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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.

8 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Good Thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Good thing you're not solving real problems. What. A. Fucking. Waste.

    1. Re:Good Thing by Burz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Good thing you're not solving real problems. What. A. Fucking. Waste.

      It just proves that a carbon tax cannot come soon enough.

  2. Please answer me one question by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

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    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:Please answer me one question by Solandri · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Selling bitcoin mining rigs is a guaranteed profit.

      Mining bitcoins is a potential profit, potential loss. It all depends on what happens to the value of bitcoins. Your reasoning only works if the equipment seller is absolutely certain that bitcoins will hold their value. From what I gather, the vast majority of people don't think they will, but will happily sell equipment to those who do.

  3. Environmental ROI? by nickovs · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?
  4. Re:20 megawatts by JazzLad · · Score: 4, Funny

    The hashing center in the Republic of Georgia...

    ...this is the perfect example of american greed...

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    "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
  5. Re:20 megawatts by Boronx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Modded down for telling the truth. These guys are wasting a small town's worth of power to do worthless calculations.

  6. Re:20 megawatts by tnk1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.