Stax recently applied for a permit with state land managers to set up shipping container-like pods housing natural gas generators and computers at a site some 30 miles south of the massive Prudhoe Bay oil field. The generators would be fueled by the basin’s huge stores of “stranded” natural gas — an industry term for gas that doesn’t have a pipeline connecting it to potential customers.

Stax’s gas generators would have the capacity to produce 50 megawatts of electricity — about the same amount as Alaska’s largest coal plant, in the Interior community of Healy. The company is “in conversation” with a number of potential natural gas suppliers on the North Slope, Mahoney said, though it has not yet signed a contract with any of them.

Mahoney said her project would require “no new drilling” and that its location 30 miles south of the main North Slope oil fields is aimed at avoiding additional air pollution there.

But even the pilot 50-megawatt project would be considered significant in the Lower 48, where a New York Times analysis of what it called the nation’s 34 “largest” bitcoin mines only examined operations larger than 40 megawatts. The country’s biggest mine, currently, is a 700-megawatt facility in Texas run by a company called Riot Platforms.