Texas Bitcoin Mining Startup With $200 Million To Steal China’s Crypto Crown

[error08]

It will take time to build such massive mining plantation, I'm wondering when it will be fully operating, although layer1 startup set up in late 2018. Their plans seem promising with its own power sub-station to utilize solar and wind energy, ASIC chips, and liquid-cooled mining containers.

[audaciousbeing]

While this is laudable because its coming at a time where the decentralization is needed but with the purpose of dethroning China for me, is a not ideal business model to go with. The market is a large and fertile one where whether you are in China or Yugoslavia even in Africa, the moment you can afford it, then you are to enter the market. No one is stopping you from doing your thing so far its done within the dictates of running a decent business.

What this Company is doing for me would be better situated in an African country because the US that its looking at is a developed economy where the building of a power substation would have little or no impact on its immediate environment but in Africa, even the impact of the substation alone would be felt miles away. But again, displacing China and concentrating the mining gadgets in one location might even expose the entire infrastructure to influences beyond the controls of the business promoters which might even force them out of business.

[Hydrogen]

It's a huge environmental issue, fossil fuels are slowly killing our planet and a lot of the problem comes down to companies using only fossil fuels to power their companies.

Fossil fuels aren't the main cause of climate change. Trees function as natural carbon sinks. An acre of rainforest will absorb and sequester (store) many metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions during its lifetime. Between 50% and 80% of the world's natural rainforests have been cut down and replaced by homes, malls, factories and otherwise urban development that does nothing to absorb or store the emissions of the rainforests they replace.

A good analogy for climate change would be a spaceship with plant life acting as CO2 scrubbers and O2 generators. If half of the plants died due to illness, the ship would lose 50% of its capacity to scrub CO2 from the air. That is the precedent we're currently witnessing in climate change.

Planting more trees to absorb greenhouse gases via afforestation and making a better effort to address issues relating to desertification are the policies to pursue if addressing climate change is our goal. Raising carbon taxes to reduce emissions is a lost cause. Emissions were never the issue to begin with.

It's going to be pretty hard for mining operations to power themselves of solely renewable energy sources, but it's good to see them at least try to do something about it - better then nothing I guess.

It should be mentioned: there are no new power plants being constructed to power bitcoin mining ops(with the exception of Peter Thiel's mining venture in texas anyways).

Miners don't really add emissions to the planet's carbon footprint. There are no new power plants being built to support them.

They tap existing infrastructure housing surplus sources of electricity. The most affordable of which is normally hydroelectric or renewable. This is one reason many mining ops are located in remote and sparsely populated areas where existing surpluses of energy not currently utilized can be found. Not that miners are particularly green or environmentally conscious. Its simply the most natural, expedient and cost effective solution.

Bitcoin miners spend incredible amounts of capital on electricity. This outflow often goes to green power companies & contributes towards funding an expansion of renewable sources of power. Mining is one of the largest sectors throwing massive amounts of money at furthering investment in environmenally friendly power.

[alyssa85]

I was hoping to see something in that article talking about them using solely sustainable energy. I see that they're using wind and solar power, would have been nice to see a commitment to them using a % percentage minimum of renewables. I think it's a pretty big problem how much fossil fuels a lot of these large mining operations use up, if we want to stop Bitcoin from having insane negative externalizes we really need to get on top of that (and to be fair, even in China where regulation is quite poor, a good proportion of energy used by mining ops there is renewable).

Good to see that the hashing power of the network will be coming less centralized in China, though.

I think Texas has the highest amount of solar panels in the USA, so basing the mining operation in Texas is a big start to sustainable bitcoin mining.

[fiulpro]

[url]https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3005334/china-home-worlds-biggest-cryptocurrency-mining-farms-now-wants-ban[url/]

This post is from 2017

[url]https://www.coindesk.com/chinese-region-to-shut-down-illegal-bitcoin-miners-by-september[url/]

This post I from 2018

http:// [url]https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/09/china-considers-ban-crypto-mining/[url/]

This post is from 2019 ..

Just wanted to make a point here .
The Chinese government itself is trying to ban Mining but the people won't listen you could say and they could do nothing about it .

Texas is amazing since with so much resistance from the government since 3 years people might actually try something and migrate to Texas.

[stompix]

I think Texas has the highest amount of solar panels in the USA, so basing the mining operation in Texas is a big start to sustainable bitcoin mining.

Not even close:
https://www.seia.org/states-map

Texas

National Ranking: 6th
Solar Installed (MW): 3,028.61
Percentage of State's Electricity from Solar: 0.99%.

Comparing to the nr1

California
Solar Installed (MW): 25,772.78
Percentage of State's Electricity from Solar: 18.74%

And no, Texas is the biggest state by electricity production and it comes from good old oil and gas
https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=TX#tabs-4

[clickerz]

It will take time to build such massive mining plantation, I'm wondering when it will be fully operating, although layer1 startup set up in late 2018. Their plans seem promising with its own power sub-station to utilize solar and wind energy, ASIC chips, and liquid-cooled mining containers.

Of course, such a massive project  and really needs a huge power to run the operation. $200 million dollar investment is magnanimous and glad to see  there is someone that can rival China. Its good that btc miner is scattered much better around the globe,so that when is damaged being ravaged by disaster we have still a backup from other country.

[NathanJB]

It will take time to build such massive mining plantation, I'm wondering when it will be fully operating, although layer1 startup set up in late 2018. Their plans seem promising with its own power sub-station to utilize solar and wind energy, ASIC chips, and liquid-cooled mining containers.

Of course, such a massive project  and really needs a huge power to run the operation. $200 million dollar investment is magnanimous and glad to see  there is someone that can rival China. Its good that btc miner is scattered much better around the globe,so that when is damaged being ravaged by disaster we have still a backup from other country.

I am not thinking so much of disasters. It is expected that a multi-million project will consider those possibilities even in their plans. And it is not really bothersome. What bothers me is that if the largest mining farm is operating in china it is always subject to the unpredictable and whimsical government they have there. There is the possibility that they will be ordered to shut down abruptly. This will badly affect the operation of the network. And it is simply due to what the chinese totalitarian government feels like doing.

[sana54210]

I still can't believe it is "200 million dollars". I mean can anyone of us really understand how big that is? Sure, there are billionaires in the world but they are not lining up to make a bitcoin farm. A bitcoin farm at 200 million dollars will be crazy.

I wanted to make some calculations but I couldn't find how much the land and the building and all other stuff would cost. So, just to give 100 million dollars to the mining equipment (which I doubt will be like, anything other than mining equipment couldn't possibly cost 100 million but just in case) that would mean they could buy literally 47 THOUSAND antminer S17 pro which gives about 50 th per rig which means they would have 2,349,624 TH which if I am not wrong means 2.35 EXA hash, yes you heard it right, it is bigger than TH combined, not only that it is bigger than peta hash which is the one higher form, so its TWO higher forms. It is 2.35 EXA hash. That would be like 3% of all hash rates all by itself. That's huge.

[stompix]

that would mean they could buy literally 47 THOUSAND antminer S17 pro which gives about 50 th per rig which means they would have 2,349,624 TH

How can you multiply 47 000 and 50 and end up with 2,349,624 ?
Really curious wow you did this!  

That would be like 3% of all hash rates all by itself. That's huge.

Nope, it's not, it's just 3%. And 3% is negligible, the proof being that even you rounded up the number by that much.
Sidenote, if we would make the math for the T17 we would get 4exahash and if they would be buying s9 they would get 5.3.
The last difficulty adjustment showed around ~ 4.8 exa deployed in just two weeks, so...

They might be big, they might have the largest farm but at the way things are developing right now, I doubt that by the time they will finish they will have more than 2% of the global hash rate.
Don't forget that they plan on building their own chips and let's see how long the queue is down over at TSMC.

[Vishnu.Reang]

They were probably hoping that the Chinese government is going to close down the mining farms located in that country. But that looks doubtful now, especially after the recent comments on Blockchain technology by Xi Jinping. It will be very hard for a mining farm located in the United States to compete directly against a similar setup located in China.

[logicgate]

They were probably hoping that the Chinese government is going to close down the mining farms located in that country. But that looks doubtful now, especially after the recent comments on Blockchain technology by Xi Jinping. It will be very hard for a mining farm located in the United States to compete directly against a similar setup located in China.

   China has great economy and I don’t think so there is any other country that is as much widely spread on international market as China. Though this is authentic news that China wants to launch its own crypto currency but it would be really hard for them to stop their people from using bitcoin. They cannot regulate bitcoin so people have many ways of using bitcoin without governmental permission.

[1Referee]

It will be very hard for a mining farm located in the United States to compete directly against a similar setup located in China.

Hard but not impossible. In fact, it makes a lot of sense to locate your mining farm very close to for example an aluminum smelting facility, which generally tends to purchase a lot of power in bulk where quite a significant percentage of that goes to waste because it's not being used. How about allowing miners to benefit from that at a super low rate?

It doesn't only help the facility make money while they aren't running their regular smelting process, but also helps the miners because they get to reap the fruits of a very low power rate.

[stompix]

It will be very hard for a mining farm located in the United States to compete directly against a similar setup located in China.

Why?
It's always the same damn thing, China, China, China, and no arguments
How are other miners managing to stay alive outside China, how are people in this forum keep on mining outside China?

Stop looking at average electricity prices, nothing can be more wrong than judging the whole US from this point.
You can't compare NYC residential rates to business rates in Texas! You can't compare them even to the same state.

One example:
In NYC residential electricity costs are 20c/kwh.
In Plattsburgh (Clinton County, New York) you get 2.7 cents per kilowatt!!!!!!!

Why do you think people are starting a business there, just to spite China?
No, when you have to pour millions in something you do a little research first, you think of it longterm!
Is the electricity price in US goona skyrocket? Nothing like that insight, the consumption is already through the rooftop, it makes zero sense for it to double. Will it do it in China? Yeah, definitely, the average Chinese electric energy consumption is 3 times lower than the US.
It will definitely grow and there is no way in hell they will manage to triple the production in that short time.
It's one thing to go from 3TW to 10TW and a totally different beast to go from 10 to 33.

~ I don’t think  ~

Obviously you don't!