Inside a Chinese Bitcoin Mine - The CoinsmanThe Coinsman - http://www.thecoinsman.com/2014...
Aug 16, 2014
from
Louis Gray,
rønin,
Rodfather,
DB, Lil LB's Dad,
thomas morton ☢,
fewdayslate,
Victor Ganata,
Jennifer Dittrich,
Son of Groucho,
Ken Morley,
Jenny H.,
d☭snake,
eslr,
WoH: Professor MOTHRA,
Todd Hoff,
Me,
imabonehead,
and
Stephen Mack
liked this
"This week I traveled to northeast China to check out a bitcoin mining operation. After being received at the airport, my contact drove me for nearly an hour to a part of the country more remote than I was expecting. This was my first time checking out a mining operation of this size, so I don’t really know what I was expecting, but I was definitely surprised by how off the beaten path it was."
- Amit Patel
Not only is this insane, but the author has no realization that it is insane, and his paean to libertarianism and capitalism at the end sounds like cloud cuckoo talk. Gold is irrational but at least it can be a paperweight. Paper money is irrational but at least you can wipe your ass with it. Bitcoin is literally nothing physical, the most irrational currency of all, and yet here's an operation spending $60k a month in electricity to generate irrational wealth.
- Stephen Mack
Ain't humans strange?
- Son of Groucho
To be fair, most of our government-backed currency is also stored as bits in computers. But the "government-backed" part is the thing.
- Victor Ganata
Money is just one of those things not to think too deeply about. Otherwise the data streams collapse.
- Todd Hoff
I just think about the resources used up to mine bit coins. It's so arbitrary. In my head it's equivalent to if tomorrow we declared that alligator teeth were worth millions apiece and people began tearing apart swamps.
- Stephen Mack
Not as scalable :-)
- Todd Hoff
Well, that is kind of how the stock market and real estate and consumerism works…. :D
- Victor Ganata
I think back to the beanie baby bubble … but at least you got some beanie babies out of it.
- Amit Patel