Modern technologies have been revolutionizing industries for years, providing competitive advantages to companies. As a technology based on decentralization, Blockchain becomes a tool to support and secure processes and transactions in industries such as mining and power engineering. It also supports supply chain processes, which are particularly important in today's mining business. The use of advanced cryptography methods results in increased cyber security in entities that implement such solutions. The use of Blockchain technology carries a strong message, both to competitors and customers, about intensifying work on authentication and process traceability. This publication focuses on defining the trust gap problem in the mining industry and on examples of the use of technology in data traceability processes. The mining industry is beginning to use technologies which had been previously available only in the theoretical realm. The ongoing development towards a smart industry entails a number of studies and expert assessments, aimed to integrate knowledge from the mining and IT areas. The combination of these research areas leads to an increase in the value of both the companies implementing modern technologies and traditional companies that implement such applications in their value chain. Based on the analyzed articles, two main areas of consideration in the context of the extractive industry were distinguished: systems that track and secure the flow of data in specific mining processes and systems that monitor and secure information on processes which support the raw materials supply chain.

The paper presents areas where the EBITDA measure is used in coal companies. The metric and the ratios where it is utilized are employed to assess companies and management efficiency, hence they are used as criteria for rewarding board members. EBITDA-based ratios are also used to evaluate the profitability of company restructuring and its goodwill in mergers and acquisitions. EBITDA, also tends to be used to value companies on the capital market. It is a good tool for efficiency assessment in coal companies with relatively stable fixed assets and small share of intangible assets, which amortized over short periods of time could interfere the comparability of relations based on this measure. The comparability is also disturbed by large investment expenditure incurred in the short term. This does not apply to the mining industry, in which investment cycles are long, last several years and expenditures are spread over time. In addition, the rate of technical progress imposing the need to implement large technology projects is not high compared to technology companies with high development dynamics.

EBITDA based ratios were used to assess a number of listed coal companies. The analysis revealed that the profit/loss of these companies is mainly determined by coal prices. The cost of coal mining is 90% fixed and projects undertaken to reduce it bear fruit only over the long term. Cyclically changing coal prices cause major losses in companies when prices are low, which leads to bankruptcies or a need to restructure. After a period of decline in 2014–2016, the profit/loss of Polish coal companies as well as companies from around the world improved in 2017–2018. T he financial standing of Polish companies was better than that of their counterparts from other parts of the world.