Fredericton — As the March 31 fiscal year-end approaches and the Energy and Utility Board hearings continue, NB Power is lifting the veil on its latest plan to deal with its enormous debt.
NB Power CEO Gaëtan Thomas said on Tuesday that the publicly owned utility will use the excess electrical capacity from Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station to dabble in the high-risk world of bitcoin and crypto-currency exchanges.
“Bitcoin is the future, and we are perfectly positioned to take advantage of it,” explained Thomas. “NB Power wants to get in on this technology trend now to capitalize on the opportunity before everyone is doing it. Also, we need to make serious money to pay for the Mactaquac refurbishment, or we are going to have to mortgage the reactor core!”
At the last fiscal year-end, NB Power’s debt was $4.9 billion. While its debt has steadily decreased recently, in the last two years it has gone down by only $15 million — about 0.3 per cent.
“It’s time to take some bigger risks to retire our debt, and mining bitcoin is the perfect opportunity for a company with a lot of electricity,” said Thomas. “You see, every time there is a Bitcoin transaction, ‘miners‘ are involved with validating it. For every block on the chain, we get a bitcoin — sort of like when Mario goes down the pipe on Nintendo. And, then…profit!”
Thomas proceeded to map out in detail how NB Power plans to set up a farm of number-crunching computers directly to the reactor’s electrical output to “super-charge” its bitcoin mining. Then once it has enough bitcoins, NB Power can trade them on crypto-currency exchanges…and honestly our reporter nodded off at this point. He woke up about 45 minutes later with Thomas still evangelizing in front of a whiteboard full of arrows, dollar signs and stick-figure people.
“And, that’s how we’ll pay for the smart meters,” concluded Thomas.
“But…do we really need those smart meters?” pressed The Manatee reporter.
“Get out of my office,” replied Thomas.