Mohawk Council of Kahnawake in preliminary talks to host crypto-mining company on servers

The Mohawk Council of Kahnawake is in preliminary talks to host a cryptocurrency-mining company on its server space, a Council Chief said in an interview Tuesday morning, in an effort to generate more own-source revenue for the community.

"We don't exactly know yet" what the bottom line could be for the community, except that "it absolutely looks positive for us," said Mohawk Council of Kahnawake Chief Mike Delisle. "We’ll know more over the next couple of weeks."

The deal would see the MCK rent space on its Mohawk Internet Technology servers to digital asset-mining corporation Pow.Re, Delisle said, but nothing is official.

"We'll know more over the next couple of weeks. We’re not there (on a deal) yet. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up. – aspects of the business need to be further defined before we can come to an agreement," Delisle clarified.

Delisle said another aspect to consider is the request that has to be made to Hydro-Quebec for increased power supply to the servers, Delisle said. 

If the Hydro-Quebec request goes through, the MCK will provide a letter of support to the company and will allow the company to set up shop on its servers at MIT. 

"We don't know exactly how it’s going to look just yet, but there are different scenarios we are examining," he said.

Crypto-mining is a process wherein cryptocurrency miners race to verify online cryptocurrency transactions. The miner that wins the 'race' to verify the transaction is rewarded with some amount of the currency and/or transaction fees. The process requires powerful computers and software and increased energy to servers.

Delisle said any deal that comes out of these preliminary discussions was the result of a number of meetings over the last few months and that the one similarity is that they will be hosted on the server a lot like the community's online-gaming industry.

"We would merely be the hosts, as we are with online gaming," said Delisle, who said the community has been looking to diversify its sources of revenue since Internet gaming rose in popularity in 1999.

- This report by Iori:wase / The Local Journalism Initiative was first published on April 14, 2022