EU Mining Farm under costruction

[lordlucas77]

After couple of years of "self mining" I decided with an investor to open a mining facility in Bulgaria, 2 months ago we found the ideal location:

- 4.5Mwh available
- New building in a safe area
- A hydroelectric power plant nearby (we are negotiating a direct supply, even if in BG the electricity is the cheapes in EU)

As you can imagine we started this new adventure and I d like to share with you the future progress.

Right now we are securing the building (cameras, 24H armed gards, automatic double front doors, steel bars behing fans and air filters)

Tomorrow are going to be installed the fans and the air filters (at max capacity we ll filter more than 200.000mq3 of air per hours    )

In January an Italian firm will start the electrical system with high quality and fire resistant cables (most of the mining farms I saw had the cheapest cables ever, but in our opinion there is no logic to connect milions of € of miners to few thousands € of cables)

We expect to start operation in late February. In the meanwhile I ll share pics, videos and adopted technical solutions and of course I d love to hear your feedbacks!

Stay Tuned 
Luca

[lordlucas77]

Right, even if costs in our "business" is not all (security, air filters, company reliability...)
Anyway we plan a go to the market from 0,12€/Kwh for "little" miners to 0,09€/Kwh for "professional miners". VAT/Assistance/Installation/Everything else included.
What do you think?

[Biffa]

I calculate that if you charge over 0.06$/Kwh or 0.052€/Kwh no-one will mine with you as it will not be profitable, and if you are paying more than that to start with or plan on paying more than that for your own miners you will not make any money.

[RadekG2]

My friend's 0.25MW farm is about 0.09E/kWh and 95% customers decided to switch off and leave. My other friend's own farm with 0.07E/kWh is already switched off.

I wish you good luck, you will really need it, but I belive that 2019 will be S9 and similar profitable again with your energy prices and 2020 you will be overfilled thanks to another bull run.

[studio_mining]

If the data center, all of the equipment, mining rigs, operations, and staff were free; a s9 needs power to be 0.083c USD (0.073EUR)/kWh or lower to break even or be profitable.

Very much support more people entering mining, but you need to re-evaluate your business plan ASAP.

If you have any questions, please contact me and I would be happy to provide more details.

[mikeywith]

Right, even if costs in our "business" is not all (security, air filters, company reliability...)
Anyway we plan a go to the market from 0,12€/Kwh for "little" miners to 0,09€/Kwh for "professional miners". VAT/Assistance/Installation/Everything else included.
What do you think?

there is probably not a single miner that is profitable with these power rates, you might argue that this is only a temporary situation due to the bear market, bet rest assure the mining game has changed FOREVER, china has an average rate of 3-5 cents, the US has a rate of 5-7 cents , many other countries like Goergia and some Arab countries have cheaper rates than china, the mining industry will always be "fully-occupied" by those players, if crypto prices go on a rally that allows such high rates like yours to be profitable, it will be only a matter of "short-period" before those players load up on their hash power to beat you out of business again.

the best mining investement would be to find a cheap power source somewhere in a trusted place and host your machines there, also giving the labor cost + wiring + maintenance cost in EU zone makes it even harder for you to mine there.

not trying to let you down, just preparing you for a big fail, and hopping you will re-think your investment, because really, this mining business has became something like oil,medicine or weapon business,  where only the strong can do it with profit.

[lordlucas77]

Here I am, all of you guys are partially right, but we have to consider some facts:

1) Bulgaria has the cheapest rates in Europe (to be 100% honest there are some lost places in Sweden or Norway that have cheaper power rates, but the nearest one is 350Km from an airport (I ve been there) and let me say that doesn t worth the saving).

2) Bulgaria is part of EU, so for all the miners in our territory there are no custom fees nor VAT. We ve been in Georgia and Siberia too before choose Bulgaria, and talking about Georgia (if a inhabitant is reading I seriously loved your hidden country) the power cost is 0,07€ or 0,06€ if you deal for more than 1Mwh (cost for us, then you have to add the hosting services, the import expenses/VAT/Taxes) so again it doesn t make sense. Siberia is totally an other speech, dealing with the local power company we could pay it 0,035€Kwh, but guys lets be realistic: who of you is going to ship or bring your miners to Siberia, where if the local mafia wakes up a day and decides that the mining farm is going to be a new piece of their own business you cannot say or do absolutely nothing? Furthermore we talked with some guys who own a mining facility either near Moscow or in Siberia, both answered when I asked them how could we potentially move our miners there that there are "ways" to not pay the import taxes and other "ways" to "oil the gears" of the local police. For sure I did not rely on their "ways" how can I pretend our customers would rely on them?

3) We are experimenting a lot of alternatives to usual Bitmain/Innosilicon/etc AISC or GPUs and we are investing in different collaborations with new FPGA manufacturers (one is even in Bulgaria   ). There are ways to mine in a profitable way even in today s market situation. Obviously we believe in cripto future and much more in side chains (where anyway the Kwh price is still a problem).

And now, some preview pics (real preview, the website is under costruction as the farm). Here there is the electric company replacing the electric poles for us   :

https://imgur.com/a/pwsTOzS
https://imgur.com/a/ykIHie6 (sorry for the unprofessional editing)

Here is the inside:

https://imgur.com/a/zQboxCt

And some shelfs:

https://imgur.com/a/34tEaB9

On 22 the hvac Engineers will come to install the ventilation, so I ll post more pics after that.

Cheers!
Luca

[Biffa]

Look first off, I wish you all the best in your endeavour, don't get me wrong I hope it works out for you. But you can't make money mining with the costs you posted. Also there are some flaws in your "facts" as you call them.

1) Doesn't matter if its the cheapest in Europe, I find it hard to believe anyone is mining in Europe anyway, either at home or at scale, its just been too expensive to mine here for over a year. The only time it was worth mining in Europe was when BTC went to the moon over 12 months ago. Now its a bloodbath. Anything over 6c/Kwh and its just not worth it.

2) VAT, this just isn't the case, your customers will have to pay VAT and duty to import miners to Bulgaria if buying from the supplier because the supplier is outside the EU (China for all the major suppliers). Yes if your customer has loads of equipment already that they plan to move to you then there will be no VAT or duty, but there will be crazy shipping and handling costs. Plus your company will be VAT registered so will have to charge VAT to anyone who is not VAT registered. Which will be a lot of the "smaller" or "home" miners. So the only time there will be no VAT on your services is if you are supplying to a large VAT registered entity.

3) No FPGA will mine bitcoin profitably, period, even including this idea makes you sound like either a scam or someone who doesn't know what they are talking about.

Hopefully the HVAC engineers are NOT installing AC, just ventilation.

I hope you take this in the spirit it is intended, constructive criticism, and I hope you have some decent network engineers working for you as one of the things that is a must for a hosting setup is a VPN infrastructure that lets your customers manage their miners directly.

[Lantic_Mining]

Agree with Biffa - just because you may have found the best place in Europe to locate a farm sadly doesn't mean that it will be competitive with the rest of the world. Equally for your point about the Nordic locations which are 350km from the nearest airport - for home miners that are looking to host their rigs with you that doesn't matter, if it has cheaper electricity then the remoteness is your problem and not theirs.

Mining is a perfect example of looking after the pennies and we are at a point where pennies can make the difference between continuing to mine and switching rigs off.

As with the other replies I wish you luck and hope this works out for you but I think you are underestimating/ignoring the basic financials.

[jbillk]

Seems very risky to be putting money into setup and infrastructure right now. Most established farms/setups now have everything paid for. All they pay for is electricity.

All the labor, start up costs, time, overhead, security/distribution/cooling equipment need to be factored in as well.

Rising difficulty, and reward halving less than a year away needs to be considered. There will be a crunch, and whoever has the lowest cost will win. I know operations that use waste gas, and pay nothing for electricity.

Its definitely an uphill battle, but i wish you luck.

[PassThePopcorn]

Right, even if costs in our "business" is not all (security, air filters, company reliability...)
Anyway we plan a go to the market from 0,12€/Kwh for "little" miners to 0,09€/Kwh for "professional miners". VAT/Assistance/Installation/Everything else included.
What do you think?

Prices in USD**

Most large firms that get their miners hosted won't get out of bed for over 5c/kwh, the ones that do pay more than that tend to not do so well down the line. Of course if BTC goes to the moon suddenly then they profited but if a similar occurrence to last year happens again they won't be around long. This isn't just for power but all inclusive.

For the smaller miners, some will pay those high fees, but good luck filling 4.5MW with small miners as that's a lot of customers + you'll also need customer support for that many people, if  you only had 20 smaller customers you might get a few emails a day asking questions or requesting something be done good luck with a few hundred.

As far as self mining goes if you get under the large firm price for yourself then you should be smooth sailing and any hosted customer is just extra but that is based on about 50% self mining.

[RsvTu]

Yes I think for big players its more like 5c/kwh at least USA,China,Canada. I think Europeans are used to pay bit more tho, at least in North Europe where political and climate are good for cryptos but things cost a lot. At least for me, i would rather send my miners to EU area than USA (im north Europe based).

Would be nice to get update of the project, cheers!

[Paycheck]

Lordlucas, I've been in cryptocurrencies for 6+ years, and I've seen a lot of mining technology evolve, prices swing up and down, and so forth.  I've done tons of research and have seen miners get all excited, invest huge sums, and then give up, when if they had HODL'ed, they would have been ok.  The most famous of which was JRose120 from Florida, in early 2014 on the Litecoin forums.  He got excited, did not think it out properly, took $50K of a relatives' money, and blew it, eventually dumping his GPUs on ebay for cheap.

Long story short, you are a complete and total FOOL to invest a penny in building a farm.  It doesn't matter how cheap your power is.

You will make a lot more profit with a lot less anxiety and work if you watch the coin market prices, buy the dips, and HODL.

Then when the market manipulators decide it's time for the next big bitcoin price boom, you can ride it to big PROFITS.

But mining is not the way to do it.  Difficulty has risen from 7 trillion to 12.7 trillion in only the past few months because people are throwing lots of money at buying miners and are not thinking rationally.

And all that aside, if you do buy miners, do you really think you're getting the new hottest versions?  You aren't.  The Chinese manufacturers keep those quiet while they mine with them, and when their next generation is ready, they sell the old gen as the NEW miners.  So they make money coming and going!

I've been around for a long time, I'd be scamming and scheming if I had more resources, so they don't fool me.  I see their game.

EDIT - I just noticed that Lordlucas hasn't posted since February, so his plan and himself obviously came to nothing.  But this post I just made here has great info for anyone else thinking of making a mining farm.  Don't bother.

[UKfarmer]

LordLucas - Any update on this how are things going? Do you think there is much market at the moment in the EU for bitcoin mining compared to cheap prices in China, Canada etc.?

[AlecMe]

hi, nearly 1 year has passed.

do you have a website and some prices in mind?

any minimum requirements to use your facilities?