staff members initially from the area as he shared a narrative about two of them who’ve achieved extraordinary work. Gouspillou refers to those two staff members, Patrick Tsongo and Ernest Kyeya, as two of “the real heroes from Virunga.”
“Ernest has been the manager of the Virunga farm, and Patrick his second in command,” mentioned Gouspillou.
“We employed them four years ago when they were 23 years old. Now they have the capacity to create a farm. They have the capacity to repair ASICs, which is valuable because even if our machines are under warranty, we can’t send them back because the chances they will get stolen in transit are high,” he added.
“They have the capacity to repair all kinds of issues. I think they are the best technicians in the mining world now.”
Ernest and Patrick are actually launching the brand new farm within the Republic of the Congo, they usually just lately left the DRC for the primary time of their lives to take action.
“Three months ago, we went to Pointe-Noire, a port by the sea in the Republic of the Congo, and it was the first time they saw the sea,” mentioned Gouspillou. “They’re so grateful.”
Gouspillou additionally talked about that they’ve develop into tried and true Bitcoiners, as BigBlock Datacenter has given them a bitcoin bonus every year, a few of which they’ve held onto and used because it’s appreciated.
“At the beginning, they used to sell it,” mentioned Gouspillou.
“However, they recently bought land with the bitcoin they’ve saved. So, now they’re crazy about Bitcoin. They love it,” he added.
The Future Of BigBlock Datacenter
Shifting ahead, Gouspillou and his staff plan to proceed to increase their operations globally.
They at present have mining initiatives in 5 African nations in addition to others in Paraguay (the place Gouspillou says it’s troublesome to work due to the mafia presence within the nation), Finland, Oman and the small one in Siberia they began years in the past.
“We were the first miner in Oman, and I was the guy who convinced the government to start mining,” defined Gouspillou. “We started with two containers, and now the country has big miners with facilities that can mine with up to 300 megawatts.”
They additionally moved their headquarters to El Salvador six months in the past, the place they’re included as BigBlock El Salvador.
Whereas Gouspillou and his staff can probably increase wherever from right here, he shared that he prefers to deal with rising their operations in Africa, as he’s most enthusiastic about what his staff is engaged on within the Republic of the Congo proper now.
Towards the top of my interview with Gouspillou, once I requested him the way it feels to see his firm develop to the purpose it has after beginning the method in his late-40s, he chuckled earlier than responding with the next:
“Maybe I was a little bit too old, but we had time to build something solid. Now, it’s only pleasure with this business.”
