[BREAKING NEWS]: Putin getting ready to kick Bitmain's ass

[odolvlobo]

Wow, just wow.  This could be huge.  

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

[TK14]

so it's time to buy and hold some WAVES  

[AleSergio]

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

[HeRetiK]

Wow, just wow.  This could be huge.  

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

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.

[pontoumporcento]

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

[dragonusa9]

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

[BitWhale]

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.  

[gentlemand]

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.  

Bitrubles anyone?

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?

[squatter]

The company initially plans to locate mining computers ... in individual Russian households ...

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

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.

[Iranus]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[BitWhale]

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.  

Bitrubles anyone?

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?

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"...  

[gentlemand]

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

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.

[BitWhale]

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

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.

[cryptocointrading]

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.   

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

[lennyk]

What exactly is the main issue though ?

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

[exstasie]

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.

[krishnapramod]

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

   Today’s bitcoin mining requires special computers based on chips with minimized power consumption. China’s Bitmain Technologies Ltd. is one of the leading producers of such equipment and also runs Antpool, a processing pool that combines individual miners from China and other countries. Rival Bitfury Group, founded by Valery Vavilov, a Russian-speaking native of Latvia, produces equipment for mining virtual currencies and runs large-scale centers in Georgia and Iceland.

    Russia has 20 gigawatts of excess power capacity, with consumer electricity prices as low as 80 kopeks (1.3 cents) per kilowatt hour, which is less than in China, RMC said in the presentation. The company initially plans to locate mining computers based on Bitfury chips in individual Russian households to challenge Bitmain by using Russia’s lower power prices.

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.

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

[ivrynx]

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.

[GreenBits]

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.

[exstasie]

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

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.