Crypto Inside a bitcoin mine.

Photos of a Mongolian bitcoin mine.
Photos: Inside one of the world’s largest bitcoin mines

 

Does anyone think that Bitcoin is simply the world's new way of distracting itself?

It's like we all got over our obsession with Pokemon Go, and now we need something new to keep ourselves occupied.

(Photos are a nice insight by the way, thanks for sharing)

 

Added a pic as the link in isolation may look sketchy to some.

 

Wow that’s amazing and it feels like the technology is so new and at its infancy that it feels backwards.

Like computers were in the 80s or 90s where they took up entire warehouses.

Going forward 10 years the way we think of money would be radically changed and mining would be done on one computer in people’s houses.

As for electricity companies hopefully they will just be gone - water companies too, and supermarkets and have everything decentralised and in the control of people not corporations.

Schools too

No this is not like Pokémon this is not a game it’s real world.

 

In Siberia, they have come up with a small home that is heated by bitcoin miners.
You get to keep warm and earn $430USD per month (not bad for that part of the world).
Free heat from mining bitcoins

 

Nope that's the past.

Anyway I'm not impressed with the way crypto is going. Can't be useful for the majority until it can reliably buy milk two days in a row

 

Bitcoin Mining Guzzles Energy—And Its Carbon Footprint Just Keeps Growing

 

Tailings Dam

 

Where’s the love guys?

I’m going to go and be enthusiastic somewhere else.

 

Sorry if we killed your buzz.

The mining is interesting, the energy and equipment to be competitive is just stupid unfortunately, can't be competitive with somewhere like China. Hope those problems get solved in a widely acceptable way. I would be happy to use crypto for currency if it reliably functioned as such, bottom line is it doesn't. Be interested if you had info on progress to integrate it as a payment gateway and a more stable exchange rate.

Personally I'm not a fan of tax avoidance (as opposed to minimisation) either which seems to be the motivation and hope of some.

 

Lol cool story bro
unless you have a bunch of ASIC miners in your home and mining for a pool with close to free electricity this ain't happening

 

7 world-changing inventions people thought were dumb fads

Let’s review in a couple of years.
Pessimism dosnt work for me.

.... and I’ve made millions by NOT listening to the masses.

 

It's got nothing to do with pessimism, more so a very basic understanding of the mining process of cryptos and BTC especially.
Mining difficulty has increased to a point where even dedicated ASIC machines are hard to profit from unless one has access to very cheap electricity. This does not even take into account the next halving of the block reward in 2020.

While I appreciate your enthusiasm for cryptos, you clearly have not kept up to date with the leaps made in processing power required for mining and the necessity of very cheap electricity to make this profitable. My point was that your statement about how in the future people will mine BTC from their home computer could not be further from the truth and you would realise that too if you had a better understanding of the mining process.
That's not to say that BTC won't be around for good, I think it will. But the mining aspect is going to be more and more out of reach as the difficulty goes up, ASIC chips are constantly being released and mining rewards go down.

 

There is a lot of technology being created in the mining space

 

It is not technology but economies of scale that dictate that these miners will always be this way. If a single mining device is profitable then 10,000 mining devices packed into a relatively dense factory will be more profitable.

 

It is a cat and mouse game though. Newer cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Monero are designed to be ASIC proof. They were designed so that GPUs could still be competitive to mine them and thus make the mining less centralised (and thus the whole cryptocurrency susceptible to manipulation)
In the end it come down to cost of power. The major places where mining has become large scale is where they can get access to cheap power and minimise cooling costs like;
Iceland - where there is cheap geothermal power and cool temperatures
Iceland is Home of Bitcoin Mining
Siberia - where there is dirt cheap hydro power and cool temperatures. Electricity is 4 US cents per KWh
https://www.economist.com/news/euro...sive-computer-servers-why-siberia-great-place
China - again cheap hydropower. Cold through part of the year and cheap equipment costs
Photos: Life inside of China’s massive and remote bitcoin mines

OF course all this may change with Proof of Stake instead of the current Proof of Work to verify transactions (Proof of Stake requires much less power)
Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake: Basic Mining Guide

 

I do wonder what will happen to ethereum once (if) they move to POS. I mean sure many miners have plenty of ETH stockpiled for POS to work for them, but will they continue to support a network they have had to take all their hash power away from? And what happens to all that hashpower seeking other coins?
A very difficult topic and hence why they will start with a hybrid system but IMO we won’t see a pure POS anytime soon on ethereum.

 

High end GPUs (like the ones used for mining ethereum and other cryptos) have plenty of other uses as well - machine learning, brute force password cracking and even graphics rendering and games (we might then be finally be able to get a reasonably priced gaming GPU ).
No one knows how POS will pan out (or that it will even work in the real world) but it shows how rapidly this scene is evolving