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Inside BitFury's 20 Megawatt Bitcoin Mine
1sockchuck (826398) writes Bitcoin hardware vendor BitFury has opened a 20-megawatt data center to expand its cloud mining operations. The hashing center in the Republic of Georgia is filled with long rows of racks packed with specialized Bitcoin mining rigs powered by ASICs. It's the latest example of the Bitcoin industry's development of high-density, low-budget mining facilities optimized for rapid changes in hardware and economics. It also illustrates how ASIC makers are now expanding their focus from retail sales to their in-house operations as Bitcoin mining becomes industrialized.
Good thing you're not solving real problems. What. A. Fucking. Waste.
As far as I can judge, and please correct me if I am wrong, running a bitcoin mining farm isn't really something that ties up a lot of your time. I might be a bit naive, but... isn't it just "flip the switch and, well, wait"?
If it's not so, the next question is probably moot, but if it is: Why would anyone SELL bitcoin mining rigs instead of simply building them and getting rich themselves? To me the whole deal smells a bit like those crystal ball experts who tell you next weeks lottery numbers... why, if it works, don't they play themselves and get rich themselves?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This begs the question whether mining for BitCoins is more damaging to the environment than mining for precious metals, for a given value of return. The EPA emissions factor for electricity is about 0.69 tons of CO2 per megawatt hour, so producing the electricity used by this datacenter is, on average, dumping into the atmosphere 331 tons of CO2 per day or about 120,000 tons of CO2 per year. While there are many other forms of environmental damage from gold mining, a quick search suggest that the greenhouse emissions from gold extraction run to about 11.5 tons of CO2 equivalent per kg of Gold. At this rate 120,000 tons of CO2 yields of 10.5 tons of gold, worth nearly $500 million at today's price. Will this datacentre yield more than half a billion dollars worth of bit coins each year?
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
The hashing center in the Republic of Georgia...
...this is the perfect example of american greed...
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
its just the most wasteful thing i can think
You should think harder. Gold fills much the same niche as bitcoins, and results in millions of tons of mine tailings, and mercury contaminated rivers. If bitcoin reduces the demand for gold by even 1%, every kilowatt is worth it.
Wait, what? You do know that the circuit boards and crap that go into the ASIC and computer rigs and the cooling and all uses a lot more natural resources (including gold and the things called "rare earths") than a bit of gold mining right? Ever seen the disposal sites for computers? Lots of tailings and contamination there too. Bitcoin mining is funny. People here love imaginary currency even though they don't like imaginary property. It is imaginary and wasteful. Let's just leave it there.
Modded down for telling the truth. These guys are wasting a small town's worth of power to do worthless calculations.
Play Command HQ online
Considering that bitcoin isn't big enough, nor has it been around long enough to bail out, using the bank bailouts as a comparison is a specious justification.
Just because a new system is different than a bad system, does not logically imply that it is a better system by default.
If you'd taken ten seconds to click over to TFA, you would've learned it's in this Georgia, not this Georgia, you America-bashing twat.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Fiat currency for all intents and purposes is also imaginary, as the value it holds is not a fundamental property of the bill or coin itself. It just happens to be represented in a physical form.
But that value only exists because the market by and large 'agrees' that this currency has this much purchasing power. See also: every single hyperinflation episode ever.
(Then again some snotty muckraker might point out the fact that the USD is only maintaining its value through perceived military capability,nostalgia, and status as the de facto world currency.. (Which is likely temporary if things continue).
IE, what's more wasteful, some computers in Georgia doing complex math, or propping up a currency/economy with an endless amount of unrecoverable debt, smart bombs, and drones?)