How Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining is hurting astronomers in South Africa

While computer owners looking to upgrade their graphics cards are well aware of the shortages and steep price increases caused by cryptocurrency mining, those working in the sciences are also beginning to feel the pinch.

This is according to Professor Aaron Parsons, an astronomer at the University of California: Berkeley, who is currently working on Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) telescope upgrades in South Africa.

The HERA has been designed to listen to low frequency radio waves emitted by the reionising hydrogen gas that permeated the universe before the first stars and galaxies formed. Using this technology Parsons is hoping to discover the first stars that formed in our Universe around 13 billion years ago.

Speaking to the Verge, Parsons said that as part of his work, he is currently upgrading the HERA to a total of 350 antennas. But last week, he found that the GPUs he needed for the upgrades had doubled in price — from $500 to $1,000.

“I kind of rolled my eyes a little bit,” Parsons said. “I usually think of cryptocurrency as some kind of peripheral thing, and I was surprised and a bit annoyed to discover that it’s impacting the bottom line of our telescope.”

In a separate interview with the BBC, Parsons explained that the graphics cards were needed to bring together data from Hera’s many small radio telescopes – this synthesises a much larger array, offering an especially wide field of view peering out into the universe.

“We’ll be able to weather it but it is coming out of our contingency budget.” said Parsons. “We’re buying a lot of these things, it’s going to end up costing about $32,000 extra.”

He also said he was concerned that future work could even be stopped in its tracks, should the GPU shortage worsen.