- If you had claimed at the beginning of January 2025 that the USA would soon threaten Denmark with the military option of annexing Greenland, you would have been asked which drugs you had just consumed.
- At the beginning of January 2026, the question about drugs arises again. In any case, the USA brought up the military option of acquiring Greenland against its NATO partner Denmark.
Crypto experts are wondering what would happen if Greenland were actually controlled by the US, while Denmark insists on international law and the US bases its claim on strategic necessity.
The focus is on a topic that has previously only concerned crypto insiders: crypto mining in the Greenland Arctic. Extremely inexpensive hydropower and natural cooling available 24 hours a day make the island one of the most sought-after mining locations.
Ideal mining conditions thanks to energy and cooling
Greenland has enormous untapped hydropower potential that will be expanded in the coming years. For mining companies this means: electricity prices well below Canada and Iceland levels, combined in an environment that exceeds the PUE valuee close to 1.1 possible. In an industry in which every percentage point of efficiency counts, this is a location advantage of global importance.
At the same time, interest from American tech and mining companies is growing. Behind the scenes, investigations have long been underway to determine how US influence – whether political, economic or military – could affect long-term energy and infrastructure projects.
The geopolitical shadow is long
The conflict between Denmark and the USA is more than a diplomatic exchange of blows. It touches on NATO structures, raw material security and control of Arctic trade routes. For miners, this means political uncertainty that delays investments and calls existing projects into question.
Scenarios that experts consider unlikely, but not ruled out, include US occupation or other forced control over parts of the island. The consequences would be the freezing of existing civil energy and mining projects, the withdrawal of EU companies, unstable crypto markets and the forced reorganization of the global hashrate with increasing US dominance.
Who controls the Greenland hashrate?
While many countries are regulating – i.e. making it more expensive – or reducing mining capacity, Greenland, regardless of ownership, could become one of the most efficient mining clusters in the world. The island would not only be an energy hotspot, but also a geopolitical lever in the fight for digital sovereignty.
However, the sheer size of Greenland is often not taken into account: the “island” is about three times the size of the continent of Australia and almost the size of South America. In the future, apart from rare earths, there are likely to be many other things whose significance cannot yet be guessed at, but which are already arousing desire today.
What this means for the industry
For miners, investors and infrastructure operators: Greenland is both an opportunity and a risk. The island could become “Norway 2.0” – or a geopolitical powder keg that stops projects overnight. Greenland is no longer a remote Arctic outpost.
It is a strategic location of continental proportions that attracts energy interests, natural resources interests and military interests. Whoever controls Greenland controls a large part of the global mining hashrate – and thus a growing part of the digital economy.
A wise historian in the 1830s described the concept of the primacy of foreign policy over domestic policy. What he didn’t mean was primates in foreign policy.
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