you strong and this is VOA 1, the hits.

Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30 minute program from the Voice of America.

I'm Ashley Thompson.

And I'm Mario Ritter Jr.

This program is designed for English learners so we speak a little slower and we use

words and phrases especially written for people learning English.

On today's program, John Russell tells us how U.S. technology companies are securing energy

supplies from Bitcoin miners.

Brian Lynn has this week's science report.

We close the show with the lessonon of the Day from Andrew Smith and Jill Robbins.

But first, U.S. technology companies are increasingly purchasing or leasing energy assets

held by Bitcoin miners.

These moves come as technology companies hurry to secure a supply of electricity for their growing

artificial intelligence or AI and cloud computing data centers. Those data centers are driving the fastest

increase in U.S. electricity demand since 2000. The demand is growing faster than the electricity grid. That means big technology

companies, like Amazon and Microsoft are aiming to secure large amounts of electricity.

Growing power demand is affecting the cryptocurrency mining industry, an industry that uses a lot of energy.

Some miners are making a profit by leasing or selling their power-connected infrastructure and

centers. But other miners cannot get enough electricity to stay in business.

Greg Beard is chief of stronghold digital mining, a publicly traded Bitcoin mining company based in Pennsylvania.

The AI Battle for Dominance is a battle being had by the biggest and best capitalized companies in the world, and they care like their lives depend on it that

they win, he said.

...