Ethereum Miners Are Renting Boeing 747s to Ship Graphics Cards

Megalith

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Crypto miners have begun leasing Boeing 747s to fly GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA directly to their Ethereum mines so they can be plugged in as quickly as possible. Apparently, some of earliest, largest miners have special connections allowing them to go beyond the traditional method of shipping by sea, which is a terrible idea when time is of the essence. This report also reveals that AMD’s stock is up significantly due to cryptocurrency miners snapping up the firm’s graphics cards.

“Time is critical, very critical,” in mining, Marco Streng, chief executive of Genesis Mining, a major Ethereum miner, told Quartz. “For example, we are renting entire airplanes, Boeing 747s, to ship on time. Anything else, like shipping by sea, loses so much opportunity.” “When building our data centers, we have the highest priority on time,” Streng said. “Time counts so much. We are using the fastest delivery possible. You risk the opportunity to mine for the days you are delayed. If you are deploying 10 days later, you are losing 10 days of mining—that is the cost.”
 
I thought Ethereum was crashing, and mining it was no longer viable using standard GPU's due tot he increasing difficulty of the computation?
 
I think Ethereum definitely has a bright future, but that seems like maximum irrational exuberance right there.
 
Instead of creating normal inflation... you print USD to buy graphics cards to build a system solely to consume electricity (paid with USD, etc) to be first to calculate a specific number, to claim some bits, in hopes of converting this back to USD... Sounds like normal inflation.
 
crypo currencies just need to outlawed at this point
Not sure if this is sarcastic but i do know that most government entities don't see them as real currency. Not that its stopping anyone from mining and using it. Goes to show you that people will find alternate means to sell and trade.
 
I think Ethereum definitely has a bright future, but that seems like maximum irrational exuberance right there.

Or shitty reporting. Unless you have a shitload of graphics cards coming your way, you can go with air frieght or air courier before having to lease a whole plane.
 
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Not sure if this is sarcastic but i do know that most government entities don't see them as real currency. Not that its stopping anyone from mining and using it. Goes to show you that people will find alternate means to sell and trade.

Yeah, its called a Black Market.
 
Gotta wonder how how the difficulty spike will be with a couple of $100,000 systems popping up each month.
 
Instead of creating normal inflation... you print USD to buy graphics cards to build a system solely to consume electricity (paid with USD, etc) to be first to calculate a specific number, to claim some bits, in hopes of converting this back to USD... Sounds like normal inflation.

I don't think you have a grasp of what inflation is.

Inflation is created when the Fed prints USD and by the use of loans in fractional reserve banking. Crypto, any of them do not and can not print more USD, that is fully up to the central bank as to when and how that happens.
 
Oh well, I guess that I will keep my 970 until it blows up, since nobody will be able to buy a damn card.
 
AMD's stock is back down again, lol. It had a nice few hours of being over 15 if you wanted to sell at the high point, though.
 
Critical for those operating facilities like this
we-got-a-look-inside-a-vast-icelandic-bitcoin-mine.jpg
 
That is an icelandic rig that is a little over 10,000 units strong that has been running since early 2016.

10,000 units are making $60 a month each....

That is still a hell of a bet. I think when they first rigged it up, it was making 4x more money than the electricity it cost to run it.

On another note, you need like 150 watts of power supply per card, so how the hell do you wire a building to run 1.5 million watts at 240v?
 
On another note, you need like 150 watts of power supply per card, so how the hell do you wire a building to run 1.5 million watts at 240v?

That's 1.5Mw, which is about 1% of what the biggest datacenter in the world uses, so it should be pretty feasible and Iceland has pretty low power costs too thanks to their use of geothermal power.

Still annoyed at the price rise of GPU's tho, my old 970 is getting a bit old and I feel the need for something new.
 
The article loses credibility to me when they talk about 747s being rented and then put up a picture of a different type of plane...
 
Are 747s used to ship goods? Sounds kind of like made up bragging type stuff.

But if it's not, as my title says... I really don't get it. And no I don't need a "how crypto currency works tutorial"
 
Crypto currencies the biggest money laundering circle jerk around, this is why i hate anyone who work strictly in finance.
 
Are 747s used to ship goods? Sounds kind of like made up bragging type stuff.

But if it's not, as my title says... I really don't get it. And no I don't need a "how crypto currency works tutorial"

747 are actually being slowly phased out from Passenger business and more into cargo haulage.

The biggest airlines have started replacing the jumbos with whale jets, AKA A380, and the smaller ones have moved onto more efficient models.
 
I thought Ethereum was crashing, and mining it was no longer viable using standard GPU's due tot he increasing difficulty of the computation?

Crashing according to whom? Don't believe the clickbait headlines.
 
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The biggest airlines have started replacing the jumbos with whale jets, AKA A380, and the smaller ones have moved onto more efficient models.

Errr.....no they haven't. Emirates operates ~1/2 of the in operation A380's and they were never a direct 747 operator. On average the rest of the 12 airlines that fly A380's operate 10 of them. Lufthansa operates more 747-8i's and 747-400's than they do A380's. BA operates more 747-400's than A380's. Etc.

No, the wondertwins (particularly the 777-300ER) killed and replaced the Queen. Not the A380 by any stretch of the imagination. Also, 747's are not moving more into cargo. There are TONS of parked cargo 747's out there in the desert. Just take a look at any of the databases like Airfleets. What killed the 747 in cargo is belly freight. If you don't need the nose door on a dedicated 747 freighter then there is lots of belly capacity to go around with all of the wondertwins flying.
 
I stand corrected then.

I admit, I haven't seen many 747's flying around in the countries I have been to (been several years since I have ever landed in London and paid any attention to the plane types), and the airlines I have been flying are local (Aer Lingus, British Midlands) or Emirates... >.<
 
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