The Régie de l'énergie (the
"Régie") recently issued a
decision approving the creation of a new class of customers for
digital currency mining. In addition, a new electricity block of
300 megawatts will be reserved for this class of customers.
Digital currency "mining" refers to the process by
which high-powered computers attempt to match a sequence of digits
in order to verify transactions stored on a blockchain. Blockchain
technology uses a distributed ledger, which is a database that is
shared and synchronized across a network of individual computers.
The ledger contains "blocks" which are digital pieces of
information that record transactions. Once the sequence is found,
the transaction is added to the blockchain and the successful miner
is rewarded with digital currency.