Bitcoin Forum

So I had this Layer1 story pop up in my feed the other day and it just sounds overly ambitious. I think the article mixed in their future(likely unattainable) goals with their short term goals of becoming a large US based mining company using renewable energy(Wind and Solar). All the stories have conflicting information, but the linked article appears to show they have at least 100 MW at their disposal via the transformers in the image. They talk about purchasing power from Solar and wind farms, and developing new technology to cool miners in Texas.
The weirder parts about this are that when they launched in 2018, there was no plan for mining disclosed, and that they are planning in the future to become a chip manufacturer, "to control all aspects of their operation". I don't think there is anything in it for US based miners from what I can tell. No talks of hosting or selling hardware if they did become a chip manufacturer, nothing apart from attempting to move a larger percentage of the Network hashrate out of China.
Personally I can see them getting a facility up, but beyond that it's a hard sell.
https://fortune.com/2019/10/15/what-is-bitcoin-mining-layer1-peter-thiel-crypto-investment/

Nobody smart would launch something like that now.
And if they are they would be idiots to do it in TX (or anyplace in the US at the moment)
And if they are relying on new tech to do cooling it's going to be even worse.

1st  the new build is going to be expensive
2nd due to the tariffs the equipment is going to be more (miners)
3rd  new cooling tech, even if it works, since it's new means it's unproven and untested, which means there are going to be issues
4th  and this is a big one, it's not even started yet so by the time it comes online the next gen miners / chips are probably going to be just on the horizon so, they are going to be hitting the tail end of this gen if they want to be up and running or paying big money for the new gen.

Just my view, I hope to be wrong since I would like to see more mining come to the US, but I just do see it as viable.

-Dave

Seems Texas is the place to be: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitmain-launches-worlds-largest-crypto-mining-facility-in-texas

- Texas is actually a good place to do this, electricity in Texas can be purchased at extreme discounts if you get the right contract, basically if you know the right people/companies.

- Additionally and this depends exactly where you are, summer is really the only "hot" time, once fall / winter come around it's 60-70's (F) sometimes below freezing at night.

1) Building anything adds a cost, upside to TX is land and labor are super cheap.
2) If you construct the miners in the US there is no tariff, you buy the parts import the parts (which don't get taxed at the rate of a finished product) and do assembly locally.
3) Immersion isn't really "new" people have been talking about it since 2013, now it's getting more reasonable price wise with advancements in the tech.
4) I can make more with last gen equipment than new gen equipment, this is based on other factors than just efficiency and price of equipment but they do play a part. If I had the option of getting new gen equipment or last gen I would take last gen in a heartbeat, new gen only comes into the equation sometime after the halving according to our models. This has to do with the bullet points at the top of my post.

Yeah I wondered about the tariffs myself, unless they are hoping that it won't be a concern in the future. A stupid gamble if that's the case but who knows. Likely they would be trying to offset it with a large volume order bringing down initial purchase price. I couldn't find anything about timelines for the project, so it was weird to see some of their available capacity but nothing else. I agree it seems risky but some people were willing to put millions behind it so they must have some sort of a gameplan.


Yeah I remembered this last year, and initially thought it might have been the same project. I just assumed it had been a false report last year when it seemed nothing was materializing. I guess Jihan had just wasted to much money last year.


I'm not sure if it's supposed to be immersion or what their plan is. If it's an attempt at a new way of doing things I would venture something like geothermal for being able to cool your intake air. Enough tunnels and fins especially on a new build and it could be done. I saw something a year or so ago, that was a more efficient swamp cooler, essentially a waterwall or something that didn't raise the humidity, it was neat but I couldn't get may details on it. I agree on the buying of gear, I imagine it would be a hard sell to investors on buying used gear, so they would still be hit with tariffs but would likely be sourcing S9's from Bitmain while they are still available. Especially if the power costs are dirt cheap.

It is A BITMAIN ONLY facility..and they are exempt from import tariffs because they are not selling "that gear" retail.
(But they are happy to give Uncle Sam the tax they will collect from hosting fees which will also make those "Megwa" coins more expensive than their Da Lu Jia mined coins)
You guys that can't read or speak Chinese are just sooooooo out of the loop. American/English news feeds are just propaganda for you "Bun Dan Megwa Ren".

Good thing there's someone here to translate without condescension.

well I would say maybe stick to 1 language so you can easily differentiate between 2 stories.
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/43950/bitmain-opens-a-large-crypto-mining-farm-in-texas
That article points out your Bitmain facility and at the end discusses what my OP referenced. A seperate group that backed Layer-1 for a facility with land inside the city. No mention of them partnering with bitmain

Chips are made in Taiwan which as far as the USA is concerned is not mainland China.

If I gave bitmain millions to assemble in India 🇮🇳 or Malaysia 🇲🇾 with board and chips from Taiwan most likely I beat the trump tax.

That may be the case. I've never had to deal with the tariffs but I sure wouldn't gamble 10's or 100's of thousands on that. Especially when they can backdate and go after previous purchases.

I remember when they first went into effect and asked Canaan I believe if there was a way around the tarriffs by building or assembling elsewhere. I don't recall exactly what the response was but it seemed cost prohibitive for what could be a shortlived policy. So odds are you would need to be shelling out much more than a few million in gear, and who knows the quality from a brand new thrown together facility.

Bitmain already has manufacturing set up in Malaysia and they are offering miners manufactured there to larger US customers. My host has offered his customers multiple group buys shipping from Malaysia with no extra 25% tariff. I just got another offer from him this morning for s17 pros for the same price as on the Bitmain website, $2128.

Might take up most or all of their manufacturing capacity there for a long time to fill a $50 million farm, but I'm sure Bitmain would make it happen.

I think the tariffs are going nowhere until after the presidential election. Trump isn't going to back down, and China is trying to wait out the clock hoping Trump won't get re-elected. So at least a year. Getting a contract manufacturer in Malaysia, Vietnam, or elsewhere to make the products is not much effort to be able to offer a 25% discount to  USA customers for a year.

The bitmain facility in tx hasn't even deployed from What I've heard.  I Interviewed about a year ago @ rockdale. They had bigger concerns then general operations with massive dip this time last year.  They hired people that didn't understand blockchain. I knew this based on my interview questions not really relating to crypto.  Who knows maybe they got it all together.

When you buy bulk from bitmain they assemble in Maylasia to go around the tariffs.
even with just evap cooling they would be fine