Jimmy Carr Tells UK To Mine Bitcoin With Wasted Night-Time Power
UK comedian and TV host Jimmy Carr suggested the British state should consider mining bitcoin using electricity that would otherwise go unused overnight, framing the idea as part of a broader push for more “radical” thinking about public finances.
Will The UK Mine Bitcoin With Excess Energy?
Carr made the comments in a Dec. 11 TRIGGERnometry interview recorded on “the day of the budget,” where he questioned why the UK has never created a sovereign wealth fund and argued that some revenue-generating assets should be treated as collectively owned.“
There are certain things that should belong to everyone,” he said, pointing to “the oil and gas that sit under the UK” and “the wind farms around the coast.” Carr claimed that “all of that money goes to the Crown,” and asked why it shouldn’t accrue more directly to the public.
He extended the argument to infrastructure such as “mobile phone masts,” while stressing he wasn’t making a socialist case. “I’m not a socialist. I’m not even for state capitalism,” Carr said, before arguing that some assets “should belong to everyone.”
From there, Carr offered bitcoin mining as a concrete example of a non-tax revenue lever the government could explore. “I would not mind it if our government said, yeah, we’re going to mine for Bitcoins,” he said. “Our power stations, they don’t do anything at night, so we’re going to mine for Bitcoins.” He added: “Great. New gold standard. Fine.”
Carr did not propose a formal policy design, cite figures on spare capacity, or address governance questions around state-run mining. The point, as he presented it, was directional: use underutilized national infrastructure more aggressively and stop treating taxation as the default answer to funding pressures. “Do something radical, something interesting with the finances of the country,” Carr said. “Why does it all have to come from taxation?”
While the remarks come from an entertainer rather than a policymaker, the framing is notable for how it positions bitcoin in a nation-state register: not only as a tradable asset, but as something a government could plausibly produce using excess energy capacity, then hold as an alternative form of reserve value.
Carr’s “mine with spare power” idea has real-world analogs: Bhutan has quietly built a state-linked bitcoin mining operation powered largely by hydropower, a model often described as a way to monetize seasonal surplus generation.
El Salvador has also leaned into the “excess energy” narrative. The country mined nearly 474 BTC over roughly three years using 1.5 MW of geothermal energy from a state-owned plant tied to the Tecapa volcano. And in places like Iceland, miners have long been drawn by plentiful renewable supply (and the economics of cheap, clean power), making it one of the most mining-dense jurisdictions globally.
At press time, BTC traded at $87,113.
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