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Armenia Opens $50 Million Bitcoin, Ethereum Mining Farm (chepicap.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the day-late-and-a-dollar-short dept.

Armenia has opened a cryptocurrency mining farm to the tune of $50 million. It reportedly mines Bitcoin and Ethereum and consists of 3,000 machines. Chepicap reports: The country's first mining project, launched in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, is headed by Armenian real estate investment company Multi Group Concern and Malta-registered Omnia Tech International Company. Armenian entrepreneur and head of Multi Group, Gagik Tsarukyan said at the ceremony that $50 million had been invested into the farm. The first floor of the farm is designed for an IT business center with around the clock operating services. Bitcoin.com reports that Armenia is working at establishing its own Silicon Valley through the development of a free economic zone that will boast an advanced technology center.

11 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Timing is by reiterate · · Score: 1

    ... Everything.

    1. Re:Timing is by alvinrod · · Score: 1

      Now doesn't seem like a particularly bad time. The price has been relatively stable for a while. It's probably still going to slide down, but it's probably better to get in now when there's at least some future chance of it going up sometime in the future instead of getting in right at was starting to crater. If it remains relatively stable over time, it might have some potential as a real currency since one of the biggest knocks against it was that the value was too unstable.

    2. Re:Timing is by alvinrod · · Score: 2

      I never invested in or mined bitcoin, but I was genuinely intrigued by the whole thing. The concept itself is interesting and it's funny to think back to a time where people were spending them when they were pretty much like coins. No one expected any of it to really pan out or be worth anything, so people would spend a dozen or so on a pizza if they could find some place that would take them just for the novelty of spending some funny digital money that no one really understood. I just wonder how many of those people think back on that pizza and think that they could have had a quarter million dollars instead if they would have held onto them.

      Everything to come with it has been fascinating. The rapid technological arms race to mine more bitcoins, where people started being able recoup an investment from their high-end GPU in a few months by having it mine bitcoin instead of gaming on it, and people setting up little bitcoin mining operations until the ASICs pretty much killed that off. People posting on message boards about plowing their tuition into mining rigs or just outright investing bitcoin and the stories about people moving to towns that had cheap power contractually guaranteed to set up massive mining operations there because electricity was the real limiting factor.

      All of it's almost just too surreal and I'm not even completely sure that the rodeo is over either. It's like getting to watch a gold rush happen and all of the human exuberance and tragedy that comes along with it.

  2. At $50M... by Wolfrider · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...this thing will never pay for itself. One of the Big Five should put a monitor on their network traffic and see what they're *really* doing.

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    .
    == WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
    1. Re:At $50M... by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

      If the guy is smart, he used the buzzwords of cryptocurrency to fleece some VCs to build an IT Business Center that will otherwise keep itself afloat via normal means.

  3. It's a private investment by swell · · Score: 5, Informative

    Armenia is a country. The headline clearly says that Armenia is doing this. The article clearly says that individual companies are doing it.

    Some governments do invest in similar ways, such as Saudi Arabia and China. Armenia doesn't seem to be doing it here. Please read before posting stories.

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    ...omphaloskepsis often...
  4. Is this good? by Idimmu+Xul · · Score: 1

    Seems Bitcoin is now about moving control away from Governments and towards private corporations.

    Is this the capitalism of money itself?!

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    The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
    1. Re:Is this good? by jythie · · Score: 1

      Well, a big part of the hope behind bitcoin was rooted in the idea that private companies are better for 'people' than governments, so yeah, BTC was in part about moving control from governments to the already wealthy, well, after making some new wealthy people at least.

  5. Too late by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Mining BTC and ETH at this point in time is going to be a lot less profitable than 2 or more years ago.

  6. The real solution by Blackburd · · Score: 1

    The logical endgame for bitcoin is to add an Ethernet card to electric heating systems and call it a day. At least you are getting some sort of logical return from the work preformed.

    1. Re:The real solution by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      There has been some effort to reduce impact and cost by homing mining servers in people's homes, but that's a lot of expensive hardware to insure offsite.

      I say we bomb any bitcoin farm from here on out, for the protection of the environment. This shit has got out of hand.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"