Bitcoin Forum

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/putin-s-aide-seeks-100-million-to-rival-china-in-bitcoin-mining



Now this is getting interesting. And when Russia joins the mining ecosystem, you know that the US is not simply going to sit back and relax. They will jump in too eventually.
The Chinese mining monopoly has it's days countered. It's time to fire Jihan.

This is indeed [BREAKING NEWS].

Shit's about to get real.

You know that a lot of hash rate directed at Chinese mining pools is not going to be from China, right?

Regardless, what's the difference between a Chinese mining monopoly and a Russian mining monopoly except for whether you have a personal vendetta against the Chinese ones?
It really isn't.

Or the US will declare prosecutorial jurisdiction over Russia and seize every Russian home computer under the the explanation of: suspected financial involvement with Russian spy organization....because anything Russian is considered "covert" and having "malintent" and "egregious to the US" and "something the US would never engage in."

It would be nice for multiple countries to provide ideal and competitive conditions for bitcoin mining...it shouldn't be monopolized in China because they can produce the cheapest cost of energy.



It's not a monopoly when two strong entities exist at the same time...it's called duopoly...and when they're not working together it's called competition. And competition is good for all of us.

Well this is obviously a very interesting development. I am a bit surprised by this news.

I hope Putin kicks BTC-e founder's ass and gives back my money. ;D
Seriously, I lost a lot of money I need to get that back hope something happens.

All of this kind of news are always good for Bitcoin, it is amazing guys but bitcoin is being adopted in a lot of countries, also it is growing superfast i think this is the best moment to get into the boat and buy bitcoin, it has a very good potential. In my opinion it is going to reach 5k at the end of the year, so let the good notices come and the bitcoin price will go up as usual.
glad to hear such a notice from russia.

guys what do you think that will happen with bitcoin in SouthAmerica? Most of the countries dont wanna it to be legalized.
 

Not only you loss a lot of money in BTC-e exchange, most miner in my country also holding our coin in this exchange, but we just can waiting BTC-e can refund in September as their announce or not. This time really new deathline for the price of Bitcoin increasing or crash :P

Lol how's the US going to seize inside Russian citizen homes? they can't do shit if Putin decides he wants to mine BTC. Putin has nukes, US know where the limits are.
You mean seizing Russian citizens living in US that are mining BTC?

If BTC survives long enough, then big state actors will either attack it or will compete to dominate it, and when one begins then the rest will follow, this in principle is good because different big actors will be competing for hashrate, it only legitimizes Bitcoin even more as something important.

Just wait until AMD, Nvidia and Intel enter the mining game, the cheap chinese stuff may not cut it in the future, but they will always have the cheap electricity advantage so im not sure how they will go around that.

at some point i think nations will have to start their own bitcoin mining operations to help secure the network against bad actors (like bitmain) to help protect their citizen's interests. similarly, any large corporation who has a stake in bitcoin in one form or another may also want to protect it with their own mining operations.

oh shiiiit, this happening, this is really hapening, where is the medical , i can't hold the hype right now.

All big player will comes and join the game  :o
Let see how's the game will be played  8)

Something is about to go down. Once russia establish their mining corp. US will follow so as other big countries. This is going to be a domino effect and will be fun!

I am actually wary of the Chinese monopolize on mining and am hoping that other countries would also participate in this endeavor so there would be spread of ownership and influence. In a situation where there seems to be a monopoly, the control can be one-sided.

Good thing that Russia is getting to be interested with the Bitcoin mining business. But we are all waiting for USA to really be a big participant on this thing so that there can really be a balance of influence.

Anything that removes China is a good thing. I didn't know Russian power was that cheap, however some Chinese power is borderline free as they mine next to plants with capacity going free.

OK, well I hate to break it to you, but several groups other than BITMAIN are already major groups.  So I suppose you should be questioning the OP's point about the "Chinese mining monopoly".

My view is that any group controlling too large an amount of the hashrate is bad, whether that's BITMAIN or the Russian government.  The difference, however, is that BITMAIN only has temporary power over their amount of hashrate, because if they did something really malicious the miners could just move away from their pools.

I suppose all this stuff with mining pools is just an inherent flaw in Bitcoin anyway so we'll have to sit back and watch how it pans out.
By which you mean anything which competes with BITMAIN, rather than things that "remove China".

Nope. There are plenty of fine people mining there, but they're all under the boot of the Chinese authorities. That much mining possibly controllable by one regime is potentially harmful.

Wow, just wow.  This could be huge.  It'll be interesting to see how the US approaches this.  On one side I can see the US attempting to stop Russia from monopolizing this currency and competing against them... but on the other the US doesn't want any other currency to become popular.  Every foreign currency that goes into BTC is currency that's not holding the US dollar for reserve.

Also, jeez... 1.3 cents per KwH??  In the US, land of prosperity and dreams, I pay 12 cents per KwH.   :-[

This is the price because - the standard of living... you live better - pay more

That part of the plan will fail. The failure of 21.co proved that it won't work.

Yey more bitcoin miners. (insert sarcasm here)
To be honest, bitcoin mining is wasteful and it totally just doesn't do anything else but produce, well, bitcoins. Just think about it, a miner just mines bitcoins and nothing else really. It just tries to create digital gold which is totally useless in practical use but we value it based on how much we want to pay for it (supply and demand). No, russia has so much excess power, so why not just sell it to industries that will totally make use of it in better things. Though don't get me wrong, I love bitcoins. I really believe this is the future, but not how it is acquired.

Or it could be a huge scam. It's an ICO. They are looking for investors. What more do you need?

so it's time to buy and hold some WAVES  ;D

Wow this is a really good news, maybe we will see some great things in the future. Ofcourse the best thing about Russia that you pay really low fees for electricity,water, fuel and water.
Also as someone said it is time to hold WAVES ;D

That was my main takeaway as well. First of all, it's not Putin himself, but one of his staff members, so claiming that "Putin" is "getting ready to kick Bitmain's ass" is a bit of a hyperbole by OP. Secondly, it's a friggin ICO. So this fellow's endgame is probably not mining profits, but getting his hands on that sweet sweet ICO money. Running an ICO is probably more profitable anyways, otherwise they'd just have a bunch of Russian oligarchs chip in and be done with it.

This is big. Also good news, less centralization is always better.

i think this is a good news because if the miners added, the block transaction would be much faster. but i really hope that Putin deploy his team into mining bitcoin not only altcoin.
also i predict that bitcoin price will go boom again after this, just wait and see the player joining bitcoin world

Russian state-sponsored mining sounds like a good reason for the US government to freak out.

Suddenly our secretive internet money becomes "secretive internet money... controlled by the Russians". LOL

Sure it doesn't matter if they actually control it, it just sounds good on paper.  ;D :D

https://i.imgur.com/fAlshuj.jpg

There's a fair few nuclear powered subs and carriers nearing the end of their service life. All the US of A has to do is stuff them with miners. How cool would that be?

Indeed. In time, we will see a push towards enterprise mining, just as we did in China. It is far cheaper and more scalable to strategically build mining farms in regions with excess power run-off. In China, such mines are often built right off of hydroelectric dams. The fact that this "plan" includes mining from individual Russian households suggests that it wasn't well-thought out.

We're probably years away from this happening. But the fact that the article made it into Bloomberg at all is pretty exciting. :)

So you don't think that Russian authorities mining is as bad as Chinese miners potentially being under the authorities' influence?

EDIT: though to be fair, ties to Putin here seem to be tentative at best.
So I suppose the market is going to give up for your sake then?  The only way that it can be changed is if BTC's PoW system changes, and for that to happen there needs to be a worthy change to make.  Sure, it's a shame that BTC is disproportionately wasteful, but it's not like people are going to give up on profits to make it efficient.

Lol definitely cool, or maybe we can take apart a few of the 6800 nuclear warheads that we will never use and use them to fuel nuclear-powered bitcoin miners (the planet would cease to exist before we got through 1/12th of them).

I could see it now: "Sweetie, don't stare directly at the bitcoin miner, it will make you go blind"...  :D

No. Two authoritarian regimes are better than one however you want to look at it. They're not going to be working hand in hand. If one makes a move to squash it it's conceivable the other will foster it instead. If Bitcoin became truly large it may well become a geopolitical tool.

I definitely agree, competition tends to be a good thing no matter whom it comes from.  Chinese miners have already shown us their ability & will to influence the future of bitcoin in their favor. It's not a good thing to have such a concentrated amount of mining power in a single area or with a single group, it makes collusion too easy.

I am still quite curious if anyone can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bitmain was actually using Asicboost?

imo, a more distributed network of miners is a good thing for bitcoin, regardless of whose doing the mining.

Yea right and here in europe I pay almost double that
Doubtfull the US gov would want to get involved in fact BTC is still very unknown to the general population there, and the gov has only been negative about it. I do wonder when India gets into mining, they already put a lot of cash into the system

What exactly is the main issue though ?

Do the Chinese miners keep all the bitcoins and have possible manipulation power later on ?

If the majority of hashpower is located under the jurisdiction of one country, this is theoretically very dangerous for the network. Miners operating in China are under the thumb of the Chinese government (just like miners anywhere else answer to their own governments).

As such, the Chinese government could, theoretically, shut down a majority of global hashpower all at once (causing significant network disruption), or they could even 51% attack the network. Ideally, for Bitcoin's security vis-a-vis decentralization to be realized, hashpower must be decentralized. It can't all be concentrated in one legal jurisdiction.

One of Putin's internet advisors, Herman Klimenko had said that accepting bitcoins is a crime and recently claimed that around 20 to 30% of Russian computers are infected by mining malware, which is absurd, but good that another one of Putin's internet advisors, Dmitry Marinichev is planning to launch an ICO, RMC to expand mining operations in Russia.

China is the biggest player in mining now, according to Marinichev Russia has the potential to reach up to 30 percent share in global cryptocurrency mining in the future.

The ICO would be launched in 18 days, http://rmc.one

I guess the mining hardware they are planning to launch is Sunrise s11i
18,6 Th, 2.6 кBт
$1600
ROI - 5 months

Cheaper than Antminer s9 and much more efficient.

http://rmc.one/RMC.pdf

now that another world power is joining in the game, bitcoin will surely dominate the scene, we all know Russia will not easily back down a good fight, if things goes well, both Russia and China will have dominance on bitcoins, the US as we all know will also try to join in, I think they will be left out, knowing that almost major powers in the east are already accepting bitcoin and for sure, the have the technology to mine on their own, but Russia has a great advantage, when it comes to mining, their climate and their power source, their miners will not easily overheat. This will be another breakthrough for bitccoin.

Have we so quickly forgotten BitFury?  ::)

We have been here before. If you recall,  a few years ago cex.io's ghash feature, and mining shares were powered by BitFury. Russia had the advantage, as we got all types of flack for getting so close to 51% of the network. In other words, there was a time when Russian made and Russian controlled hardware were the majority of the network.

But this isnt that. As stated before, this is a cash grab, a state sponsored ICO. You could invest in worse, but know what this is. You are essentially buying a bond from the Russian government, who's economy is looking quite hurt at the moment due to sanctions by us. Oil isnt looking so darling at the moment either, Russia's chief export. Better then say, sending 2 ETH to the Eros ICO (yes, I'm making fun of you guys that invested in that), but just as risky in my opinion, despite the state sponsorship.


Buyer beware.

Well, it's too bad that the Russian government had to ban BTC-e and all the other .ru exchangers. They released another list last month banning dozens more. They have been especially harsh towards bitcoin commerce. But I guess now they see the writing on the wall: everyone wants in on Bitcoin, and there's only so much time left. The supply is nearly 80% mined out, so it makes sense for those with capital (including national governments) to subsidize mining.

Bitcoin mining doesn't only produce bitcoins... that is in fact a side effect of what mining is really about: processing the transaction. Without hashing power you don't process anything and your blockchain is useless.

Sure PoW has a lot of problems but guess what, it has been proved to be the only method to keep a crypto running with no downtimes for 7+ years record.

Until someone invents a better system, the more hashrate and the more competition between hashrate the better for Bitcoin, so I say bring it on Putin.

The first stage is to get an economy of people going that actually mine, the second stage is to use that foundation and only use it for useful things = calculating transactions, for now that is a side earning but with ever increasing difficulty it will soon become the main source of income for miners

Lol, when I read your post Heading, I thought Putin will be getting involved into this…lmao. By the way, let’s just watch and see what happens, will they be able to beat Bitmain, will the US just sit and watch or get into this too? It’s just a matter of time. By the way ***chews popcorn*** this is interesting.

How reliable is this news? Even if the news is reliable, Russia hasn't shown much tolerance towards Bitcoins lately. Also, remember that the owner of Bitfury (Valery Vavilov) is a Latvian citizen. Russia and Latvia are not having good relations right now. Another aspect that needs to be considered is the price difference between the Bitfury and Bitmain mining rigs.

I suppose they banned those exchanges to clear the table.
Presumably the exchanges did not pay taxes and were not controllable by the state and therefore of no use for the russian authorities.
Now they have space to create their own bitcoin world the way they like it.
It seems possible that they could become some kind of competition for China.
But it's possible as well that China and Russia could work together.
I'm not sure if that would be a good thing for bitcoin.

It's a sensationalist clickbait crap. Putin himself didn't say that Russia will start mining Bitcoin, it was some of his advisers who said that he has a plan to start a large scale mining operation, and he even launched an ICO (which is kinda suspicious, because why would the government need private investors?). Knowing Russia's history with corruption, it's quite likely that's this is just another scheme to steal money while making a PR move.

Interesting indeed, but I am a bit wary when governments want a slice of this pie. I dont think its a good thing that one country has majority over hashpower. I wish my country was as this proactive.

as long as this leads to more decentralization of mining throughout the whole world, it can be the best news for bitcoin. so far we have only China as the major manufacturer of mining equipment known as ASICs and they can do whatever they want, like asking for high prices, not releasing new version of their hardware to other countries until they become older, .... but if other companies start mass producing that can create competition and it is good for customers.

Instead of fighting over it, I wonder what would happen if they team up to centralize and control bitcoin. Would the price/value of bitcoin increase or decrease?

miners can never fully centralize and/or control bitcoin. what they can do is to delay things, and make us angry like what they did this year. but in the end it is all the users that decide things. bitcoin is not just miners, it is all those who run a node, all those who are holding some coins, all the businesses that use it.

if some day bitcoin becomes centralize and people don't like it, they will either fork and kick the malicious miners out (like changing the PoW) or they simply stop using bitcoin and price will crash. and believe me when i say this, miners know this better than you and me and they don't want to harm their huge investment operation.

It will take a lot of time before Russia will join blockchain technology, but it will be good.

You all must be like WOW after this news. But I am stayed sceptical. You may call me a nerd, but I googled how much the electricity costs in Russia and it has nothing with this 80 kopeek the author says about. The scatter of the price is really huge just like Russia and it's from 0,97 (For Irkutsk which very far and not developed) to 4,28 (For developed and turistic Krasnodar). In USD it is like 0,02 to 0,07 Cents add to that on the price affect many factors, such us day and night tarifs, city, gas or electrical stove and many others. Add to that each year this prices are rising. So now it is a big question - is it really so cheap to mine in Russia or it's just new Putin's tric based on searching for new friends and business partners?

So will it be private Russian companies or the Russian government mining he bitcoins?

Any further decentralisation is good, so of course I see this as good news. However very bad news for anyone planning to mine or currently mining.

I think it's inevitable. Bitcoin's decentralized nature made governments scared to act against it, for fear of falling behind the others. Now, they will start scrambling to secure a piece of the pie. Is it a good thing? Well, if it takes mining power away from China, it probably is. Russia definitely won't be the last country moving in this direction.

Okay, that's some good news then US will also mine and the other countries then btc price will continually rise.

There is no way I am going to support monopoly in any form but at the same time, whether the coins is being mined in China or Russia or even the United States, it does not change anything in that, it does not by automatic increase the maximum that can be mined rather it will just then take the control from individuals back to the conglomerates to be the deciding factor. With government now showing some form of attention, I am sure they have some ulterior motive towards this.

It will be a private Russian company co-owned by one of Putin's staff members, not the Russian government itself. My educated guess would also be that they will make more money during the ICO than they'll ever be able to mine.

Russia has been interested in blockchain technology for a very long time. probably longer than most countries. in fact one of the biggest conferences on blockchain technology takes place in Moscow every year.
the only thing they have been behind was regulating bitcoin, and that is starting to change now after Japan regulated bitcoin.

Several coins have done just that already but nobody cares, bitcoin has the name and the fame it will always be the supreme leader

I think russia finally made a move to show how dominant it can be, we all know that the chinese invested a fortune on miners, but this news, i think it will show the world how russia can be dominant not just as a superpower country that has weapons of mass destruction, but also a a technological giant. with this russia , in future time will surely change the course of power from west to east, since we all know that bitcoin is the future of currency,and having a lot of bitcoin then, means you are in charge. this move will also bring more confidence in russia and sooner or later it will destroy the petrodollar, i guess, putin might be thinking that since bitcoin is the future, they can lead us all, along with other countries that had legalized bitcoin and are still mining, in the end the one who still has more bitcoins will make the rules.  hopefully this will have a positive feedback from those who had bashed bitcoin before, not only that bitcoin has a lot of users, now bitcoin is backed up by superpowers, hopefully this decision of russia will change the mind of china from banning bitcoin and in the end, everybody will help in achieving their goals, and i think it is safe to say that one of those goals is to have bitcoin be legalize globally.

I think Russia is setting up a cryptomining facility in Leningrad. Russia is serious in pushing  crytocurrency projects and this is good to most people.This is a bold move from Russian government.

I smell WAR ON MINING! Let it push through! And I hope china will just get out of this war mining since they choose to close these exchanges.I I am not saying that i believe that they have hidden agenda but it looks like they do have a hidden agenda on this, Government will not just push through on entering such fields without gaining benefits from it. I think Russia really saw a bright future on cryptocurrency.

This will likely not going to happen. I don't want say why it won't but I can guarantee you that CRYPTOCURRENCY cannot be taken over by Centralized authorities.