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Hacker News Comments on
Inside a Secret Chinese Bitcoin Mine

Motherboard · Youtube · 21 HN points · 4 HN comments
HN Theater has aggregated all Hacker News stories and comments that mention Motherboard's video "Inside a Secret Chinese Bitcoin Mine".
Youtube Summary
In 2014, before Ethereum and altcoin mania, before ICOs and concerns about Tether and Facebook's Libra, Motherboard gained access to a massive and secretive Bitcoin mine housed within a repurposed factory in the Liaoning Province in rural northeast China.

This is the infrastructure that keeps the digital currency’s decentralized network up and running, and its operators were profiting big time.

The mine we visited was just one of six sites owned by a secretive group of four people, part of a colossal mining operation that, as of our visit, cumulatively generated 4,050 bitcoins a month, equivalent to a monthly gross of $1.5 million as of 2015. Since then, the cryptocurrency mining world has become even more extreme.

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Hacker News Stories and Comments

All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this video.
Dec 21, 2017 · 3 points, 2 comments · submitted by ogdoad
ogdoad
Setups like this completely invalidate any individual effort.
mkempe
Why completely? is there room for marginal profits at the individual level?
Vice produced a video called "Life Inside a Chinese Bitcoin Mine" which complements these photos with a bit of an eerie audio/visual experience.

The noise of these machines is incredibly loud and annoying even in the edited video and the people running these things essentially live in squalor.

https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/life-inside-a-chinese-bit...

Non-Flash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8kua5B5K3I

No, they're not outside of China. Locating a Bitcoin farm in China allows paying for power, equipment, and staff in yuan, while generating revenue in dollars or euros, legally.

Northeast China mine: [1] Another China mine: [2] Mine in Kangding: [3] BW Pool and Antpool, in Inner Mongolia: [4] OxBTC farm (possibly in Ordos): [5]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8kua5B5K3I [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3-7X80DXzY [3] http://www.afr.com/technology/lisa-kangding-story-20160706-g... [4] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=969823.0 [5] https://www.facebook.com/oxbitcoin/videos/921660704629104/

Taek
The mining is in China but the nodes are outside of China. Then they have multiple means of talking to the nodes from the mining farms.
None
None
andirk
I think I get it. So 1) the computing power happens on hardware in China, but then 2) the message can, if need be, relay the message of, say, a new mined block to non-internet points that are able to escape The Great Firewall, then 3) outside of China it connects those messages to the internet. Is that right?
Won't guys like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8kua5B5K3I get affected? If all they can do is mine but not cash out, what happens to the network transaction speed and the overall difficulty?
h1d
How is cashing out got anything to do with processing speed?
Jun 23, 2016 · 1 points, 0 comments · submitted by wslh
Feb 14, 2015 · 4 points, 0 comments · submitted by arunabh
Feb 07, 2015 · 3 points, 0 comments · submitted by whyleyc
Feb 07, 2015 · 1 points, 0 comments · submitted by cjbar
Feb 07, 2015 · 3 points, 1 comments · submitted by nodesocket
nodesocket
Honestly this upsets me. They are wasting power without any regard to energy, the entire place is a massive electrical fire just waiting to happen, and the workers are like slaves. Did you see the "resting" bed, it was filthy. Not to mention, all the wasted computer parts and power supplies they just throw away. It is any wonder why China's air quality is so poor. This is a zero sum game for them, but the quality of life in China is so poor it is sustainable.
Feb 06, 2015 · 6 points, 0 comments · submitted by shocks
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