Bitcoin Mine opportunity with ultra-cheap electricity

[chiguireitor]

I've been studying my local real-state market, and prices have been going lower lately.

I'm currently considering starting a project for a mining farm that will have approximate capacity of 7.5 MW.

Considering my past experiences with mining on my country, adding human resource costs (guards, technicians to setup miners, cleaning personell), electricity and internet costs, i calculate that hosting 1 KW on that mine would cost less than $10/KWh.

I've found a real-state lot on a nice place of the capital city that would fit a building with around 200 individual "shops" (being data-center oriented, there wouldn't be anyone around walking besides building employees) of ~20 sq meters with common air extraction and emergency CO2 extinguishers, with 36KW lots. I could provide all the man power necessary to keep running the place 24/7.

Is there any interest on this kind of endeavors? Would anyone be interested in investing on these kind of real-state on my country?

Also, i'm not interested on taking money atm, just knowing if people would be interested so i can develop the project and get costs down to reality to evaluate feasibility.

Some quick numbers: 36 KW worth of S5 would be ~69TH/s * 200 locations, 13.8 PH/s. Running 13.8 PH/s would cost south of $72k USD (with all non-electricity costs included).

[notlist3d]

I've been studying my local real-state market, and prices have been going lower lately.

I'm currently considering starting a project for a mining farm that will have approximate capacity of 7.5 MW.

Considering my past experiences with mining on my country, adding human resource costs (guards, technicians to setup miners, cleaning personell), electricity and internet costs, i calculate that hosting 1 KW on that mine would cost less than $10/KWh.

I've found a real-state lot on a nice place of the capital city that would fit a building with around 200 individual "shops" (being data-center oriented, there wouldn't be anyone around walking besides building employees) of ~20 sq meters with common air extraction and emergency CO2 extinguishers, with 36KW lots. I could provide all the man power necessary to keep running the place 24/7.

Is there any interest on this kind of endeavors? Would anyone be interested in investing on these kind of real-state on my country?

Also, i'm not interested on taking money atm, just knowing if people would be interested so i can develop the project and get costs down to reality to evaluate feasibility.

Some quick numbers: 36 KW worth of S5 would be ~69TH/s * 200 locations, 13.8 PH/s. Running 13.8 PH/s would cost south of $72k USD (with all non-electricity costs included).

It's a interesting idea  I kinda made a hobby version when I upgraded for summer.    I think it would be interesting as an idea to build a data center.

I see a few things that might be hard.  I don't think the price of electricity is cheap enough.   I think you would need to move to another place with a decent amount cheaper electricity if you truly want to be a commercial datacenter.

Other problem is 200 shops.  Your talking you need 200 of everything, this scale is not really reasonable.  I mean 200 security systems, cooling systems, networking equipment, etc etc.   And employees going in between them would be a waste of time and money. 

Look into 1 place and cheaper electricity is my advice.

[chiguireitor]

I see a few things that might be hard.  I don't think the price of electricity is cheap enough.   I think you would need to move to another place with a decent amount cheaper electricity if you truly want to be a commercial datacenter.

Price of electricity is ultra cheap here, with 80% being from Hydro power (Guri dam) and the rest from heavily subsidized thermoelectric petroleoum power plants.

Other problem is 200 shops.  Your talking you need 200 of everything, this scale is not really reasonable.  I mean 200 security systems, cooling systems, networking equipment, etc etc.

That's the genius part of it, if i granulate electricity to be distributed among 200 shops, you get a really low electricity rate, like almost free. Cooling would be centralized, with a extraction system tailor made to remove heat of 36 KW of bitcoin mining equipment, not wimpy systems made for meatbags . Networking equipment would be a cost each "resident" would need to cover from their assigned ethernet endpoint, i would just provide building backbone, again, tailor made for the specific needs of a bitcoin mine.

And employees going in between them would be a waste of time and money.

Each employee here is just $20 a month Really cheap labor.

Look into 1 place and cheaper electricity is my advice.

Places with cheaper electricity i have enough now, i'm developing 5 low power (36 KW) mines atm, but bigger and meaner is the way to go here... i mean, with electricity as cheap as 0.002 USD/KWh...

[ferol]

Chiguireitor! Tambien he pensado un tanto hacer algo como eso, ya estoy haciendo una instalacion electrica para un espacio en La Floresta de aprox 40 sq m y con 2 aires de 24k btu. PM si te interesa o piensas que hay alguna posibilidad de negocios

[notlist3d]

Places with cheaper electricity i have enough now, i'm developing 5 low power (36 KW) mines atm, but bigger and meaner is the way to go here... i mean, with electricity as cheap as 0.002 USD/KWh...

Ok I can admit when I'm wrong.  I did math in my head and could must have done something wrong.  If you can get electricity for even close to that ... yea that is a amazing deal.   

I still like the idea of bigger miners to have to buy less equipment such as networking, proper electricity parts, etc.   Having it split is not a bad idea at all.  But I would look at splitting into a few warehouses vs hundreds of shops.    Security alone on hundreds of shops would be a nightmare.

But after seeing that electricity price you do have some nice ideas.

[chiguireitor]

Places with cheaper electricity i have enough now, i'm developing 5 low power (36 KW) mines atm, but bigger and meaner is the way to go here... i mean, with electricity as cheap as 0.002 USD/KWh...

Ok I can admit when I'm wrong.  I did math in my head and could must have done something wrong.  If you can get electricity for even close to that ... yea that is a amazing deal.   

I still like the idea of bigger miners to have to buy less equipment such as networking, proper electricity parts, etc.   Having it split is not a bad idea at all.  But I would look at splitting into a few warehouses vs hundreds of shops.    Security alone on hundreds of shops would be a nightmare.

But after seeing that electricity price you do have some nice ideas.

Yeah... i'm mostly underfunded lol... if not for that i would take the whole idea for me 

Electricity is ridiculously low here.... i've just paid my montly home electricity bill, includes 2 air conditioners + 4 miners (can't stand more noise than that @ home) and it was just 2600 VEF, which at current "black" market (which is the only market, btw) prices is 4.19 USD.

[guytp]

Might as well make my first post on here after months of lurking as this is an area I've been looking at investing some money in to as the figures just don't work when cost is closer to that in UK.

I'd certainly be interested and figures you've got would potentially stack up - my concern would be the regulation in Venezuela.  I believe the state has quite significant powers over nationalisation of assets that become either very productive or in any way could be considered at odds with authorities.  Whilst I have no idea what the real situation on the ground is like over there compared to European news coverage this would be my biggest concern.

If you were looking at doing this properly and getting suitable company setup then do you know the limits are for foreign ownership in a company based over there?

A final question - other than the well publicised power outages that have hit the country and taken a while to redeem in the last few years how reliable has power been in these areas in your experience?

[chiguireitor]

I'd certainly be interested and figures you've got would potentially stack up - my concern would be the regulation in Venezuela.  I believe the state has quite significant powers over nationalisation of assets that become either very productive or in any way could be considered at odds with authorities.  Whilst I have no idea what the real situation on the ground is like over there compared to European news coverage this would be my biggest concern.

Main interests of the government are mass market facing properties: milk, coffee, etc. Also, there are SEVERAL government officials knee deep on the ecosystem, and the fact that there's no central authority to the blockchain is a plus when it comes to considering it as an alternative over the "empire" and such (officials refer to the US as the empire).

If you were looking at doing this properly and getting suitable company setup then do you know the limits are for foreign ownership in a company based over there?

Foreign ownership is totally valid, there's a horizontal property law in place, that would be the one regarding these kind of properties.

A final question - other than the well publicised power outages that have hit the country and taken a while to redeem in the last few years how reliable has power been in these areas in your experience?

Electricity lately has been more stable. The main power outages of past were like 6 hours/year. The zone where i found the terrain lot is one of the most "exclusive" of Caracas, with several tech companies there.

I'll be developing the project a little more if i found out there's real interest from the community at large on this kind of opportunity (so far, it seems not very well received )

[guytp]

Not negatively received by me - just due diligence.  I am certainly interested in seeing where this goes so wouldn't rule it out - if you get some figures and this fleshed out a little more I'd certainly be interested to hear what final costs end up like and look at it further.  I've always fancied justifying a trip to South America.

[notlist3d]

Places with cheaper electricity i have enough now, i'm developing 5 low power (36 KW) mines atm, but bigger and meaner is the way to go here... i mean, with electricity as cheap as 0.002 USD/KWh...

Ok I can admit when I'm wrong.  I did math in my head and could must have done something wrong.  If you can get electricity for even close to that ... yea that is a amazing deal.   

I still like the idea of bigger miners to have to buy less equipment such as networking, proper electricity parts, etc.   Having it split is not a bad idea at all.  But I would look at splitting into a few warehouses vs hundreds of shops.    Security alone on hundreds of shops would be a nightmare.

But after seeing that electricity price you do have some nice ideas.

Yeah... i'm mostly underfunded lol... if not for that i would take the whole idea for me 

Electricity is ridiculously low here.... i've just paid my montly home electricity bill, includes 2 air conditioners + 4 miners (can't stand more noise than that @ home) and it was just 2600 VEF, which at current "black" market (which is the only market, btw) prices is 4.19 USD.

Very interesting on some of the information.   So does the official exchange not really mean anything?  I find this "black market" interesting on currency just never dealt with anything like it.  Who do you go to to exchange cash?  Would a foreign investor be paying the official exchange rate?

[chiguireitor]

Very interesting on some of the information.   So does the official exchange not really mean anything?  I find this "black market" interesting on currency just never dealt with anything like it.  Who do you go to to exchange cash?  Would a foreign investor be paying the official exchange rate?

There are at least 4 "official" exchanges here:

• Preferential rate 6.3 VEF/USD (the one used officially everywhere) that only applies to "high level" government officials and certain drugs (a list of less than 20 items, for things like Cancer, AIDS and Multiple Sclerosis). Almost no-one has access to this rate, just a handful of people on our country. If this was the real rate, a minimum wage worker would be arning a little north of 1100 USD/month.
• SICAD I rate 12.0 VEF/USD, the one people get when using credit cards from government run banks with a $300 annual quota.... yeah, we can only spend $300 a year on internet, and only with credit cards which only has like less than 5% of the population. This rate is rare, and with the annual quota is almost impossible to rely upon. If this was the real rate, a minimum wage worker would be earning a little north of 580 USD/month.
• SICAD II rate ~60 VEF/USD, the one that some businesses get to import stuff when they prove the import has social impact, that doesn't has national production, that comply with a shitload of documents. Normal people can't access this rate, just business and it isn't that common. If you buy with this type of exchange your business can't EVER gain more than 30% over the cost of the product, and you must state explicitly that you've received this type of rate, per product you sell. If this was the real rate, a minimum wage worker would be earning a little north of 110 USD/month.
• SIMADI rate ~200 VEF/USD, this rate is weird. Officially, you can ask for 10k USD a year as a normal person, and up to 350k USD/month as a business but no more than 45k daily. The official stance is that this rate is the result of an auction, but the fact that there's no offer book, there's no information on volume, and the market works VERY weird doesn't helps. Besides, you must have a special USD account on a national bank to receive the funds, and you never receive what you ask for ie I asked 800 usd and received 300 each time, and only once a month. After receiving my first 300 usd each month, the auction "dried" up for me, although several people could get funds at different days than me. This system is a clustefuck, really, there are more nuances to it, but i won't explain here because, for practical uses, it isn't working anymore.... ooh, and you can only use the funds via WIRE TRANSFER with an effing 35 USD fee each time. If this was the real rate, a minimum wage worker would be earning a little north of 35 USD/month.
• Black Market rate ~630 VEF/USD this is the only market rate available to everyone freely, in other countries this rate would be called free market rate, go figure. There's one caveat however: there's only ONE WEB PAGE with this rate and it calculates the rate based on the Colombian frontier in Cucuta, so we have ultra sharp market swings whenever an exodus of people occurs on the colombian frontier. "Why only that page?" you ask, welp, if you happen to publish black market rates publicly, you can get jail from 5 to 10 years, and the guys that are publishing that rate are OBVIOUSLY outside our country, if not they would be serving hard time already. However, the plot thickens, as this is a self fulfilling prophecy: Because the only people interested in our effing currency are the colombians on the Cucuta frontier, you can't use another way to rate the currency parity, and the government forces everyone dealing with them to use the 6.3 VEF/USD rate, thus making it unattractive to deal with the government, lowering the market interest on dealing with Venezuela. If this was the real rate (and, ooh what a coincidence, prices line up nicely with this rate), a minimum wage worker would be earning a little north of 10 USD/month.

So, with this wall of text you should be asking me "how the fuck are you living down there?". Low income people are forced to do daily lengthy queues to access subsidized products. It really really sucks for them. Mining with just one S5 allows you to live the "good life" here, it is really crazy.

Most businesses are dealing with USD amounts. Pro-forma invoices denominated in VEF are valid for, at most, 7 days, with most of them being valid only for some hours. I'm looking to buy a truck, and all the prices are stated on USD. Real-state is exclusively dealt in USD, with most parties preferring foreign banks for transfers.

Finally, how would i handle this business: Everything denominated in USD and payments made on Bitcoin, each buyer should have to either take a trip here to sign the sale contract or have a lawyer firm do that with a "power" document. Most real-state is paid on USD, so that would be dealt without VEF in the scene

Also, most details i haven't determined it yet. I have a friend that has a construction business and he gave me ballpark figures, which sound nice and i think it is viable from experience dealing with big projects in the past. However, if there's not enough interest (and by interest, i mean 200 units reserved with a signed message from a wallet with at least 100 btc per unit), i won't even bother, i know i will eventually have the funds to do this, but atm i can't.

[timk225]

First question -- where is "HERE", where you want to do this mine?  With the cheap real estate and power?

Second question - how can you even have such a boneheaded, moronic idea of trying to start ANOTHER Bitcoin mine when the difficulty is 51 BILLION, and the prices are past their peak, and all the infrastructure to build this thing is very costly.  It is a financially losing proposition, cheap labor and power aside.  Don't do it.

[armedmilitia]

This mining operation is very interesting, but I have a few questions:
How are you planning on giving your investors a return?
Where are you sourcing your hardware from?
Does/can border authorities seize incoming mining hardware?
How can you convert btc to your local currency at the black market rate?
If local authorities find out, is it likely the hardware will be confiscated?

[cheetahman333]

Im from ve and im interested in getting into the business. If youre looking for a partner pm me.

[MCHouston]

It appears you already have investors and you already have people investing.  How much are you looking for total?

Isn't this you?

https://btcjam.com/listings/47619-last-mining-expansion-for-this-year

[chiguireitor]

First question -- where is "HERE", where you want to do this mine?  With the cheap real estate and power?

Venezuela. Everything is cheap here.

Second question - how can you even have such a boneheaded, moronic idea of trying to start ANOTHER Bitcoin mine when the difficulty is 51 BILLION, and the prices are past their peak, and all the infrastructure to build this thing is very costly.  It is a financially losing proposition, cheap labor and power aside.  Don't do it.

Apart from the obvious trolling there, this is not a "mine" per se, if you read what i've said already is that this will be a "mini-mine condominium", everyone inside is free to pick any mining pool and get their profits themselves. The idea is to let everyone have the opportunity to mine profitably without the costs related to electricity in most countries. This is the contrary to centralization.

How are you planning on giving your investors a return?

Investors would "buy" one of the "shops", they are totally free to either use it or sell it to someone else. It would work exactly as having a commercial shop, just that it suits best electronics.

Where are you sourcing your hardware from?

I'm not sourcing hardware. However, i'm working on a better heatsink for the S5 for more efficient heat removal, but that's a different project altogheter.

Does/can border authorities seize incoming mining hardware?

Haven't heard of someone being victim of this. However, i would advise owners how to get they hardware safely to the country, no need to have this kind of losses if i'm already into the mining business.

How can you convert btc to your local currency at the black market rate?

Btc can be exchanged on two sites already, there's a thriving localbitcoins scene and a facebook group to boot.

If local authorities find out, is it likely the hardware will be confiscated?

No, data services are VERY common on my country. Just in the same zone where i spotted the real state is an IBM data center, and one of the biggest venezuelan-owned data centers Daycohost.

It appears you already have investors and you already have people investing.  How much are you looking for total?

Still not much investors as you would think. Certainty of long term profitability is something not much people have, and it seems that outside VE there's a feeling of bitcoin losing its magic and charm. I only know that whoever thinks that, they haven't found out yet how profitable Bitcoin mining is in my country.

Isn't this you?

https://btcjam.com/listings/47619-last-mining-expansion-for-this-year

Yeap, that's for one of my personal mines

[notlist3d]

Very interesting on some of the information.   So does the official exchange not really mean anything?  I find this "black market" interesting on currency just never dealt with anything like it.  Who do you go to to exchange cash?  Would a foreign investor be paying the official exchange rate?

There are at least 4 "official" exchanges here:

Wow thank you for putting such a great response together.  It's honestly better anwser then any of the stuff I was finding on google.

Mining does sound very interesting there.

[armedmilitia]

Ah, so just to clarify what you're offering is an ultra low-cost hosting service based out of vz?

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[chiguireitor]

Ah, so just to clarify what you're offering is an ultra low-cost hosting service based out of vz?

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Almost correct...

It is a real-state that will be sold to investors, in a completely legal fashion, they can even resell or lease it to other parties.

Administration of the whole building is the "hosting" with services meant specifically for data-hosting needs: cleaning of devices, handling of equipment, removal on demand and shipping, proper cooling, multiple internet access, VPN access, remote video feeds, etc. This would be part of the commons cost, not too different to what you have to pay monthly on your average condo.

[armedmilitia]

Ah, so just to clarify what you're offering is an ultra low-cost hosting service based out of vz?

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Almost correct...

It is a real-state that will be sold to investors, in a completely legal fashion, they can even resell or lease it to other parties.

Administration of the whole building is the "hosting" with services meant specifically for data-hosting needs: cleaning of devices, handling of equipment, removal on demand and shipping, proper cooling, multiple internet access, VPN access, remote video feeds, etc. This would be part of the commons cost, not too different to what you have to pay monthly on your average condo.

Oh, I see! Thanks for the info, I'm interested in seeing how this progresses as time passes on.