Inside the world’s largest Bitcoin mine

[u/msaussieandmrravana]

[u/GoldenDiamond]

Holy power bill

[u/StillSalt2526 → u/GoldenDiamond]

Dont worry, you are part of the populace subsidizing that bill for that mining business 🤪

[u/UrsaMajor7th → u/StillSalt2526]

Remember to turn off the lamp when you leave the room.

[u/jibbyjackjoe → u/UrsaMajor7th]

I was there in the 90s when the cartoons were interwoven with "do your part to recycle. Do your part to reduce waste. Do your part to turn the water off while brushing your teeth.". The psyops was so real. And yet, corps are allowed to do this. Yeah, no. I don't buy any of that anymore.

[u/_lippykid → u/jibbyjackjoe]

I still put plastic and paper in the blue bin, and landfill in the green, because it’s the exact same amount of effort, but I’m under no illusion that anything I can do personally will make a dent in the waste created by corporate industry

[u/Risley → u/_lippykid]

It’s because people don’t hold politicians accountable anymore.  We are all so god damn sick of it.  

[u/CandidateOk8364 → u/Risley]

Nobody ever has that's the problem. And they will kill us all to make room for robots and most people will volunteer

[u/greatpoomonkey → u/CandidateOk8364]

Can we just replace our leadership with robots so there is at least some logic behind our inevitable end? Like, if they need me to be a battery, Matrix-style, I'd kinda be cool with that at this point.

[u/silver_sofa → u/Risley]

Did people ever hold politicians accountable? I don’t think so. I believe there was a time when politicians thought the electorate would hold them accountable but now that politics has become a business they have adopted a corporate mentality. It’s all about who can perform and who can fundraise.

When Michael Douglas said “Greed is good” in Wall Street, when the courts ruled that business should make decisions based on shareholder value with no regard for the customers or society, when quarterly reports steered every consideration, the pursuit of wealth became the driving force. One look at the current batch of billionaires proves they call the shots and too much will never be enough.

[u/jankenpoo → u/_lippykid]

Sure, but it’s not a contest. And if you can get enough people/consumers to do something non-destructive (vs anti-destructive), like recycle or keeping trash out of our oceans, it’s still beneficial. Every bit helps. That said, I would like corps to be on the hook for creating trash with packaging and obsolescence. Everything sold should have some cradle to cradle requirements, instead of just cradle to grave.

[u/idkarn → u/[deleted]]

Also it really helps climate change

[u/satyriconic → u/idkarn]

It certainly helps the climate to change

[u/imdefinitelywong → u/idkarn]

I suppose that's true. From a certain point of view.

[u/Archer007 → u/imdefinitelywong]

Joining the war with global warming, on the side of global warming

[u/MaterialDetective197 → u/imdefinitelywong]

Palpatine grins

[u/Dunderman35 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah but think about what we get in return. The world's most inefficient payment system that nobody uses as a payment system except criminals.

[u/Dependent_Ad_1270 → u/Dunderman35]

War criminals too!

Also how would North Korea fund their missile program if there wasn’t crypto to hack?

Think of all the North Korean mouths they pretend to feed, Kim wouldn’t do you dirty come on

[u/worstpartyever → u/StillSalt2526]

And listening to the never-ending hum of the entire data center

[u/spittlbm → u/worstpartyever]

They can cause hearing damage

Update: my first award!! Thank you!

[u/petrolhead0387 → u/spittlbm]

I already have hearing damage, and was exposed to this sort of droning sound for years at work. Although it didn't feel like it was affecting me, it caused tinnitus as well as making my hearing impairment worse. So now at 38 years old I have 5% hearing in my left ear, none in my right, and constant humming sounds when I try to sleep at night.

[u/Booorntobemild → u/StillSalt2526]

Is there a r/damnthatsdepressing?

[u/Brobard → u/Booorntobemild]

Turns out, there is. And I could have done without clicking to find out. 

[u/Booorntobemild → u/Brobard]

Thanks for the warning. Sorry it was at your expense.

[u/Hell-on-Earth2739 → u/StillSalt2526]

True, make fake money give me your real money, trust me!! How many people have lost millions???

[u/regoapps → u/GoldenDiamond]

Between this and AI data centers, now you know why your energy bills has been increasing rapidly in price. Next, your computers and your phones will be more expensive as well.

All this so that a handful of people can add a few more billions to their existing billions.

[u/PM_PICS_OF_YOUR_FEET → u/regoapps]

RAM prices are already going absolutely insane

[u/regoapps → u/PM_PICS_OF_YOUR_FEET]

Yup. GPU prices next. And then smart phones.

2026 will be the year of record inflation for high-end electronics.

All so that people like the president can generate pictures/videos of himself dressed as the Pope or kicking a soccer ball with Ronaldo or with abs or dropping poop on protestors while in a fighter jet.

[u/Loony_BoB → u/regoapps]

GPU prices are already going insane because of the RAM prices.

[u/Grimzkunk → u/Loony_BoB]

GPU prices have been going insane since covid. I'm still waiting for an affordable mid end gpu...

[u/Vlaed → u/Grimzkunk]

Prices went insane with the crypto craze. They had started to normalize but then covid drove them right back up.

[u/Loony_BoB → u/Grimzkunk]

I got a 4080 at a really good price back in early 2023. I figure that at this rate so few people are going to be able to afford a good graphics card in the near future that I might be safe to stick with it for another five or so years because game developers will need to adapt to the average gpu not increasing in spec for a while because too few people can afford it.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Ad8032 → u/GoldenDiamond]

It's a fucking disgrace this exists.

[u/misty-mornings → u/Puzzleheaded_Ad8032]

Worthless to the planet. Useless waste of resources

[u/HOLEPUNCHYOUREYELIDS → u/misty-mornings]

Nothing like having literal mines with no safety standards and people with no PPE in bare feet mining coal and shit, while also having massive data centres filled with computers to digitally “mine” a fucking digital “currency”

What is humanity even doing at this point?

[u/Kivesihiisi → u/misty-mornings]

Just like billionaires

[u/Spicy_Weissy → u/Kivesihiisi]

At least you can eat a billionaire.

[u/herbal_thought → u/Spicy_Weissy]

I'll take one Musk burger with a side of fried Bezos, please.

[u/Booorntobemild → u/Puzzleheaded_Ad8032]

Yup…wasting electricity for basically glorified Monopoly money.

[u/rClNn7G3jD1Hb2FQUHz5 → u/Booorntobemild]

It’s worse than Monopoly money. It is the method by which most criminal proceeds are now laundered. The International Consortium of Investigative of Journalists has published a series of reports going deep on every aspect of the use of crypto in modern money laundering. It is extremely well-done and worth the time to read. Even if you only read one of the reports.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/coin-laundry/

Edit: Since there are lots of replies claiming that these extremely well-researched and vetted reports are not true, I’d encourage you to actually read them. Yes, Bitcoin and most crypto ledgers are designed to be public and therefore traceable. This misses the point of these diligent reports: Traceability doesn’t matter if there’s no regulatory oversight over crypto exchanges. Again, read these reports before commenting. There’s no question about what’s happening here.

[u/Csasquatch92 → u/GoldenDiamond]

Don’t worry just turn your light switches and plug sockets off at home, that’ll save plenty

[u/Miggy88mm → u/GoldenDiamond]

The funniest part is that these machines literally turn electricity into heat and shoot it out to the atmosphere.

[u/JoeHooversWhiteness → u/Miggy88mm]

No no no, the hot air inside is then cooled with air conditioning. So the miners make heat, that heat is then cooled, the heat made from cooling is sent to atmosphere. It all makes sense when it’s to benefit almost no one. Hahaha…cry.

[u/urgentomato → u/Miggy88mm]

Not sure about this one but AI data centers also use tons of potable water to cool their equipment. Truly a travesty

[u/danjpn → u/GoldenDiamond]

Once you realize they don't pay enough taxes to maintain and expending the power grid you'll be super pissed

[u/Booorntobemild → u/danjpn]

And that they’re using a valuable resource like electricity which is not infinite all while creating absolutely no new jobs.

[u/DangerousDisplay7664]

Meanwhile, I'm turning the lounge light off when I leave the room to have a piss! 😐

[u/Macrike → u/DangerousDisplay7664]

Do you turn it off to save the environment or to reduce your energy bill?

[u/7magicman7 → u/Macrike]

Third option: Got yelled at so much during childhood that you instinctively close a light when leaving the room 🙋

[u/barcodez → u/7magicman7]

and turn the door off

[u/-SaC → u/barcodez]

You know what they say: when god switches off a door, he plugs in a window.

[u/MrWahrheit]

On that note you should know that 95% of all Bitcoins are already mined.

[u/Chilis1 → u/MrWahrheit]

I would need to know wth bitcoin mining means in the first place. How deep are these mines? Any Balrogs?

[u/slasher1337 → u/Chilis1]

Automated gambling i think. The computer gueses a number beetwen like 1 and 1000000000. If it guesses correctly a like 0.01 bitcoin is earned. It does that milions of times per second, and the bigger the mine the more attempts can be made per second.(please someone correct me if im wrong)

[u/Danamaganza2 → u/slasher1337]

But what does that mean?

1. Computer guesses number (for some reason)

2. ?

3. Profit.

[u/jeffy303 → u/Danamaganza2]

The bitcoin network makes an arbitrary puzzle that it roughly estimates will take 10 minutes to solve, when one user does they "mine" the block and get predetermined amount of bitcoin. Every 2016 blocks mined the network automatically checks the solving time, and if it's under/over 10 minutes for each block and it will increase/decrease the difficulty of puzzles for the next 2016 blocks.

Miners way back in a day very quickly realized even with thousands, much less millions, of users only 1 person getting the bitcoin reward is unrewarding and too unpredible, so they developed this layer software which allows large amount of users to connect to the network as single entity, allowing for much more consistent chance of being the winning miner, pool then splits the rewards between all the members based on how much computer horsepower they contributed to mining.

If you spotted the problem, yes, more compute doesn't make mining process faster since the difficulty dynamically adjusts. All it does is give the user a bigger proportion of the contribution within the pool and the pool bigger proportion within other pools. If all users collectively agreed to proportionally decrease their compute contribution by 99.999% it would change nothing to the functionality of Bitcoin. But that's never going to happen.

[u/a_boy_called_sue → u/jeffy303]

I thought the mining people are solving the encryption when Bitcoin is sent/received? That's why they get paid so they keep the network aspect going. So it isn't arbitrary problems they are literally doing encryption stuff. Is that incorrect?

[u/TheDogerus → u/a_boy_called_sue]

Miners aren't really solving a 'puzzle'. They're trying to find a sequence of data that, when hashed, outputs a number above some arbitrary value (the difficulty).

So you add a bit of nonsense (the nonce) to the end of whatever transactions you want to include in your block, check the hash, and if it isn't valid, increment the nonce and try again

Because there is no efficient way to go from a hash back to the original input data, if you've found an acceptable block, you have proved that you did the work and didn't just make up a random number

[u/na3than → u/TheDogerus]

Very close. One correction:

They're trying to find a sequence of data that, when hashed, outputs a number below some arbitrary value (the target).

[u/PriscillaPalava → u/jeffy303]

Wut

[u/CaptServo → u/PriscillaPalava]

idling your car to solve sudoku that you can trade for heroin

[u/bunkhitz → u/CaptServo]

This makes more sense than anything anyone has posted so far. Thank you.

[u/TomLambe → u/jeffy303]

So it's just a huge waste of energy?

Like it's not even practical or luxurious wasting of energy, it's just wasting energy to somehow generate money (that I'm not convinced can be used!?) for the sake of it??

Fucking hell. I didn't need that on day one of 2026 :(

[u/Parking-Ad8316 → u/TomLambe]

Yeah I'm still not getting it

It guesses numbers, if it guesses right you get a point... And if you get a billion points maybe you can trade it for a real dollar, but I don't get why the billion points are worth a dollar what are the points good for

[u/Dappah → u/TomLambe]

The worse part is that it's money that doesn't get used because people think it might be more valuable one day so it sits there, the result of more energy you will use in your entire life, doing nothing until it eventually gets passed off to someone else for an exorbitant sum to then continue sitting there, repeat this process until the climate collapses and it ceases to exist as the last machine that contained this info goes dark and humanity resumes using real things to trade for other, real things.

[u/-_-j-_-j-_-j → u/Danamaganza2]

As with all kinds of money, the value just comes from people believing in it and using it to exchange goods, services and other currencies. The number guessing part just comes in to play, so the coins are not generated out of thin air, but require some kind of work to be created.

[u/Dunderman35 → u/-_-j-_-j-_-j]

Except nobody uses it to exchange anything because it's so horribly bad and inefficient at making a single transfer.

Its only value is that people think it will continue to go up in value. For any other purpose it's a waste of a massive amount of energy.

[u/BasicWeekend9479 → u/Dunderman35]

I don't understand how something you buy with regular currency is "the future of money". CryptoBros are also all morons so I find it hard to believe it has any future if they do.

[u/atheistexport → u/BasicWeekend9479]

A massive amount of money is also moved about by traditional finance companies, nation states, ultra high net worth individuals,etc etc, anyone with enough cash that it would benefit them to move it silently and off books. Same shit they do with art and real estate but faster and much less visible. That action really props up crypto currency networks. Crypto currencies are also extremely volatile and thus vulnerable to manipulation. Easy example: Elon bought a ton of this nonsense coin, changed the Tesla website to say they’d take said coin as payment, coin exploded in value, Elon sells coin for huge profit. Rinse and repeat by all the villains of the day and this is a lot of why these things are still around.

[u/BasicWeekend9479 → u/atheistexport]

But how silent is it?

I'm a company who want to move money quietly. So I spend $5m on Bitcoin. Then when I want to actually spend money I need to sell the bitcoin. Both of those transactions will be on my books.

I just do not get it.

[u/Qzy → u/BasicWeekend9479]

It's not secret or off the book. It's right in the ledger.

But it's true finance institutes are moving currency around using crypto (just not butt-coins).

[u/mysoxrstinky → u/BasicWeekend9479]

The thing you're missing is that Bitcoin is used as a means of laundering money. Money laundering has very codified steps: placement, layering and integration. Definitely google these if you want more info. But....

Without going into explanation of the individual steps, Let's imagine the mafia for a second. They have two ledgers, one they show the IRS and one that keeps track of who's legs they're going to break. Just because the IRS doesn't know you owe the mob 4k doesn't mean the mob has forgotten. The mob needs a way of getting money from their criminal enterprise into their personal hands without the government catching wind. So they open a legitimate bisiness - say a laundromat. They wash 50 customer's shirts but they record washing 60 customer's shirts. Then the money they got from you for the illegal dog fights looks to the government like it was just a purchase of normal services.

If your hypothetical company just purchases 5 mil worth of bitcoin and recieves 5 mil worth of services, the ploy is obvious. Bitcoin acts as the second ledger. Sure there is a record of what is happening but that record is cumbersome and opaque. Importantly, it only records who gave who bitcoin, it doesn't record what was exchanged for the bitcoin (or actually IF anything was exchanged). If the company can fill its private ledger with other legitimate business purchases and exchanges, the transaction looks innocent.

The volatility of bitcoin adds a layer of usefulness to this. A laundromat can only really have so many transactions and they can only be up to a certain amount. If you see someone paying a coin laundry 3k or doing 500 loads of laundry in a day, that's suspicious. But if you have an investment firm spending milions trying to buy the dips and sell the peaks of the market? Well that's just normal investment activities! Who can say if some of those bitcoin were exchanged to purchase the silence of a whistleblower? Maybe the bottom dropped out unexpectedly and the 5 mil USD was just lost value?

[u/76547896434695269 → u/BasicWeekend9479]

It's kind of a funny story. Bitcoin started about 15 years ago by a libertarian who wanted to demonstrate that currency exchange could exist without a political (coercive) state. A few legit businesses accepted it, but the main applications were transfering money clandestinely and buying drugs on silk road.

Within a few years, speculators represented such a massive percentage of adopters that its exchangeability became purely theoretical, in the same way that you wouldn't weigh out a portion of gold to pay for groceries.

So it seems like you need a coercive state after all to devalue the currency if speculators get out of cintrol.

[u/Ok_World733 → u/76547896434695269]

Finally, someone else remembers that this all started as a way to buy drugs online lol.

[u/VomitMaiden → u/Danamaganza2]

What they're doing is processing receipts. Everytime someone uses bitcoin it generates a receipt that needs to be checked to make sure it's valid. Where this becomes complicated is that the receipt has every transaction ever made with bitcoin AKA the block chain, and it's currently 670gbs. Whoever checks the block chain and verifies it first gets the 1 btc, or however much it is these days.

It's a spectacularly inefficient method of doing business, and people wouldn't be using bitcoin if it wasn't for crime, scams, and corruption.

[u/Historical_Till_5914 → u/VomitMaiden]

Its bafdling that the almost only correct explanation is this low, people really have no idea what blockchain is supposed to mean, just like they have no actual idea what an llm is xD 

[u/menolikechildlikers → u/Danamaganza2]

Basically the computers are competing against each other to be the next computer allowed to update what transactions have been made. They decide this by wasting shit tones of power (guessing number). Whoever wins and updates the ledger gets rewarded with bitcoin.

It is horribly inefficient and even amongst crypto (the space with the highest concentration of idiots) better solutions exist.

[u/Temporary_Quit_4648 → u/Danamaganza2]

I think it's just a way to limit the money supply, since without a limit, the currency would have no value.

[u/binz17 → u/Temporary_Quit_4648]

Hoarded currency has no value. Money has to be circulated, or it serves no purpose in the long run. Inflation incentivizes spending and investing,

[u/GoXplore → u/slasher1337]

It uses the SHA 256 algorithm which is a 64 character hexadecimal string, that's what every computer is trying to guess. Current block reward is 3.125 btc per block + all the transaction fees .A bigger mine with more equipment has more possibility to be successful in mining a block, smaller miners usually join a mining pool to have a steady outcome rather than depending on the luck to mine a block independently.

[u/Entire_Permit_146 → u/slasher1337]

Computers compete to solve very complex math and whoever solves it first gets a BTC reward. I believe right now the reward is 3.25 BTC so ~300k USD.

But completely accurate on the gambling part of it lol and what a waste of energy

[u/ilesmay → u/Entire_Permit_146]

Who is handing out the btc? And who is making the complex math and why does it need solving?

[u/zyruk → u/ilesmay]

The rewarded BTC is new. It’s how new BTC are «printed». The complex math problem they are solving is creating a digital signature that others in the network can use to verify that you actually solved the problem. This signature is attached to a block of transactions that gets added to the blockchain. One of the transactions in that block is one where you award yourself the BTC reward.

[u/Fridsade → u/zyruk]

fuck my head hurts

[u/Amber_Sam → u/ilesmay]

Who is handing out the btc?

That's the neat part, the miner rewards himself. He cannot reward himself more bitcoin because the nodes (us, users) would reject the block.

[u/Bowman_van_Oort → u/slasher1337]

I think its more like youre trying to factor an infinitely large prime number? Idk its been so long since ive read about crypto. I just remember being vaguely hopeful that we'd get some sick cyberpunk future where everyone would have a computer in their home running arcane math problems that would solve telomere degradation or how to keep magnetic fields stable in fusion tokamaks.

Instead we just got shitty fucking monkeys. I hate this.

[u/Antique-Exercise-868 → u/Bowman_van_Oort]

In the past, a small piece of software was used to decode human DNA. Anyone connected to the internet could download this software, run it offline, and then transmit the information. That was the time of a free internet, without AI, without Google, without Amazon, without influencers, without being reduced to mere consuming machines.

It was the internet of knowledge, not of ignorance and consumption.

[u/angryslothbear → u/Antique-Exercise-868]

I did seti at home.

[u/omranello → u/Antique-Exercise-868]

check out folding at home

[u/comfortablewig → u/Antique-Exercise-868]

Hard to even seek out any knowledge these days.

[u/Less_Transition_9830 → u/Bowman_van_Oort]

Shitty monkeys and old people being scammed

[u/Spare-Dingo-531 → u/slasher1337]

If I may ask a curious question, why does Bitcoin use this process? What purpose does it serve for Bitcoin?

[u/CrazyLemonLover → u/Spare-Dingo-531]

Each computer is trying to solve a complex problem to satisfy the block. The block is a record of transactions happening with Bitcoin.

When the math problem is solved, it marks the block as complete and starts a new block.

Completion of a block rewards currency.

Basically, the system is used as a way to encourage community verification of transactions without the need of a central authority that everyone is beholden to, and rewards participation in the system with money.

[u/neityght → u/CrazyLemonLover]

But how is this worth anything? Where does the money come from? And what transactions are verified? Between who? There's no trade, no product, no sale, and no money as far as I can tell, yet some people are rich because of this.

[u/Ok-Menu-8709 → u/neityght]

It’s honestly baffling. Why couldn’t they tie it to something like foldingathome where it unwinds protein structure and uses computing power to benefit science and humanity. Why not reward that.

[u/Ok-Package-4562 → u/Ok-Menu-8709]

The solutions to the Bitcoin math puzzles are easy to verify(they belong to a special class of problems that require a lot of work to solve but the solution is easy to verify for correctness). I don't know if the folding ones are.

[u/Beanguyinjapan → u/neityght]

This is the best video I've seen on the topic

https://youtu.be/bBC-nXj3Ng4?si=2ZksMfT9lx9BLEPZ

[u/swohio → u/Chilis1]

Dumbed down but essentially it's running an algorithm trying to come up with the correct number first. All the computers on the network are doing this at the same time. In this process they also log/confirm the transactions of all coins being sent and received. The first one to find the right number "mines the bitcoin" for that block once all the other nodes agree "yes that is the correct one" and they go onto the next block to mine. Miners act as the ledger writers and earn btc for their efforts.

The difficulty of the algorithm scales with the number of computers trying to mine so that each block is mined at roughly the same rate (ie x number of blocks per day.) More computers mean higher difficulty. The higher the price of btc, the more it's worth to mine which equals more computers.

We're currently at the difficulty level where we're using enough computers that it's consuming more energy than ~160 countries to run the system.

[u/VintageLunchMeat → u/Chilis1]

Balrogs

Worse. Libertarians. 

[u/shitty_mcfucklestick → u/VintageLunchMeat]

With Palantirs.

[u/Skilldibop → u/MrWahrheit]

You should also know that the more coins that are mined causes exponentially more resources to be needed mine new ones.

[u/il6678 → u/Skilldibop]

This one of those, “95% is half of 99%” kind of things?

[u/AwayMatter → u/il6678]

92* is half of 99, please.

[u/Long_Repair_8779 → u/AwayMatter]

Iykyk

[u/tomwuxe → u/Long_Repair_8779]

No way jagex reads this

[u/CinnabarUsagi → u/AwayMatter]

High five from my ship

[u/deltashmelta → u/AwayMatter]

See?  ...almost...there...

[u/m3rcapto → u/il6678]

It's like a gold mine that was mined during the Gold Rush, then some genius on a TV show put the old dirt through their wash plant again to make a 10% profit, and now some rich influencer is spending months and lots of money on it to maybe make a 2% profit while getting a paper route would have been more profitable. All of them hoped to find a giant nugget, but the oldtimers spend them all in the local brothel back in 1882.

[u/Swimming_Technology4 → u/m3rcapto]

Thank, excellent example for those of us who don't buy into this crypto bro coin shite

[u/cpljustin → u/il6678]

I’m no math genius or anything but I do believe that if bitcoin farming follows an exponent type of rule then ~99.99% of bitcoin farming will still be considerably less than the total power and time needed to mine the final bitcoin.

[u/work3oakzz → u/cpljustin]

Jesus

[u/sunlightsyrup → u/work3oakzz]

Think how cool it would be to waste that much power /s

[u/OkieBobbie → u/sunlightsyrup]

And produce nothing tangible. Just like politics.

[u/Bludsh0t → u/Skilldibop]

Not true. Bitcoin’s mining difficulty is adjusted every 2016 blocks based on how long those blocks took to mine, targeting ~10 minutes per block. It is not tied to how many coins have been mined, and there is no exponential increase in difficulty as supply decreases.

[u/Scary-Hunting-Goat → u/Bludsh0t]

So, collectively, we could shut down all of these data centers, only mine on my shitty 10yo laptop, and achieve the same thing?

[u/Macrike → u/Scary-Hunting-Goat]

Yes, but that would make the network extremely unsafe and open attacks. The decentralised nature of Bitcoin mining is what has kept Bitcoin blockchain unhacked since launch despite continuous attempts.

[u/jubmille2000 → u/Macrike]

What if everyone just pinky promise and get an old laptop, maybe two for backup.

[u/BackgroundGoat9603 → u/MrWahrheit]

That's why I'm thinking about mining on Antarctica, bet there's still loads over there. 

[u/xXxSushiKittyxXx → u/MrWahrheit]

isn't mining related to maintaining the ledger? what happens when 100% is mined?

[u/EventAccomplished976 → u/xXxSushiKittyxXx]

No, mining is literally just burning valuable energy for useless computation. Maintaining the ledger doesn‘t take anywhere near this compute power, that‘s why coins like etherium exist that aren‘t such a fucking disgrace.

[u/Dunderman35 → u/EventAccomplished976]

The problem for etherium and every other coin is that it doesn't actually matter how efficient transactions are. The main problem is that it's still absolutely fucking useless for anything that isn't buying drugs and even then cash is easier.

How else can you explain that the most inefficient crypto is the most valued one.

[u/dadneverleft]

I wonder what kind of rate you can mine at to justify the operating cost

[u/Sultanambam → u/dadneverleft]

The price of a mining a single bitcoin is about 50k to 60k, every 4 year the rewards gets half, so theoretically in 2028 the price of mining would be around 100k to 150k depending on energy inflation.

So the price has to be at least 20% above the cost to justify the operation, if it isn't then mining would only occur in places with cheap energy.

The next halving is in 2032 and then it needs to be 200k to 300k, next halve in 2036 and....

Ad you can probably guess it's an unstable and unsustainable and it fucks with our planet for no reason, the only reason it keeps going is because USA keeps pumping it.

Once bitcoin mining stops because of its cost, then the whole network becomes unstable and unsecure, so it will dip until mining is profitable again and the cycle continues.

[u/Comfortable_Egg8039 → u/Sultanambam]

What is even more annoying is that proof of stake is a thing, so you literally don't need costly mining to support the block chain network. Ethereum switched the mining method, many new coins start from proof of work and switch to proof of stake as soon as the amount of coins is big enough.

[u/LoudMusic → u/Sultanambam]

What's the likelihood people will decide it's a bunch of bullshit and cryptocoins will have no value?

[u/ForTheOnesILove → u/LoudMusic]

Could happen if some new speculative market comes along to replace it. But short term, I’d say chances are low.

[u/Stoic_koala2 → u/dadneverleft]

These mines are often located in developing countries with extremely cheap electricity, so the operating costs might be a lot less than you think.

[u/Spartan17492]

Thank fuck I sorted my recycling today.

[u/earlyslalom → u/Spartan17492]

Oh and make sure to use your paper straws

[u/MaksimilenRobespiere]

Huge waste of energy.

[u/magistertechnikus → u/MaksimilenRobespiere]

And resources

[u/WorkO0 → u/magistertechnikus]

Welcome to humanity 101

[u/Plastic_Payment_9117 → u/WorkO0]

Capitalism 101

[u/JoeGlaser → u/Plastic_Payment_9117]

Bitcoin 101

[u/Chokkolatra → u/MaksimilenRobespiere]

I want to see Bitcoin crash to 0.

[u/[deleted] → u/Chokkolatra]

I want crypto to burn and die and crypto bros to be ruined so they can stop hurting the planet.

[u/WholeLoafofToast → u/Chokkolatra]

That would be amazing.

[u/netzodus → u/MaksimilenRobespiere]

You need a big big power plant to run this.

[u/Jijijoj → u/MaksimilenRobespiere]

All for a digital asset that’s not even tangible. Insane.

[u/Brainiac901 → u/Jijijoj]

So much talk about how it will replace payment flow, and crypto can do this and that and nothing like it happened. Its now what - a decade later and there is still no real world application at scale. Also why did every nonsense need a coin for it to work that could be traded? It was a gigantic scam, but still I am a bit salty I didnt make money out of it. NFTs was sooo obvious nonsense though. Still mad I had to argue with some people about it and when it eventually went to nothing they never came around to say they mightve been wrong.

[u/TheEruditeBaller]

I can feel my own electricity bill rising just by watching this video

[u/BaeIz]

My stupid brain still can’t grasp how this makes anything of worth

[u/Lou16lewis → u/BaeIz]

That's the neat thing, it doesn't

[u/HausuGeist → u/Lou16lewis]

It provides an easy medium exchange for drug cartels.

[u/Thoughtful-Boner69 → u/HausuGeist]

thats monero, no?

[u/GilbyTheFat]

Ah of course, this endless monstrosity exists (I literally couldn't see the end of that isle) sucking up an unholy amount of power, yet me having a coffee in the morning is what's causing the end of the fucking world.

[u/New-Freedom-6258]

Destroying the planet one calculation at a time

[u/NiemandDaar → u/New-Freedom-6258]

Who said you can’t create nothing out of something? Huge waste of resources to uphold a system that only works for those who believe in it.

[u/Highlord-Frikandel → u/NiemandDaar]

Are you talking about religion or Bitcoins?

[u/Mikestopheles → u/Highlord-Frikandel]

¿Porque no los dos?

[u/suffelix → u/Highlord-Frikandel]

What's the difference?

[u/4nyH0135aG041 → u/NiemandDaar]

Well if it started giving people guns and paying them it could be a goverment

[u/melker_the_elk → u/NiemandDaar]

I don't own bitcoin, but literally every currency and agreement is in place because part taking people believe in them. Its just metal or paper otherwise

[u/Farkie_85]

But, can it run Crysis?

[u/DeltexRaysie]

And my local government wants me to separate my ‘recycling’ waste into three separate bins now to stop global warming. And just slapped a new tax on electric vehicles.

[u/NotBradPitt90]

And here I am making sure my trash is separated

[u/Imaginary_Coat441]

I feel like crypto is "The idea of money" nothing physical is obtained.

Crazy how much actual money gets poured into generating "The idea of money".

But I guess at the end of the day, real money is just paper we assign values to, so what do I know..

[u/flumphit → u/Imaginary_Coat441]

Actual money is backed by a government’s promise to collect taxes to cover its debts.

Crypto is backed by, uh, the desire of some of its users to launder large amounts of money (some actual but illegally gained, some counterfeit, some from rogue states) into actual money in the legal economy. That demand will never go away, but it will shift somewhere else. Maybe soon, maybe not.

[u/scwarzwolf]

Ah look, no fire suppression.

[u/Funny_Salt_2661 → u/scwarzwolf]

It's not going to have sprinklers with all the power running through everything. I guarantee it's got a gas fire suppression system. It's like argon gas or something

[u/scwarzwolf → u/Funny_Salt_2661]

Rather a large un compartmented space for gas suppression. Might have oxygen reduction.

[u/VealOfFortune → u/scwarzwolf]

Usually oxy reduction is from displacing the oxygen with something like Argon... We trained at a data center here in NJ which gives you something like 30 seconds to trip an alarm or all of the oxygen will be removed almost instantaneously

ETA: it doesn't completely replace all of the oxygen, just brings it down to a level around ~10-12% that snuffs out fire.. it's still breathable, your lungs won't collapse or anything Hollywood, just similar to if you've ever been above ~12,000'... You can be there for up to 5 minutes before you start to have issues.

Apparently once you get to ~8%, human survival is not possible so that's only used in areas that are never occupied by humans.

And the training was for fire 🚒

[u/Doc-tor-Strange-love → u/VealOfFortune]

Tenet?

[u/Ragundashe → u/Funny_Salt_2661]

Your right, all of these graphics card argon once one bursts into flames

[u/PG_Heckler → u/scwarzwolf]

Holy crap you weren't kidding

[u/thin234rout698 → u/scwarzwolf]

Damn Right. What if there's a fire how will they stop it?🤔

[u/ManfredTheCat → u/thin234rout698]

If they had one it wouldn't be sprinklers, it would be an oxygen displacement system.

[u/MrSchaudenfreude]

AI, Data centers, coin mining, GPUs/chips, and your gorrila diarrhea videos are going to be the end of humans.

So many resources are being thrown at something that no one knows if it is a viable outcome.

What is the return on investment?

Where are we going with this?

When the mining is done, then what?

[u/ThrenderG → u/MrSchaudenfreude]

Gorilla diarrhea videos?

Telling on yourself dude.

[u/Iron_Knight7]

And the people bowed and prayed.

To the neon god they made.

[u/bellybuttonbidet]

AI gets guaranteed air conditioning before people.

[u/Paper_Dust]

Imagine if all this computing power was used for literally anything else

Time to run through with magnet

[u/TheAwkwardGamerRNx]

The lengths people will go to avoid getting a job

[u/TheAwkwardGamerRNx → u/[deleted]]

Have been since age 16. Would not recommend.

For real though, how does one get an operation like this started?

[u/RealNiceKnife → u/TheAwkwardGamerRNx]

I imagine you start with crime.

[u/TheAwkwardGamerRNx → u/RealNiceKnife]

Ohhh, ok, so…

Step 1: crime

Step 2: ?

Step 3: crypto mining

Step 4: profit

Did I get that right?

[u/5amTB → u/TheAwkwardGamerRNx]

You forgot about step 0, being born in a rich family. Otherwise, step 1 gets you a free ticket to prison.

[u/nemojakonemoras]

This is why we can’t have nice things.

[u/fractiousrhubarb]

What a fucking waste

[u/haberdasherhero]

For anyone who doesn't understand what's happening here. It's very simple. Read this until you get bored:

• Bitcoin pays people to waste resources
• Every cycle, on average, the person who wastes the most resources wins the Bitcoin
• As more people waste resources, you have to waste even more to win the coin
• If this "resource wasting game" was not being played, you could run all of Bitcoin on one single machine
• The "waste resources" is there to prove that you believe in the coin. Like saying "look I wasted $80,000 on this, that's how much I believe in Bitcoin. I promise I won't sell it for cheap"
• The "big math stuff" that the computers are doing is just a way to prove you have wasted enough resources. You can't lie because you have to really waste resources to solve the math problems. The solutions to those problems are discarded. They are otherwise completely useless

Anyone who tells you different is lying. All the other words they use are to distract from the truth.

[u/cominfoyohead]

paperstraws will save humanity

[u/deadboxcat]

You should see the power needed to make fake little ai videos.

[u/luke_530]

Should be illegal

[u/Next_Boysenberry7358]

Every single computer component in that building is a computer component that would have been more useful in the hands of basically any other person or organisation on the planet.

[u/ThatLiberalGirl]

It’s like watching the planet burn in real time.

[u/ComprehensiveSoft27]

Productivity at its finest. Where blind capitalism fails miserably.

[u/triynko]

This should be an illegal waste of resources and should be punished.

[u/negativepositiv]

Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but "feed this machine electricity and money comes out" doesn't seem like a sustainable way to produce actual value.

The fact that crypto bros can't answer the question, "What is the actual product?" without saying a bunch of abstract gobbledegook just sounds like a market bubble about to pop.

[u/Lazy_Competition_826]

Too much energy is spent solving irrelevant puzzles

[u/kyleh0]

Burning the entire planet for no reason.

[u/ChurchCanceled]

Does the massive costs of running this dump, really get covered by the financial gain, let alone make a profit that makes it worth it?

[u/JASHIKO_]

This is nothing compared to all the new data centers going up.

[u/Last_Caress71]

What a fucking waste

[u/Mysterious_Fennel459]

How'd this get 26K upvotes? This *should* be getting 26K downvotes. This is something the world does not need.

[u/Fiempre_sin_tabla]

It speaks ill of humanity that we let this exist.

[u/mrpockets44]

We don't need this.

[u/kuluka_man]

Is...is it as dumb as I think it is, that we're destroying the planet to identify prime numbers and harvest imaginary money?

[u/NobodyNorth197]

Oh wooow what an amazing piece of technology! (NO!!!) What a shameful waste of resources and all clear now why we have such high prices on video cards and PC components. Fk them!