Mining in South American and Central Asian countries

[malevolent]

For example id shy away from ANY and ALL soviet bloc countries such as Uzbekistan based on the current political climate and the issues we have in the US with Russia right now. I would also stay away from South America as a general rule because of the massive amounts of corruption, struggle, and strife South America seems to constantly have. The US border crisis is in no small part due to the mass exodus of people in South America trying to come up this way through Mexico.

Ex-Eastern bloc countries which joined the EU are safe to do business in. You should still hire law firm if you don't know the local language though. Russia and those countries which are Russia-aligned aren't the safest places to outsiders (and to locals often, too) when it comes to doing business. Ukraine is no longer Russia-aligned but the business climate is still a little rough around the edges.

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[taserz]

doing business is a foreign country is hard...

Yeah I have been working on getting something setup in country very far away since we know people in the government to help us secure what we are looking for. The downside is we don't live out there.

[investorpgroovy]

Chiquita built on the infrastructure developed by United Fruit Company, famous for turning latin american countries into massive "Company Towns", which is why central American and Caribbean countries are refered to as "Banana Republics"

As someone who professionally manages international businesses with locations the 3rd world locations such as rural China, Philippines,Russia, Ukraine , Costa Rica Panama and Brazil , I can tell you that the environment for businesses in most of Latin America is in fact considered toxic, even by Chinese or Russian based international firms...

The lengths you must go to to insure success here insure that only locals , with direct connections and a superlative knowledge of the local workforce, ever have a chance of even getting started.. And even then the success rate is in the low single digit percentage rate.

Imagine managing  a workforce that has a legal right to receive up to 1 years salary if they are fired for any reason after working their first day. no probationary period.. no exceptions to the rule.. unless your willing to bribe a local official to look the other way.


Edit: This is not to say that you cant run a bitcoin mine down here.. Its just a lot more difficult than other places, such as East Asia.

[Artemis3]

Chiquita built on the infrastructure developed by United Fruit Company, famous for turning latin american countries into massive "Company Towns", which is why central American and Caribbean countries are refered to as "Banana Republics"

As someone who professionally manages international businesses with locations the 3rd world locations such as rural China, Philippines,Russia, Ukraine , Costa Rica Panama and Brazil , I can tell you that the environment for businesses in most of Latin America is in fact considered toxic, even by Chinese or Russian based international firms...

The lengths you must go to to insure success here insure that only locals , with direct connections and a superlative knowledge of the local workforce, ever have a chance of even getting started.. And even then the success rate is in the low single digit percentage rate.

Imagine managing  a workforce that has a legal right to receive up to 1 years salary if they are fired for any reason after working their first day. no probationary period.. no exceptions to the rule.. unless your willing to bribe a local official to look the other way.


Edit: This is not to say that you cant run a bitcoin mine down here.. Its just a lot more difficult than other places, such as East Asia.

Socialist Venezuela has 3 month probation. Its technically impossible to fire people after that though.
Some companies go "bankrupt" every year, and a new one with the same owners open in place the next year.
Pesky employees can be made to resign with a "happy meal" bonus, which usually involves the same bonus as it if he/she was fired (back when getting fired without justification was still an option), ie: "double" pay.

But the wages are like 5 USD a month... One year you say? 60 USD :3

You are correct that connections is everything. We have hyper-inflation and hyper-corruption, know they right person connected to the "gov", and you are golden.

A good mine has very small plaintiff anyway, and remote surveillance lots of remote control, automation etc.

But i admit there are far bigger problems for concern, its not worth the risk coming to a country with "free"* electricity when it goes down every other day or so, and internet communications are worse.

* Yeah i know its not really free, but its price is so ridiculous i won't bother calculating it, just like the gasoline.

I believe it was Honduras the one originally labeled banana republic.

[mrmoee]

I have experience with this and completely agree with several of the aforementioned points. Specifically:

-Cryptocurrency is a relatively new thing in this part of the world, which can really be a pain in an already highly bureaucratic business environment. Moreover, depending on the country, you can receive unsolicited requests from the usual suspects if they find out you produce "X" amount at a facility. The funny thing is that for some reason people tend to assume that facilities are way more profitable than they really are. This can lead to unreasonable requests that can literally kill the business.

-Infrastructure can be a hassle. Where I operate, the power company expects you to cover everything. This includes heavier gauge cables all the way to the nearest substation if necessary. 5,000 feet of transmission cable won't bankrupt the operation but 50,000 just might. I've seen fellow miners install everything just to find out that they can't pull that draw. This poses a business risk that's hard to determine until you power up in stages and measure things. In addition, you may be faced (as I have) with rare input voltages from your primary lines. This can seriously increase your infrastructure costs as you're forced to source items that are typically sold outside the country. That means import taxes, the risk of having your equipment held for weeks at a time in customs and, finally, getting faulty equipment as you can't test it prior to clearing all the previous hurdles. There are some reputable third-party firms that provide test results but more than a few times these are faked.

-You have to seriously invest in your power delivery infrastructure as power tends to be finicky not to mention that you have to budget for downtime whenever it goes out. I mean, there isn't a generator in the world that would be profitable at powering miners on a large scale so when the lights go out... just pray they come back ASAP.

-Security.... I can't stress this one enough. Anything that remotely resembles a warehouse or data center is a magnet for criminals. Moreover, you have to be careful as to how you assemble your build crew given that they'll either know what you're doing or eventually come across a crypto article with a picture of, you guessed it, very very similar equipment and setups. Add to that all the sensational headlines of BTC going to $200k and you can imagine how someone might develop a nefarious idea.

-Cooling. Working in a hot climate year round poses a host of unique problems. We've been successful by carefully selecting large building with good cross ventilation and adequate intakes/outtakes. If you keep feeding the equipment fresh air it will tend to operate fine. I envy guys up north that can simply open the windows and have the miners running much faster/cooler but, hey, what can I do about it.

-Last but not least, dealing with the local "IRS". Where I'm at, these guys usually don't know how to deal with crypto (because they simply never contemplated it in their fiscal framework), which results in a lot of trips to their offices. I would highly recommend a good tax counsel if operating in these countries as it can seriously make a huge impact with regards to net profits. Expect audits eventually, retain good counsel, and keep all records and you should he fine. However, at least where I'm building out, there is always the chance that a regulator or politician will suddenly flip on you and derail everything. In other words, do everything by the book and retain good counsel as, unlike in other situations, they'll prove their worth.

That's all I can think off the top of my head. I guess issues with bringing the units in are kinda on the list but yeah, it can be a bigger pain if the country has yet to determine the applicable import rate.

PS. Almost forgot, you can kiss your equipments' warranty goodbye. Even if you run into a faulty unit, unless the manufacturer covers all of the shipping expenses, it'll likely be cheaper to just take whatever hashboards/control units are still OK and just use them for future repairs.

[Artemis3]

PS. Almost forgot, you can kiss your equipments' warranty goodbye. Even if you run into a faulty unit, unless the manufacturer covers all of the shipping expenses, it'll likely be cheaper to just take whatever hashboards/control units are still OK and just use them for future repairs.

No with Bitmain, you can just send the things back to USA, either warranty or repairs. This is a problem with some other manufacturers, as sending to China isn't cheap.

[buwaytress]

Adding to the previous comments about Armenia and Georgia, I've just returned from a short visit to Kazakhstan and wasn't surprised at all to learn that there also, at least according to my contacts, people were definitely starting up crypto mining -- wasn't clear if it was for Bitcoin.

Now unlike the two I talked about, there is not yet a big network of hydropower, but plenty of land and existing infrastructure especially in the east, and ongoing work to see out a whole new shebang of hydro generators.

Even in the most expensive rate in the capital -- without discounts and subsidies for new economies (government trying to diversify from oil and gas, a LOT of incentives now for enterprise) -- 1 kWh = $0.03.