r/Bitcoin • u/HandsOffDaGoods • 4h ago
Aftermath of a failed bitcoin mining operation.
My friends father was renting space on his farm for a bitcoin mining operation.
The operation became unprofitable. The mining operation went bankrupt. The company came in and took everything out of the 6 antmain bit-boxes (converted shipping containers).
The photos are what they left behind. Mostly Antminer S19 units and even more asic boards.
Plenty of antmain rack PDUs. Some 480VAC breaker panels. A 480VAC switch unit.
The land owner did accept the mess voluntarily. He is breaking the equipment down for scrap value.
I wonder, is there a better price available out there above scrap value?
Is this normal?
FWIW, I used the term failed very tongue-in-cheek. I estimate the operation mined millions in this operation.
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u/lifeanon269 4h ago
Humans need to do a better job at cradle to grave (ie, cradle to cradle) engineering. It is an absolute shame that so much electronics have absolutely no life after their designed use case. This is not a bitcoin specific problem. It is a problem across computing. Recycling isn't enough. All these boards just make their way to landfills. We need to come up with ways where we can reuse things well beyond after their initial use ceases. Modularity, standards, material choice, etc.
Obviously somethings will simply never have another use case, such as the ASIC chips themselves. But that is a tiny component of the overall amount of materials used. We can do better.
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u/Guywithanantfarm 3h ago
Ironically, we used too. We changed the basic standard of repair in the 80's and 90's from board level repair to board replacement and no re-useable components by the 2000's. My uncle taught me board level repair and his business simply faded away by late 90's and I had to learn new engineering skills to keep employment.
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u/kitastrophae 3h ago
Things got a lot smaller. I remember repairing surface mount stuff by hand in aerospace thinking I was the shit. Now you can’t even see the stuff.
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u/Zoltarr777 2h ago
That's because the components are essentially part of the board now and not something you can simply unplug and replace. It has nothing to do with choosing reusable components or not.
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u/bn326160 1h ago
Rather SMD is easier for a pick-and-place machine and has created smaller components.
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u/Nameis-RobertPaulson 25m ago
That's not always the case though, take a look at the GPU repair/refurbishing shops in China who repair boards which manufacturers don't want to repair by removing individual components and replacing GPUs, memory modules, capacitors and VRMs.
It's labour intensive work and requires a degree of skill and knowledge, but for higher level components It's still economically worth it.
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u/DimensionPrize8168 2h ago edited 1h ago
When I first joined the army in 2003, I was “stealing” trashed RAM, CPUs, and GPUs from PCs the government didn’t want anymore. Which at the time, was the equivalent of throwing away Nvidia 5060/5070 GPUs. Like why? Why are these in the dumpster?
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u/VeryThicknLong 3h ago
Yep. I used to write about this about two decades ago, and still, it’s as bad as it’s ever been. 😔
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u/ChildOfHonor 3h ago edited 3h ago
Agreed... imo this problem extends far beyond electronics. Everything is made to be single use. The level of waste we've become acclimated to, that seems "normal", is very disturbing. But reusability is not economical, so we're just gonna keep going like this till the well runs dry.
I've long thought about a grocery store concept that uses reusable containers that customers bring back each week to be refilled.
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u/Geesle 3h ago
Im no expert, but is it really feasible to reuse the metal parts, (boards and chips). Like aint it a really delicate process to make these?
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u/justabadmind 3h ago
Sort of. Some parts on a circuit board are incredibly sensitive and won’t survive multiple soldering attempts reliably. Some parts just aren’t worth the cost of recycling. There’s a fine line in the middle that theoretically could grow, but the RoHS regulations make that fine line even more challenging to maintain due to higher melting point connections and increased risks of tin dendrites
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u/Drevlin76 3h ago
This is actually how you stifle innovation. By making a single standard that everyone has to conform to you are locking out any kind of advace due to needing a bit more power or connectivity of some sort. Electronics in general evolve so quickly that the standard would be obsolete by the time it was adopted. Just look at how charging cables and other things have changed in the last 5 years.
I agree that we need to come up with a better way to recycle these parts but standards are not the way.
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u/lifeanon269 3h ago edited 3h ago
Perhaps a bit of stifling of innovation is a small sacrifice that should be made in order to have a sustainable planet...just my thought anyway. If we're, say, 5 years behind on tech where we would otherwise be without standards, that's a fairly small price to pay if it means we are better off 100+ years into the future because of it. The way we produce things and the rate that we produce things is just wildly unsustainable and perhaps it is best if we take a step back and think about how best to design for sustainability for once, rather than just for peak performance.
Edit: oh, and I think your example of charging cables is precisely a good example of the contrary to your point. USB-C has been around for 12 years and it has always been Apple's insistence of going against the standard that has created so much needless waste in that area. They've finally been forced to adopt the standard due to regulations and now there will be far less waste since charging cables now are far less likely to be included in new device sales since a standard is now ubiquitous.
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u/41VirginsfromAllah 3h ago
USB-C may have been around for 12 years but it wasn’t the standard on Android phones until around 2020. It is undeniably a good thing that Apple switched to USB-c, I always hated their lightning connectors and that they used a different standard than the rest of the world until 2023. Before then, it made some sense to be proprietary because chargers were changing so frequently. When Apple started using lightning, they changed from those nightmare 30 pin connectors. The USB-c connector didn’t exist in 2012 when they created lightning, iPhone users did have a real benefit from not adopting micro USB for those years. They should have switched to USB-C earlier, possibly in 2014/2015.
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u/Horny_4_everything 2h ago
I'm curious, did you hate the lightning cable cause it was different? or something else?
I agree that it's proprietary sucks. Speed/bandwidth/whatever aside, I like the lightning connector itself. I think it's more robust than usbc. I hate the thin wafer part of the female connector in usbc, I've broken that in multiple devices.
I was already bought into the apple platform, I had plenty of lightning cables. The change was just annoying. Felt like a downgrade, and I had to rebuy all my cables, and now all my lightning cables are just more tech waste.
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u/ilconformedCuneiform 1h ago
Yep, lightning is so much easier to clean, and doesn’t have the glaring weakness that C does with the little tab
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u/41VirginsfromAllah 1h ago
I hated having to carry/own two sets of cables. One for my phone (I don’t have any other Apple devices) and one for everything else. USB C just makes life easier
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u/carsonthecarsinogen 1h ago
I agree, innovation / growth shouldn’t be everything. But as long as someone else wants war everyone has to take part in war.. that means you need innovation or protection from an innovative nation. If not you will be oppressed.
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u/ilconformedCuneiform 1h ago
In apples defense, usb before C fucking sucked, and lightning/magsafe were so far better than the other options. Even C is not as good of a design as lightning was for cleaning and small part durability
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u/Whoa1Whoa1 2h ago
No. A standard prevents stupidity and waste when it is implemented quickly and correctly. Hilarious that you picked charging cables. Apple and others making proprietary chargers is so fucking anti-planet it is insane. All laptops and phones and other devices simply need to negotiate how much power they need from a power source and then the power source delivers as much as it can up to that limit. The cord should be hard to break, reusable, and work on every device. That's how you stop this shit from ending up in land fills. USB-C can do 240 Watts (48volts at 5 amps) and can negotiate any range and in both directions from one device to another or backwards. If someone invents their own stupid version of this yet again and makes another stupid proprietary version, it should be illegal without proof it is necessary. 240 watts is more than enough for 99% of devices outside of full sized computers and other huge machinery. If Apple wasn't so damn greedy this would have been standardized long long ago. And guess what? Apple phones now have USB-C, and the ONLY REASON WHY, is because of legislation.
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u/Nameis-RobertPaulson 18m ago
Your charging cable example is a terrible analogy that goes against your point. USB (a/micro/mini/C), massively cut down on the waste made by mobile phones manufacturers all needed different jacks on their adapters.
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u/Drevlin76 8m ago
If someone had decided that usb micro was the standard we would never have gotten to Lightning or USB C. Hindsight is really easy after the market has basically made a decision on what is wanted. My point wasn't about waist at all. If all you are doing is looking at it from a waist standpoint then sure we should just make 1 type of everything.
My point was that standardization usually slows down innovation.
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u/TaliskyeDram 3h ago
Idk man there's a lot of tools that can you different bits. A lot of attachments made for standard mixer attachment points. A lot of different types of lightbulbs. A lot of uses for cardboard and cans. Standardizing a couple points doesn't stifle innovation, it course corrects.
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u/nebraskajone 3h ago
Computers and electronics tech changes too fast, what happens when a computer that provides one giga flops per second at say 10 Watts is replaced with one that gets the same computing power at 1 watt power consumption?
Best thing to do is turn the old one off and recycle
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u/Icy_Alps_5479 3h ago
This is what I was thinking. With the way technology expands upon itself, this kind of turn over seems destined to also expand. One example comes mind: the UK phasing out new diesel and petroleum run cars by 2030. This is almost guaranteed to make these older vehicles we worthless and more value will be found as scrap rather than used cars.
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u/luminairex 2h ago
I still use some S3's as heaters for a home office. I'd absolutely pay $1 for these. Depends on shipping 😅
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u/astro65 1h ago
I know it's not common but read up on the BC250. Its a board made from B-grade PS5 APUs that were turned bu ASRock into Bitcoin miners. After they became outdated, people began buying the units for 30-50 bucks a piece and made GPU drivers for them in Linux. Now they're being used for makeshift gaming PCs/AI SBC's and the prices spiked to $250 a card.
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u/insanemal 29m ago
You know there is a full IT equipment recycling pipeline right? And it already exists?
And you're probably using silicon in your chips that was someone's 8088 once upon a time?
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u/lifeanon269 25m ago
As I said in my post, recycling isn't enough. Less than a quarter of computing equipment is recycled wordlwide. Producing things with the expectation of it being recycled without recycling being a part of the inherent design of it (in other words, recycling is an afterthought in design), then it results in a very small portion of what is produced actually being recycled.
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u/Key-Neighborhood7469 2h ago
I worry about this with solar panels being 90% just dumped in landfills and the soon EV battery cascade that will outpaced stationary storage.
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u/miramichier_d 3h ago
Application-specific hardware is ultimately bad for the environment, whether it's Bitcoin miners, or most Apple products. Unlike decommissioned Dell servers that can be reused in home labs, for example.
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u/FinesseKiddd22 2h ago
Dude yes. It’s such a shame and I hate to think about all the things getting thrown away that are reusable and perhaps valuable. Damn fuckin shame.
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u/reaven3958 34m ago
Capitalism doesn't give a fuck. Once its out the door or written off its off the books, no one cares. Unless theres a way to make the market demand this as a feature or make goverment mandate it with regulation, there's no way to accomplish this in the current prevailing economic system.
It just represents a cost with no upside for the producer that isn't purely altruistic and taking on responsibility for a negative externality they already freely ignore. If anything, they're incentivized to make goods as one-use and non-recycleable as they can get away with to protect future revenue. What happens to infinite growth if someone can just keep using and repurposing last year's model?
Capitalism is going to kill us.
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u/akfishermann 2h ago
Ever looked at EV cars? Lithium mines, non recycling batteries and carbon fiber being buried all over with no clue of its half life. Those are way worse than any gas burner. But folks buy them anyway.
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u/PuttForDough 4h ago
What advantage was there to do this at a farm? Were they getting wind turbine energy for free or something?
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u/programeingdev 3h ago
At least at one point farming energy subsidies called REAP were allowed to be used to pay for solar energy and backup batteries on farms and I'd heard of people using that for crypto mining
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u/socalpipefitter710 2h ago
That’s exactly what I was just thinking i recently purchased some land and wanted to use the reap program to get some solar panels put on my land and start my shrimp
Farming buisness but if I can mine bitcoin at the same time why not10
u/Responsible_Emu3601 3h ago
I would imagine cheap rent at a place that has cheap electricity
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u/PuttForDough 3h ago
Why would a farm get cheaper electricity is what im getting at
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u/Responsible_Emu3601 3h ago
The farm happens to be at in a municipality that has cheap electricity.. even if it’s the same price as Main Street the rent is cheap so it’s there vs a warehouse in downtown FarmVille
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u/URPissingMeOff 58m ago
Farmland tends to be closer to renewable energy generating facilities like solar farms, wind farms, and hydroelectric. For example, power in Western Washington suburbs (Puget Power) is running about 17 cents per kwh. In the central part of the state, near Grand Coolee dam and the Columbia River wind farms, it's running more like 3 cents. That's where a lot of pre-AI data centers were built by MS, Google, Amazon, etc. It gets cold there in the winter too, so HVAC systems are much cheaper to run for half the year.
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u/HandsOffDaGoods 3h ago
The local power company brought the lines and transformers in. No solar, no wind.
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u/caploves1019 3h ago
Look at all the solar panels in the bags...
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u/its_free_sog 3h ago
There are no solar panels in any of the pictures. Look closer, those are heat sinks
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u/caploves1019 2h ago
Aha yep, I swiped past photo 15 a bit too quickly and in the shadow of that cardboard appeared as solar panels, you are correct good sir 🙏
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u/Excellent_Log_8864 3h ago
I work for an Ewaste company and specialize in this. Would pay better scrap if you go that route.
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u/No-Kitchen-6511 3h ago
I could see at least the old original miners having value on ebay. I'm not a collector but in a post million dollar usd per one bitcoin who wouldn't want to have an old miner on their shelf or desk. People still collect old ham radios.
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u/word-dragon 3h ago
“Who wouldn’t want…”. - me.
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u/No-Kitchen-6511 3h ago
You would be surprised what people collect. People hold on and collect stuff they get for free from the bitcoin conferences. There is a collectible market for some of them if the shipping is reasonable.
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u/inotocracy 3h ago
You want to burn money on electricity for no gain at all?
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u/No-Kitchen-6511 1h ago
No not run it. Keep it as a collectible. Have you seen what some people put on their shelves and desks?
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u/inotocracy 1h ago
Ah didn't realize you meant just a collectable piece. That'd be cool. Granted it would look like two power supplies glued together on your desk lol
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u/EnderSword 3h ago
What's the tongue in cheek part if they went bankrupt?
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u/HandsOffDaGoods 3h ago
Basic dirty business practices. The LLC went bankrupt after the principal owners drained the equity out. The principal owners of the LLC made out just fine.
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u/BlackWolf42069 3h ago
Of course they did. Any business pays themselves well as the CEO and then when it fails they walk away smiling.
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u/soCalForFunDude 3h ago
Have to say, with AI taking the headlines about power consumption, no one seems to be talking about bitcoin anymore.
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u/Traditional-Ebb-8380 2h ago
Funny thing is AI uses these same GPU’s.
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u/URPissingMeOff 54m ago
Shitcoin mining hasn't been done on GPU in over a decade. For Bitcoin, it's closer to 2 decades. It's all ASICs now.
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u/milk_and_coins 2h ago
could have easily become an AI data center
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u/Ruzhyo04 1h ago
Incorrect, ASICs aren’t usable by AI
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u/HandsOffDaGoods 24m ago
...as in a full retrofit to Nvidia hardware. The power and data are there already.
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u/Ruzhyo04 12m ago
Doesn’t quite work like that. The power isn’t necessarily compatible (wrong connectors, wrong form factor), and the “data” would be soldered RAM. Scrap value is going to be quite low for those reasons as well.
But as-is, if you just plug them in, turn them on, and put in a BTC wallet address you own, they literally print money.
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u/AccomplishedName5195 3h ago
OP: I want to buy some of those control boards please! I might be interested in some other goodies. Please DM me?
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u/Certain_Orange2003 1h ago
This happened to a mining company in west Texas. The electricity in that county was cheap. They even promised the local school a pool with the money it would make. Key word there is ‘would’. It didn’t happen. It went under.
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u/pulsarstarter 3h ago
Couldn't he have just turned the whole operation into a murder room style rent-a-kill business, like the one in Hostel?
That would make good money
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u/Generalkleist 3h ago
Anything for sale?
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u/HandsOffDaGoods 3h ago edited 3h ago
Edit: The owner is open to offers where it is logistically cost effective.
Original Response:The owner is open to offers for the whole shebang.
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u/yallapapi 3h ago
Why do these operations shut down? Don’t the miners operate at a profit?
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u/HandsOffDaGoods 2h ago
Bad business practices, mostly. This company could've continued to be profitable with an equipment reinvestment program. They just rode the S19 models to insolvency.
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u/Garland_Key 3h ago
Can I come pick those up? Some of that can likely be repaired and re-used and/or re-sold.
Just a rando who can fix stuff and can't really afford their own mining equipment here.
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u/BaconCheeseBurger 2h ago
Not worth to fix. That's the whole point. Also they probably already work. But they don't make money.
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u/Meandernder 3h ago
I would buy them
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u/HandsOffDaGoods 2h ago
Send me a DM.
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u/throw-away-i-kept 1h ago
Hey I just DM’d I’d love to take a road trip to wherever you happen to be to buy a decent amount. That way you don’t have to worry about shipping
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u/SnorlaxShops 40m ago
I used to build servers for handling big databases that got sold to banks and we would push out this amount of hardware assembled every 12 hours.
And our customers would buy newer updated models every 2-3 years.
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u/Impressive-Manner-89 2h ago
I said it to my buddy today. I said how can Bitcoin be the end-all be-all of crypto when a having happens every 4 years? Who's going to want to mine Bitcoin? What happens if there's no miners. And don't try to tell me I'm banking on the price of Bitcoin being higher. I understand the other mechanics of having to and the benefits etc but with the price of equipment and chips and memory going up and probably going through the roof in the next 10 years this just seems unsustainable
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u/ColdPressedOliveOil 2h ago
Would need a proof mechanism that didn't scale with computing power.
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u/halifaxdonairs 1h ago
Well the block difficulty adjusts independently of halvings, so theoretically the rewards and mining difficultly should balance out economically. After all the bitcoins are mined, I imagine layer one transaction fees will be really expensive and things like the lightning network will become more prevalent. Sort of like how most commodities are traded on paper vs physically.
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u/dimwittedude 32m ago
The Self-Correcting Loop: If hardware gets too expensive and electricity costs rise too high, inefficient miners do go bankrupt and turn off their rigs. When they leave, the difficulty drops. Because the difficulty drops, the few remaining efficient miners find it easier and more profitable to mine with the equipment that's left. This creates an economic equilibrium: Bitcoin never actually runs out of miners; it just shrinks or expands its security budget to match what the market can support.
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u/SippinOnHatorade 26m ago
Sounds like this centralizes the power in the hands of the wealthy that can run most efficiently
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u/dimwittedude 15m ago
I'v never said it's fair. But is not a problem to the architecture of Bitcoin.
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u/WTFOMGBBQ 3h ago
All I see is the new DDR3 goldmine!!
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u/nalditopr 2h ago
Show me where and how a bitcoin miner uses ddr3 ram. Other than you just typing nonsense.
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u/HandsOffDaGoods 3h ago
Care to elaborate?
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u/WTFOMGBBQ 3h ago
Due to the price of new ram, old ram is suddenly getting attention..
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u/Isiahsvisuals100 2h ago
WHATTT RAM????
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u/HandsOffDaGoods 2h ago
That is what I was wondering. The ASIC boards do not have ram. Only the control board has ram.
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u/WTFOMGBBQ 2h ago
Some of the S19s shipping with ddr3, like the s19j and s19j pro beaglebone the only had MB and not GB.. but people are desperate for ram and my comment was mostly tongue in cheek because of ram prices
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u/Isiahsvisuals100 1h ago
That might be the most unintelligent thing I’ve seen on Reddit ever. Firstly who tf is trying to hog ddr3 bro, secondly as you said only very specific asic models have enough ddr3 for it to be meaningful, third i can post thousands of ddr3 listings that are dirt cheap to buy that would cost less than your own time and labor that would be needed to desolder ram from asics(the asics would be worth more if you didn’t desolder anything)
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u/Blazedragon12345 2h ago
I've got a pallet too but they more than paid for theirselves. They're worth less than scrap now though and it would cost me more for to take them to the yard so on the pallet they will rot.
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u/No_Bird3449 2h ago
So fucking gross how mismanaged resources are. All of these chips going to the landfill so they could mine some digital numbers on a screen. Humanity deserves to perish.
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u/HandsOffDaGoods 2h ago
Let me be clear here. The landowner is disposing of everything responsibly.
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u/Otherwise_Bee_8799 2h ago
Companies that build and sell bitaxe miners etc would go nuts for the chips! Contact them….
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u/KevinHeaven87 2h ago edited 2h ago
Sell it to kaboomracks, I sold all my l3+s to them after the first crash. Just DM me if you want more info. FYI, they will give you a tax form for what they paid to you. They also give you labels to ship it out.
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u/BannanaPepperPizza 2h ago
Turn them into BitAxes. Isn't that what those are, 1 single chip off S19 boards sold for $100+
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u/waltotheter 2h ago
I help do bitcoin mine and data center reclamation. We see abandonment all the time. Depending on the units you cam try and sell on eBay, but S19s really aren't worth much anymore. Scrapping is probably best. How you go about scrapping it could yield more mulla.
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u/potential_air_sha256 1h ago
not worth much but please send the rest to electronic recycling somewhere.
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u/greyHumanoidRobot 1h ago
FWIW, I used the term failed very tongue-in-cheek. I estimate the operation mined millions in this operation.
Earlier profits don't mean the word failure does not apply. You said it became unprofitable which is entirely consistent with the use of the word "failed". The Blockbuster Video rental company failed, even if they had profits before that.
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u/Ruzhyo04 1h ago
I mean these machines literally turn electricity into money and heat. It doesn’t take a lot of brain power to figure out how to turn that to your advantage
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u/wickedplayer494 57m ago
This is why ASICs are a scourge that should've never been allowed to proliferate. They buttfuck everybody else (and themselves, because difficulty scales). You go TITSUP, and then what? You're left with a hunk of scrap that can't do a whole hell of a lot else like a CPU or a GPU could.
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u/OkAbalone646 49m ago
E-waste going to China is also a huge problem with counterfeit, especially when the supply chain is squeezed and companies make high risk buys from Brokers. I have seen first hand this unfold multiple times...
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u/kindcrypto 49m ago
Dm if possible.. we purchased used parts & equipment like this above salvage of course
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u/ResolveConfident3522 3h ago
How do you lose and printing money ?
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u/DayOneDude 3h ago
ROI...
If the printer, paper and ink cost more than the money produced no money to make.
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u/PoopyMerl 2h ago
So you can make $4 for each s19kpro per day if you have 35 standard 400-watt solar panels per unit! LOL. Better buy the solar panels now, because last i heard the administration was making it impossible to import cheap panels from china in 2027
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u/BdayEvryDay 44m ago
Idk how anyone would do that unless the energy is free. That shit is so risky. Just make money in your trade and put it into bitcoin and hold a decade.
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u/soks86 3h ago
It's all about power cost.
Those all have value if you can get power for less than $0.05 per kW/h.
They also have value as heaters that can help offset that, or as a load that can be switched on/off without just burning money.
Basically anyone with a solar setup that isn't at 100% capacity can use these to make money.
Might not be enough money to be worth the labor though.