by Liz Swaine, The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate
In 2019, LSUS Computer Science adjunct professor Keyvan Shahrdar was on a mission to find the perfect location to mine for cryptocurrency. It wasn’t going to be a mine in the traditional sense of shafts and pickaxes and canaries. What he needed instead was a building that would have ultra reliable Internet, an overabundance of electrical capacity, correct zoning, and a willingness by neighbors to have something very noisy nearby. Shahrdar looked at local properties and met with SWEPCO about his sizable power needs, but ultimately struck out. He had no idea that his future might hold more promise with bite-sized pecans than Bitcoin and that is where his wife’s Aunt Pearl enters the story.
Shahrdar was born in Colon, Panama, a scenic city on the Caribbean coast that sits at the entrance of the Panama Canal. TripAdvisor calls it a “best place to visit.”
