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CALGARY — For most Canadians, Drumheller conjures up images of dinosaur bones and ancient fossils, but entrepreneur Sean Clark’s expedition in the northern Alberta town is focused on a very current obsession: Bitcoin.

The CEO of Hut 8 Mining Corp. recently set up his company in the self-proclaimed ‘dinosaur capital of the world’ because its cheap electricity rates give him the biggest margins for his Bitcoin mining business.

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The cryptocurrency boom is pushing Canadian companies to join the global rush to find the cheapest sources of energy as computing competition drives power demands higher, resulting in crypto hotspots cropping up in communities like Drumheller, Winnipeg and Montreal.

“Because electricity is our highest cost, we become energy hunters,” Clark said. “We find the cheapest sources of energy, put a container down, plug it in and start mining.”

Access to cheap energy is crucial because Bitcoin miners around the world are competing to solve the equations that feed into the blockchain that supports the currency.