Bitcoin miners leave China for US

They're going to horde all of the video cards in the U.S. market. I guess I'll be stuck on my HD7750 1GB for long time.
 
it says they are going to move their farms to Texas and Tennessee. better not move them to Texas, they won't make any money when the power is out all the time. haha
Well - think about the secondary market when they dump thousands of overstressed cards after gobbling up next years new GPUs
 
I don't buy it. Not for a second.

If I were running industrial-level mining farms I'd look to a place with lower energy prices, lower costs of incorporation, less regulation, and easier-to-influence authorities.

The United States isn't looking like a crypto currency safe haven. You'd think they'd be headed to Iceland or Finland, or even Russia. Not the US.
 
I don't buy it. Not for a second.

If I were running industrial-level mining farms I'd look to a place with lower energy prices, lower costs of incorporation, less regulation, and easier-to-influence authorities.

The United States isn't looking like a crypto currency safe haven. You'd think they'd be headed to Iceland or Finland, or even Russia. Not the US.

This!
 
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Leaving a corrupt, soulless nation ruled by sociopathic military leaders to go to a corrupt, soulless nation ruled by sociopathic banksters?
RIP.
Well rules and regulations for using power are up to the state, not the nation as a whole.
 
So China determines that bitcoin is too wasteful so they shut it down and set up snitch hotlines so people can rat out the miners for cash and prizes. So they want to move to the US instead..... sure yeah that sounds awesome.
Actually I could see something similar here if suddenly the market of miners and energy consumption rose a few thousand percent.
 
So China determines that bitcoin is too wasteful so they shut it down and set up snitch hotlines so people can rat out the miners for cash and prizes. So they want to move to the US instead..... sure yeah that sounds awesome.
China hasn't actually determined Bitcoin is too wasteful, nor are they "cracking down on Bitcoin". Even if a press release from a state-run agency claims that, it's PR and there are layers behind the story. The entire article is unfortunately a random soup of unrelated sensationalized buzzword parts. The whole "coming to Texas"/U.S./wherever thing is bolted-on FUD.

The real story is simply that larger scale warehouse mining operations in certain parts of China had off-grid sweetheart deals with power stations, where they were able to source power in a way that bypassed the state-run grid. Energy tax evasion. That's literally it. The government had a big problem with grid fees being evaded, as well as the the lack of oversight and control. They don't inherently have a problem with "Bitcoin mining bad cuz the environment" but for PR it sounds way better than calling it for what it is: "we're closing loopholes and strengthening our total control and oversight of our collective power grid, same as we do with our communications infrastructures and everything else".

TL;DR smoking out "illegal bitcoin mining" in China is only about the ones engaged in energy tax evasion, and not that Bitcoin mining is China is inherently illegal.
 
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Further reading, and why not to take headlines containing the words "Bitcoin" and "China" at face value. FUD and misinformation are a business model.

Forkast's correction

CoinDesk's correction: Yunnan Province Did Not Order Crypto Miners to Shut Down​

CORRECTION (June 11, 2021, 18:15 UTC): This article originally stated that Yunnan province ordered crypto miners to be shut down. The source for this claim appears to have been a counterfeit. Read more. The original article appears below.
 
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The ransomware folks at first wanted payments in GPUs, until they realized they'd usher in the apocalypse and never get paid.
 
I don't buy it. Not for a second.

If I were running industrial-level mining farms I'd look to a place with lower energy prices, lower costs of incorporation, less regulation, and easier-to-influence authorities.

The United States isn't looking like a crypto currency safe haven. You'd think they'd be headed to Iceland or Finland, or even Russia. Not the US.
They mention that Mother Russia's corrupt police have confiscated their equipment in the past.
 
"China’s bitcoin moguls are coming to America."

we don't want you. Go waste electricity in some other Country but, no doubt there are Politicians that have already sold out. Texas and Tennessee ... should prove interesting.
 
I don't buy it. Not for a second.

If I were running industrial-level mining farms I'd look to a place with lower energy prices, lower costs of incorporation, less regulation, and easier-to-influence authorities.

The United States isn't looking like a crypto currency safe haven. You'd think they'd be headed to Iceland or Finland, or even Russia. Not the US.

and you would go to someplace not only with cheaper electrical costs but also cold enough that ambient air for cooling
unless you are in a very northern state (and parts of MN hit 100 last week) i doubt you want to be anyplace south of alaska
 


Jiang Zhuoer became a multimillionaire a few years ago by operating some of the most lucrative mines in China. His commodity? Bitcoin.

Jiang had about 300,000 computers humming around-the-clock in 20 specially ventilated warehouses across remote northern China, guzzling enough electricity to power a small city. The sophisticated machines cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The digital currency they minted was worth even more.

Today, Jiang, a fast-talking 36-year-old, is winding down in China. He and several Chinese investors — some who became billionaires off bitcoin mining — are considering shipping their equipment to Texas and Tennessee.

China’s bitcoin moguls are coming to America.

For years, Chinese miners like Jiang were enabled by the glut of cheap — and often dirty — electricity in China, where a massive fleet of coal-fired plants and hydroelectric dams fueled the country’s rise into an industrial behemoth. At their height in 2018, China’s bitcoin prospectors accounted for 74 percent of the world’s bitcoin production.

White House reviews ‘gaps’ in cryptocurrency rules as bitcoin swings wildly

But this year, Chinese authorities are cracking down on cryptocurrency to dial back energy consumption and meet their climate goals, sending miners scattering. And increasingly, miners are decamping for places like Texas, South Dakota or Canada, launching a mass migration with implications for the evolving industry and the new communities that will house it.

There also are questions about how much local energy grids can handle.

Digital currencies need a huge amount of computing power for transactions and other functions such as creating new cryptocurrency supplies. That draws a lot of energy — often measured by the gigawatt, or 1 billion watts — to keep the systems running. The more a cryptocurrency system grows, the more electricity it requires.

Jiang recently pulled tens of thousands of his machines out of Chinese regions including Inner Mongolia, which has not only banned mining but encouraged citizens to call a government office to report illicit mining.

“You know they’re getting serious,” Jiang said, “when they set up snitching hotlines.”

Jiang Zhuoer, a bitcoin miner in China, believes all large-scale mining will leave China amid a crackdown by the central government. Instead, he is considering opening bitcoin farms in Tennessee and Texas. (Courtesy of BTC.Top)
Elsewhere in China, the Xinjiang region and three major provinces — Qinghai, Yunnan and Sichuan — have also banned cryptocurrency production.

On May 21, top economic officials in Beijing pledged to “crack down on bitcoin mining and trading,” an announcement that sent the worldwide price of bitcoin plummeting.

In recent weeks, Chinese social media users have complained that some crypto topics were being censored, while Chinese police have announced the arrests of more than 1,000 people in cryptocurrency-related financial crimes.

That sudden chill, Chinese bitcoin miners and executives predict, will only deepen. The Chinese government has appeared uneasy not only about the industry’s carbon footprint but also the intrinsically uncontrollable, decentralized nature of cryptocurrency.

Yemu Xu, the co-founder of Bella Protocol, a cryptocurrency banking service provider, said Chinese miners who see the writing on the wall have been trying for years to migrate to countries such as Iran and Kazakhstan to cut costs. In the past year, interest has grown in countries that have not only cheap power but also “stable political regimes, mature regulation and better policy support.”

“As a result, mining in countries like the U.S. and Canada have been picking up,” he said.

Feds recover more than $2 million in ransomware payments from Colonial Pipeline hackers

But the arrival of industrial-scale mining in U.S. communities could raise the same thorny questions about the technology’s environmental impact that have vexed officials in China.

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences this year predicted China’s bitcoin mining industry by 2024 could consume more energy than Italy. University of Cambridge researchers estimated that bitcoin miners globally accounted for more energy use than Argentina.

Alex de Vries, a financial economist who has long criticized bitcoin’s energy consumption, predicted the migration of China’s bitcoin miners will have repercussions.

“You’re talking about energy demand potentially the size of a small Western country that needs to be relocated somewhere else,” he said. “It’s a massive problem to find a new home for all of these miners.”

Earlier this year, a dispute erupted in New York state’s Finger Lakes region between local activists and a Connecticut private equity firm that had converted an old natural gas-fueled power plant into a bitcoin mine. As a result, the New York state legislature is considering a bill that would block new bitcoin mining in carbon-producing power plants.

Other jurisdictions have taken the opposite tack. In March, coal-rich Kentucky passed a law offering tax breaks to mining operations that invest $1 million in installing new machines in the state.

Either way, the growth in the U.S. cryptocurrency mining industry is expected to continue as larger investment funds are drawn in, especially if bitcoin can return to its near-all-time-highs above $60,000, industry insiders say.

“In China, miners might not have somewhere to go anymore and they’re thinking, how can I move some of my portfolio someplace else?” said Mike Colyer, chief executive of Foundry, a Rochester, N.Y.-based company that helps miners purchase tens of thousands of computers at once and assemble them in industrial locations. “But it’s not just the Chinese. Right now, everyone is scrambling to get machines plugged in.”

Colyer said he has also helped identify and convert real estate, such as abandoned aluminum factories that have the electrical infrastructure capable of handling enormous wattages, into bitcoin farms.

As cryptocurrency goes wild, fear grows about who might get hurt

One Chinese miner, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared political repercussions in China, said he predicted 60 to 70 percent of his peers would migrate their operations to the United States or Europe.

He said he is building about 50 shipping containers to house his computers to plop onto an oil field in West Texas, and is breaking ground on a 33-megawatt site in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.

“Right now in China, everybody’s scared. The question is not whether you pull out, but immediately or gradually,” the miner said. But he added that there were regulatory uncertainties in the West, too.

“U.S. local communities don’t necessarily like bitcoin farms,” he said. “We need to be aware of that, and the environmental policy risks because the Biden administration might take a harsher stance on bitcoin.”

Other Chinese miners have fewer compunctions about seeking new frontiers.

Jiang ticked off a number of disadvantages to expanding in the United States: too many “environmentalists who worry about wildlife and the birds,” he said, and too much “White liberal idiocy” preoccupied with climate change — the science of which he has doubted. U.S. electricity was six times more expensive than in China, he estimated, and he would have to pay relatively high wages to I.T. staff to keep his computers purring.

Even so, Jiang said he was considering two sites in Texas and Tennessee. It seemed less risky than other places, including the Middle East, where he had operations shut down by authorities, or Russia, where his colleagues’ expensive computers have been seized by corrupt police.

And right now, everywhere seemed a safer bet than China, where regulators can be mercurial and unforgiving.

“A change in government policy that suddenly forces out all miners — that would never happen in America,” Jiang said. “It’s a capitalist system.”

Pei Lin Wu in Taipei contributed to this report.
 
I can’t speak towards the legitimacy of the article, but I can confirm my pricing on GPU’s has returned to an almost MSRP place. The prices I’m getting are about $100 higher than they should be, but that’s a far cry better than before.
 
They're going to horde all of the video cards in the U.S. market. I guess I'll be stuck on my HD7750 1GB for long time.

Well - think about the secondary market when they dump thousands of overstressed cards after gobbling up next years new GPUs

I can’t speak towards the legitimacy of the article, but I can confirm my pricing on GPU’s has returned to an almost MSRP place. The prices I’m getting are about $100 higher than they should be, but that’s a far cry better than before.

This has nothing to do with video cards. You don't mine bitcoin with video cards anymore and haven't done so since maybe 2013. So either the WP doesn't know what it's talking about and they really mean Ethereum instead of Bitcoin, or this is just another case of making crypto the boogeyman when people can't get GPUs.
 
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I don't buy it. Not for a second.

If I were running industrial-level mining farms I'd look to a place with lower energy prices, lower costs of incorporation, less regulation, and easier-to-influence authorities.

The United States isn't looking like a crypto currency safe haven. You'd think they'd be headed to Iceland or Finland, or even Russia. Not the US.

I don't know about the Finland part really. Not when the climate activists finds their mining farms they'll wreak havoc there. :p Currently there's an ongoing protest where they blocked down a busy street in Helsinki for 2 days now and Police is just standing by currently negiotiating with the leaders so they can move to a different safer place (since good weather and weekend and the problem what alcohol brings into the mix). xD

Also funny just a little bit further away there's an anti-protest group gathered that wants the police to remove the climate activists by force.

Oh well looking at the bright side, at least things are handled calmly here. The same group tried to protest in a similar way earlier this year and then police removed/tried to remove them by force with pepper spray and moving them and it rose some discussions about it n stuff so guess that affects the way they are handling it this time and the fact the current interior minister is from the The Green party.
 
This has nothing to do with video cards. You don't mine bitcoin with video cards anymore and haven't done so since maybe 2013. So either the WP doesn't know what it's talking about and they really mean Ethereum instead of Bitcoin, or this is just another case of making crypto the boogeyman when people can't get GPUs.
Drugs are bad, mkay?
 
But you don't mine BTC on video cards, they use ASIC mining and have for a long time. People mine other coins and convert to BTC, Ethereum is/was the defacto coin most mined and that will be changing at some point.
"Yes, it is technically possible to mine Bitcoin with a GPU. However, Bitcoin Mining has grown and is primarily mined using ASIC miners"
https://cryptominertips.com/can-you-mine-bitcoin-with-one-gpu/

if you dont have an asic....
 
This has nothing to do with video cards. You don't mine bitcoin with video cards anymore and haven't done so since maybe 2013. So either the WP doesn't know what it's talking about and they really mean Ethereum instead of Bitcoin, or this is just another case of making crypto the boogeyman when people can't get GPUs.
I'm just saying that in the past 2 weeks the news has been all about how China is cracking down on coin miners because the coins they are mining are using too much energy and blah blah blah blah. So more articles are coming out about how the official Chinese coin uses far less energy and is environmentally friendly and <insert party positive propaganda here>, but I have seen my direct pricing for 3070's, 3080's and 3090's come down by about $500 CAD, like right now a 3080 is just north of $1,100 where at the beginning of the month it was easily $1,600 for that card. Ideally, it should be closer to $1000, but there are still lots of import duties and fees bringing stuff into Canada from the US and Canada sources all our consumer electronics out of the States now since the large Chinese freighters are no longer allowed to dock up here.
 
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