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Inside One of the World's Largest Bitcoin Mines
- mlevy 12y agoI'm just curious if anyone has insight into how this is economical. Is it economical with current bitcoin prices, or only if prices go up?
- selectodude 12y agoI think it's economical right now, but ceases to be economical the second new hardware comes out and the difficulty goes up. So they have to pay for this pretty quickly.
- AJ007 12y agoFrom the perspective of taking renminbi and converting it in to something that can be sold with dollars -- it doesn't need to be economical.
- maxmcd 12y agohttps://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator
- jedunnigan 12y agoIn the long run it doesn't make much sense at all. [0] [0]http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/how-many-bitcoins-does-it-cost-to-maintain-the-bitcoin-network http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/how-many-bitcoins-does-...
- larrydag 12y agoAlready been talked about on HN. Estimated around $190K profit per month. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8163934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8163934
- discardorama 12y agoThat does not include the cost of hardware. What kind of hardware do you need for 230 GH/s ?
- burgers 12y agoTo add to another reply, the big perk of bitcoin mining is that you can launder your money through the purchase of equipment, real estate and power directly into US Dollars. It's as that comment said, basically just a way to turn Renminbi into Dollars without the Chinese government knowing about it.
- thedaveoflife 12y agoHow long do you think the Chinese government will allow this subversion to continue? It seems like something they would aggressively shut down.
- burgers 12y agoI don't know enough about Chinese politics to be able to reliably comment on their intentions, but buying dollars like this could help push down the price of the Renminbi compared to the Dollar. That has been part of China's economic policy for a long time. Also, when you think about how China is under international pressure to allow the Renminbi to start naturally moving up in value, these types of currency pressures would certainly make a nice way to keep the Renminbi low without having to responsibility for it.
- giarc 12y agoThis has been discussed many times before, however it's often in context to North America. You specifically have to look for articles that calculate economics of Chinese prices (electricity, building materials, labour, hardware etc) because they differ greatly depending on where you are.
- CatsoCatsoCatso 12y agoThis just strikes me as a colossal waste of energy & time. I understand that there may be good profit in doing it, but that doesn't shirk off any of my feelings.
- maxmcd 12y agoMore inefficient than producing and maintaining paper currency? Than mining actual gold? They really are just throwing tons of electricity and hardware at "nothing", but if this kind of activity helps replace the current inefficient systems of currency, then I'm all for it.
- tveita 12y agoYes? Going either by volume or number of transaction, Bitcoin transactions are currently ludicrously expensive, though this is somewhat hidden by subsidizing the miners. I don't know why you mention paper currencies and gold when most money today is transferred electronically, in a far more efficient way than Bitcoins.
- jacquesm 12y agoI'm not sure if by the time you factor in all the costs of banking (including bail-outs) bitcoin is still ludicrously expensive. And one block will include a whole slew of transactions, that's fixed overhead with economies of scale built in.
- danielweber 12y agoPurely in an accounting sense, the bailouts are not a negative, since the government made money on Wall Street bailouts. (If you wish to say they encourage unhealthy behavior, that's another argument.)
- bduerst 12y agoQuid Pro Quo: Bank bailouts had positive returns. Mt. Gox collapsing was a worse wealth loss than bank bail outs, by far.
- jacquesm 12y agoThe scale of this is impressive regardless of whether or not you're a bitcoin believer (I'm neutral, if it works long term, great, if not something better will come along). This bit in particular is impressive: "The mine operators told me that each warehouse took fifteen days to construct, and an additional ten days to fill up with hardware and get it all hashing away. The concrete was still drying on some of the buildings." 8 of those... I wonder who supplied the chips that do the mining and how much energy that facility uses. "This entire facility has several petahashes of mining power, accounting for perhaps 5% of the entire bitcoin network. Damn." I like their cooling solution as well!
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoIt is a crying shame that all the CO2 is being pissed away to produce imaginary points. What hubris humans have.
- innguest 12y agoThe cost of producing dollars is much higher (both in terms of energy waste, and in terms of human rights violations) and it is just as imaginary.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoThat's interesting - does printing (not earning!) a dollar cost as much in energy? Valid idea. The 'human rights violation' part seems thrown in there. I imagine some Treasury sweatshop with rooms full of slave engravers covered in ink, working 20 hours a day.
- innguest 12y agoIt is a human rights violation because printing more money steals value from currency holders. Stealing is immoral.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
- elwell 12y agoWow, I had no idea there were non-aws miners at this scale.
- valarauca1 12y agoCan you mine on AWS? I thought cpu mining wasn't worth it in terms of cost? And I don't see how Amazon could sell you CPU time cheaper then an electric bill.
- gwern 12y ago> They keep the machines cool with an evaporative cooling system. Its basically a durable paper product that looks like the wavy corrugated part on the inside of cardboard. Water is pumped to the top and flows down, and the fans blowing outwards on the other side create negative air pressure, drawing fresh air through the holes and cooling it. The cardboard cooling system looks pretty interesting, but I wonder how durable it is: cardboard which is constantly wet doesn't sound like it'll last too long.
- gatehouse 12y agoWithout actually knowing how it works, the cardboard might have a waterproof coating, it might not interact with the water at all, just a cheap space filler to spray coating onto.
- tjsix 12y agoThe material looks to be the same as the wicking filters used in HVAC humidifiers. They're typically recommended to be changed every couple months under normal usage, though they'll usually get clogged up with dust/dirt and sediment from the water before the actual cardboard/material gives out.
- wilsonfiifi 12y agoIt's the same system/technology used by Port-A-Cool http://portablecoolers.com/models/PAC2KCYC01.html http://portablecoolers.com/models/PAC2KCYC01.html and this is one of their promo videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoI1BDEiawY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoI1BDEiawY I was searching online for cooling systems that could run on solar power and "evaporative cooling" seemed like a good candidate. I was looking for a "whole house cooling system" though but these folks come up in the search results.
- autism_hurts 12y agoThis is hilarious, and if you think this isn't, you're clueless.