Many people avoid “crypto” because they don’t understand the world of digital currency. Eden Prairie-based Compute North has a booming business supplying computing technology for mining cryptocurrency. Digital coin transactions are tracked in a “blockchain,” which is essentially a database. “Miners” verify the legitimacy of transactions. In exchange for this auditing work, miners can be given digital currency such as Bitcoin. With Dave Perrill at the helm, the company raised $30.1 million in financing in 2021. Crypto has been criticized for the energy usage it requires, but Perrill says that’s changing. “Given the scale of the bitcoin network,” he says, “there is an opportunity for the leading crypto mining operations to serve as a building block toward a cleaner future.”