
Inside one of the world’s largest Bitcoin mines - mdelias
https://qz.com/1055126/photos-china-has-one-of-worlds-largest-bitcoin-mines/
======
vog
Very interesting view into the insides of mining.

However, I always find it sad to see how mining is depicted in most media: as
a way to "generate" bitcoins. This view is inaccurate for two reasons:

1\. The purpose of this whole computation power is _to secure the Bitcoin
transactions_. The mined Bitcoins are "just" an incentive (i.e. a desired side
effect).

2\. In addition to the mined Bitcoins, the miners receive the transaction
costs. In the future, the mined Bitcoins will become a lesser and lesser part
of the incentive, gradually replaced by the transaction costs.

Luckily, this one seems to be an exception. Although the title is misleading,
the process is stated mostly correct (except for not mentioning transaction
fees). From the related article:

"The lives of bitcoin miners digging for digital gold in Inner Mongolia"

[https://qz.com/1054805/what-its-like-working-at-a-
sprawling-...](https://qz.com/1054805/what-its-like-working-at-a-sprawling-
bitcoin-mine-in-inner-mongolia/)

 _Today, Ordos (population 2 million) has emerged as a center of bitcoin
mining, the process of approving transactions and creating new coins in the
digital currency’s system_

~~~
landave
I don't know. If you are not already familiar with the inner workings of
bitcoin, it seems to me that a simple _computation power secures the
transactions_ is not really helpful. What does that even mean, to secure the
transactions?

Essentially, for an article that is aimed to such a wide audience you need to
find an appropriate simplification. Such a simplification will never be
completely accurate. Therefore, I consider anything appropriate that is
technically not wrong and does not create more confusion. For example,
describing mining as a process of generating bitcoins would probably satisfy
those requirements (ignoring transactions fees).

I agree that it would be nice to be able to explain _what_ the real purpose of
mining is, but I don't see a really good way to do this.

------
1024core
Its _daily_ electricity bill amounts to $39,000.

All from coal-fired plants.

Surely there's a better form of "currency" that's not so wasteful?

~~~
elmar
Why Blockchain Needs ‘Proof of Authority’ Instead of ‘Proof of Stake’ or
‘Proof of Work’

[https://cointelegraph.com/news/why-blockchain-needs-proof-
of...](https://cointelegraph.com/news/why-blockchain-needs-proof-of-authority-
instead-of-proof-of-stake)

------
amatus
I love how they published a picture of the keys[1].

[1]
[https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/bitmain_127.jpg](https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/bitmain_127.jpg)

------
piker
Why can't the proof of work be a series of adversarial StarCraft games or
something? At least then all of these GPU cycles (is that the term with GPUs?)
and power consumption creates something we can watch and be entertained by.

~~~
EA
Why don't we add processors to water heaters and HVAC systems to do something
useful with the heat generated by the processors?

~~~
tlb
It would require the silicon to run at higher temperatures than when air-
cooled. Semiconductor failure rate roughly doubles every 10C temperature rise.
For most environments, it's better to spend energy to actively cool the
silicon than extract heat energy from it, because the cost of failures is
higher than the cost of power.

~~~
undersuit
I know you said air-cooled, but what about a Peltier cooler? Silicon stays
cool, water gets hot, win-win.

~~~
kiddico
I don't know if it's a frequency illusion or if a lot of people are playing
with them lately, but I've seen tons of people mentioning peltier cooling
lately.

I've been working on a design to cool my cpu with one. The best part about
peltier modules is also the worst part: the cold side gets really cold. So
cold you get below the humidity threshold, and end up with water all over your
system. I'm trying to hook up a bunch of humidity, and temperature sensors to
an arduino that will regulate the power to the peltier module to try to only
let it get as cool as the relative humidity will safely allow.

What I'm getting at is you could do it, but a peltier cooler would need to be
manufactured for it to be reasonable at the scale they're looking for.

Separate from the condensation problem they use a LOT of power. They're not
terribly efficient, which would likely defeat the purpose. (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling#Perform...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling#Performance)
)

~~~
qplex
I remember them being used for "extreme" overclocking.

Nowadays people in that department seem to have moved to the elegant solution
of manually pouring LN2 on to a cup that sits on top of the CPU (or GPU).

How about water cooling?

------
MrBunny
Funny bloomberg just made a video about this mine.
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-08-18/bitcoin-
s-r...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-08-18/bitcoin-s-rally-
proving-a-boon-for-china-video)

------
SippinLean
Ah so _that 's_ who was using my "new" ASIC before Bitmain shipped it to me

------
zwieback
Looks like unintended consequences of the worst kind to me.

------
theEXTORTCIST
Interesting... there doesn't appear to be any fire suppression systems
pictured in the mining buildings

------
mod
Those office chairs need a re-think. It would crush my back to sit like that
for a shift.

------
lafar6502
i wonder how their computing power compares to biggest supercomputers and at
what fraction of their cost

~~~
azag0
Bitcoin mining is trivially parallelizable. Most supercomputers are built for
problems that are not.

