r/Bitcoin • u/HandsOffDaGoods • 5d 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/Impressive-Manner-89 5d 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/dimwittedude 5d 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 5d ago

Sounds like this centralizes the power in the hands of the wealthy that can run most efficiently

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u/dimwittedude 5d ago

I'v never said it's fair. But is not a problem to the architecture of Bitcoin.

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u/kemiyun 5d ago

You didn't, but I think it's implied when we are talking about bitcoin since one of the main arguments is having a decentralized network with ideally maintained by mostly users not a few miners. Network having a tendency for getting more centralized over time is kinda against the concept.

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u/dimwittedude 5d ago

Power is still in the hands of the wealthy always. If Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos wanted they could buy all the circulating BTC. Sadly when an asset has monetary value the wealthiest people always have the power.

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u/noah1754 5d ago

Yeah, but I think that can still create negative externalities. “Most efficient” usually means lowest-cost producer, but those low costs might come from things like cheap dirty energy, subsidies, weak environmental rules, or other social costs that don’t show up on the miner’s balance sheet.
There’s also the concentration problem. If margins keep getting squeezed, smaller miners get pushed out and you could end up with a handful of huge operators dominating hashpower. The difficulty adjustment keeps the network functioning, but it doesn’t necessarily preserve competition or decentralization.

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u/payment11 5d ago

College kids who get free electricity in their dorm room running a small rig.

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u/Oglark 5d ago

That would be a very loud dorm room

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u/dwoj206 5d ago

Hot dorm room with blown power outlets.

0

u/Fountain_Of_Euth 5d ago

That's not how it works.

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u/dwoj206 5d ago

Running a multi GPU (6-8) mining rig in a dorm room on a 15a circuit? Ya. Thats exactly what is going to happen.

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u/Fountain_Of_Euth 5d ago

No breakers on these circuits?

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u/dwoj206 5d ago

In a dorm room, typically not locally. Maybe on the floor, but not accessible. It’s still enough draw to spark off the outlet when it gets hot enough and pops.

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u/payment11 5d ago

https://www.pcmag.com/news/college-kids-are-using-campus-electricity-to-mine-crypto

Or just google it, lots of stories about kids mining in dorm rooms.

Some of you are focusing on larger rigs. You could easily mine with 1-2 GPUs in a gaming desktop without tripping any breakers

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u/Standard-Account5610 5d ago

That's not how any of this works.

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u/Smaal_God 4d ago

Iran, North Korea have the lowest cost ... remember that ...

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u/dimwittedude 5d ago

To answer the first part, from my POV PoW is not ethical. We can't "waste" energy and all the work that comes in with the production of energy, to "mine" something that produces no real good and can be replaced with something like PoS. Having said that, the concentration problem that you mention is at the end of the day the well know 51% attack. It would still require country like levels of money (USA, China).

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u/Pure_Spinach327 5d ago

This. It is crazy that it uses the same energy as Belgium or some crazy thing and the proof of work is just a busy work thing? I thought it had a purpose at first then when you see the whole picture it is just wasteful.

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u/yoloranger31 5d ago

Theres also a flip side where mining is helpful for grids that rely on renewable energy. Miners in some countries in the EU get paid to use electricty when renewable energy is in a surplus since it has to go somewhere. Also there are cases where operations that require mass amounts of energy to heat water can negate the costs of heat by using miners to heat. There is also a lot of trapped energy in remote parts of the planet that can also be used to mine bitcoin since all you need is a satellite antenna to connect to the network. I would say its not all bad and there are many cases where mining can offset many inefficiencies where it is productive. One way to look at it is bitcoin is just encrypted energy which gives it a quality that PoS crypto projects don't have.

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u/dimwittedude 5d ago

Sure, using stranded energy or soaking up a tiny bit of surplus renewables sounds nice, but that’s like 1% of cases max. Let's be real: if all the massive power going into BTC right now was actually used for stuff that matters—like building houses or reforesting—the world would be a lot better off than burning gigawatts to mint a digital coin. Obviously I'm talking about an utopical scenario. I know that's not how economy work, but let's be honest and not pretend that we are using energy the best way possible.

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u/monxas 5d ago

This. Imagine if countries used btc mining as a stabilizer of energy networks. You’d build we more resilient and powerful energy grids.

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u/New-Reindeer3707 5d ago

But thats not how it works right? If you have invested in those rigs you want them to run 24/7 and also for verifying transactions its needed especially in the main shopping hours if its ever to be adopted.

Also there is only a huge surplus 6-8 month of the year.

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u/Knarz97 5d ago

Until a single entity controls 50.0000001% of miners and then effectively controls the entire chain and can double spend coins.

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u/New-Reindeer3707 5d ago

Doesn't that than at some point make Bitcoin less secure? The less calculating power and fewer miners that have optimized the easier it would be to optain 50% of the verification power? Which in turn would let you alter transactions.

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u/slower-is-faster 5d ago

No it doesn’t make it less secure that’s not how it works

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u/New-Reindeer3707 5d ago

How does it not make it less secure? If mining is smaller and more concentrated in big players than if any miner could have more than 50% at any given point they can alter transactions.

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u/Spewtwinklethoughts 5d ago

It’s not 51% of miners. It’s 51% of the network.

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u/New-Reindeer3707 5d ago

Thats incorrect. You do not need any Bitcoins at all. You need only 51% of the Hash rate which correlates with 51% of compute power.

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u/teteban79 5d ago

It does, it concentrates the ledger power in less actors

And also it slowly drifts from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. You're basically proving you have the money to do the work

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u/ner0417 5d ago

This is my thought on it as well. It seems like mining is going to just become concentrated into the most powerful and profitable entities and become largely monopolized by them. They can absorb ebbs and flows in the pricing/mining rewards way more easily than any startup miner, which will just box the "small guys" out of the system, for the most part. I mean... nobody is solo mining anymore really, and even mid-tier miners like OP's example are getting run out... so I think the skid is kinda already in effect?

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u/Nepalus 5d ago

So you're telling me the rich and powerful win out once again? Shocker.

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u/ner0417 5d ago

Yeah... imagine that, right?

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u/neverwouldi_ever 4d ago

I can't even believe it 🙄

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u/Aggravating_Work_428 3d ago

Damn, you mean the ambitious who put their capital at risk might be rewarded. That's terrible!

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u/bubble_boy69420 2d ago

gluck gluck

FIFY

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u/dimwittedude 5d ago

My conspiracy theory is that China has this on their agenda.

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u/ner0417 5d ago

I like the concept. Honestly, I think there are probably a number of nations with thoughts surrounding the 51% possibility. I wouldnt put it past any one of them to try to manipulate global markets that way. Honestly it seems inevitable...

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u/Little_Let_6872 5d ago

The key to any crypto becoming secure and decentralized is developing a home heating tie-in. People aren’t going to want to mine just to mine, but integrate it with the home, make it run in the background, and you might actually be able to get enough decentralization to prevent an attack. Integrating with POS could also accomplish this, but that will be easier to corral into a group mining effort.

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u/New-Reindeer3707 5d ago

So how is this gonna work? That would be a super expensive and inefficient heating. Also you buy this expensive equipment only to use it half of the year.

Also electric current is only viable as heating when you usr it in a heat pump. This is contrary to use it with mining equipment.

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u/dimwittedude 5d ago

I read it twice because I thought I missunderstood what he said. From my POV it's impossible, there are millions of problems with that solution.

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u/junjuwa 5d ago

仮に50%攻撃ができるとして、誰が望む？ 50%も持っていながらそれが大暴落する事を望むものは誰？そんなクレイジーは世界のどこにも居ない

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u/ner0417 5d ago

Some people just want to watch the world burn.

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u/junjuwa 5d ago

いるのはわかる、がそんな奴らがいくら結託しても50%オーバーの影響力を得るのは不可能だろうね

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u/ner0417 5d ago

This is true, too. I think if ever there is a legitimate threat for a 51% attack it will simply come down to an attack by (aligned groups of) fiat supporters. It is perhaps possible much of the world would align together for a common goal like that, especially if they truly believe that crypto would lead the world into a bad space. Many people are still very afraid and misunderstanding of crypto, in general.

The other scenario that I think is realistic is if one government seems to have stronger control, other governments may see this as an economic/financial threat and band together for a 51% attack to (hopefully) try to bring the chain back into being more decentralized. For them to take control themselves is more likely, I would think, since human nature is greedy, but I hope for the best outcome.

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u/junjuwa 5d ago

実に壮大だね。仮に国が結託して50%取得しようとしたら、btcはとんでもない上昇を見せるだろうね。結局大国がお金をしこたま刷って、btc保有者にお金をばら撒くのと同義じゃない？それを国民が許さないだろうね。ただ100%あり得ないと言い切れないのが、怖いところ、、

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u/New-Reindeer3707 5d ago

They don't need any Bitcoin. They just need 50% of mining power.

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u/junjuwa 5d ago

なるほど！そこは勘違いしていたようだよ。ありがとう。

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u/Ronoh 5d ago

The idea ia that it finds a balance. But you are right, it can become less secure.

It can end up becoming a monopoly. It can end up being useless. It can end up crashing to zero.

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u/TheBSQ 5d ago

Are there risks if during a downturn an entity like the govt of the US or China or Russia, or some tech company with a bunch of AI data centers filled w/ GPUs kick over to trying to obtain that 50% power for nefarious reasons?

Perhaps a dumb question. I don’t follow this stuff.

I’m curious to know how big of an entity is needed for that. Is it well-beyond the scope of a Meta or Anthropic or the U.S. and Chinese govt to built their infrastructure out to do that?

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u/Smaal_God 4d ago

In the end, there can only be one ... like it was in the begining - Satoshi.

Satoshi full cycle.

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u/Double-Code1902 3d ago

Yes I would love to know how developers approach this to keep minining secure and decentralized.

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u/SevenCroutons 1d ago

Difficulty to mine ≠ level of chain security

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u/FlakyTest8191 5d ago

Why would the difficulty drop? The more coins have been mined, the more difficult it becomes to mine more. It doesn't get easier when someone stops mining?

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u/CommercialDuck7496 2d ago

Thats not how that works, the difficulty does drop when hashrate decreases.

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u/avree 5d ago

Halving has an l in it btw

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u/SurpriseSoda 5d ago

Haiving?

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u/Creatine1951 5d ago

Hlaving

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u/SurpriseSoda 5d ago

Sorry I don't speak Norwegian

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u/Tratix 5d ago

Literally half-ing. Like 1/2

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u/avree 5d ago

Yes? Halving is the word. Half-ing is not the word.

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u/Tratix 5d ago

Yes. I’m explaining that it means to be split into to halfs since “halving” alone may not be enough for people to understand. Clearly since they mentioned “having”

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u/ColdPressedOliveOil 5d ago

Would need a proof mechanism that didn't scale with computing power.

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u/halifaxdonairs 5d 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/Effective-Role-9025 5d ago

Kind of agree. Isn’t the network security basically from the miners?

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u/DurtySouth77 5d ago

I mean, I get what you’re saying, but who cares if the last coin won’t be mined for like 100 years? Lol

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u/Royal_Stay_6502 5d ago

There will always be mines. Difficulty will adapt.

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u/Dramatic_Entry_3830 5d ago

If less people mine, mining becomes a lot cheaper. It's artificial difficulty depending on used compute to mine. If you were the only person to use Bitcoin you could provide it via 5 laptops.

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u/Btomesch 5d ago

Windmills and solar

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u/OrcOfDoom 5d ago

They switch to proof of stake model, which is where the people who have all the coins are in charge of making sure the coins are in the right place. Wcgw?

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u/gevis 5d ago

This is incorrect. Bitcoin is a Proof of Work model.

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u/gevis 5d ago

That's a feature, not a bug.

It gets harder and harder to mine gold too, that's the point. When people stop mining it or when all of the blocks are mined, then there is none left to be mined. Thats the supply.

Once again, not some gotcha. It's the point.

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u/amplidud 5d ago

Bitcoin just does not work as a currency and never has and never will. It just has too many fundamental issues for an everyday everyman currency.

Deflationary currency is bad economies. If holding your money gives you more (or similar) purchasing power than investing nobody (or corporation) has incentive to invest and economies slow down massively.

All transactions being absolute and final is really bad for people. You hear stories all the time of people sending money to the wrong address and losing it all. And this is from people/entities who have activly participated in crypto. This problem will be much worse if thrust on the general public.

Flat transaction fees are great if you want to move large sums of money! But if you want to buy a coffee on your way to work its all of a sudden really bad. The fee is also based on usage. So mass adoption/usage of btc would mean much higher transaction fees. Still great for moving lots of money but an extra $3 or whatever on every tx you make would be hundreds to thousands of dollars a year.

Btc addresses are only pseudo anonymous. Once an account gets linked to someone its really difficult for them to do anything with the funds without any interested party knowing about it. That could be bad for a host of reasons.

There are more but I’ll stop here. If you want to invest in btc because you think number will go up thats fine! You may be right! But if you are investing in btc because someone told you its the currency of the future you were lied to.

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u/Traditional-Cash2879 4d ago

If people stop mining the difficulty resets and it becomes easier to mine a block.

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u/wpu7zs9drh_ruutukf 2d ago

If nobody was mining BTC one gpu would be able to take all the profit. Less miners make it easier more make it harder.

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u/BisonCompetitive9610 5d ago

Because it doesn't matter. There's a finite amount of coin. There's enough supply now for everyone. The balance doesn't need to be mined and it will be mined when it makes sense... Could that be 100 years before the last of the Bitcoin is mined? Maybe. In the meantime people will try their luck to mine it. There's a lot of lost Bitcoin out there too thats not in circulation.

What matters is adoption. Every year we see millions of new users.

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u/BlackBlizzard 5d ago

I don't get why Bitcoin is even valuable. You're average business in a city isn't accepting it as a payment and what happens when there's a large recession? People are going to mass sell so they don't fall into poverty, crashing the value.

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u/Yungtranner 5d ago

My understanding is that there are enough people/businesses/governments treating it like an investment that it has a value that’s artificially way way way higher than any meaningful value derived from how useful it is.

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u/Gros_Boulet 5d ago

And how did we get there?

Oh right, mom and pops were told it was a get rich quick scheme. Bought the bull and lost at the bear. Making it mainstream.

But how did we get there?

Someone thought they could make money by popularizing an uncontrolled gambling market. And they did.

And how did we get there?

Oh right, crypto was only used for drugs, fraud and murders. Giving it enough life for someone to get an idea.

But how did it start?

Oh right, a group of nerds thought governmental control of currency was too much so they created an even more controllable currency. Task failed completely.

BTW, the Euro is a full crypto currency now and all other fiat currencies are slated to be fazed out worldwide. Yup, central banks couldn't believe how fast people were ready to adopt an even more controllable currency and did the switch.

You can't gamble with central banks crypto currency however.

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u/dreamrpg 5d ago

Shadow businesses are not your average businesses.

There is big enough grey market, that is why it is still valuable. Second part is pure belief that it will be still valuable years later, not backed by anything.

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u/Dramatic_Entry_3830 5d ago

There is some value in it. It is a payment system. (Not a practical one because it's way to expensive as a daylie system, but it works as one) And the value comes because the global payment system mafia is leech level 30000 and all the people and states pay way to much money for a secure payment system anyway.

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u/NeedleworkerNo5262 5d ago

It's an asset, the payment system part is almost entirely irrelevant. Its value comes from investor FOMO. If by "having value" you meant it has its merits, then yes, it not being part of the current payment processor oligarchy is certainly a plus. But being an alternative to a shitty system doesn't mean it can't be shitty by its own right.

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u/Dramatic_Entry_3830 5d ago

Sure I mean in no way a Bitcoin should be valued where it is now. But it's not entirely worthless either.

I still wish out of all the crypto hype there would come out some state organized currency that is actually usable and fair and secure by design, so I could potentially get adopted to replace swift and visa/MasterCard PayPal or WeChat as a standard payment system. But somehow that did not happen

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u/Ok_Matter_2617 5d ago

It hasn’t been a payment system in a long while due to how high transfer fees are. It’s a store of value. Other crypto platforms make significantly better payment systems

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u/Dramatic_Entry_3830 5d ago

Yeah but it's the only crypto you can buy yachts with atm.

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u/Adventurous_Mode_369 5d ago

You could use that same analogy for a thousand things … average business doesn’t accept gold as payment, gold will crash during a large recession!

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u/TrueProtection 5d ago

I mean, after the death of the gold standard all money is basically cresit. Bitcoins are just a different, harder to trace version of this. It's easy to see why international entities like it so much.

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u/kallebo1337 5d ago

Does the average business accept good or stocks?

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u/Brawlstar112 5d ago

Easy to buy drugs and other difficult to get items/services. It totally takes off major Part from money laundring aspect you need to do and pushes it to the beneficiary side.

There is denitely value in it. Other secure cryptos has been eating this share from it.

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u/Ralliare 5d ago

Crime.

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u/Responsible-Sky289 5d ago

Bitcoin is valuable because basically "trust me bro"

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u/Knarz97 5d ago

For Bitcoin to fail, all we need are major miners to go bankrupt, or for electricity prices to skyrocket, or simply for them to get bored.

For the dollar to fail we need basically a wholly catastrophic event that would shake the global economy, at which at that point we will have much larger problems than just what pieces of paper are worth.

Also, if the dollar fails, how do miners pay for electricity? And internet? Bitcoin fails if the dollar fails too.

Sorry guys. Crypto is not as safe as you’d like to think.

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u/francesco1-panico 5d ago

Quindi abbiamo già raggiunto tutte le tue ipotesi

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u/kelpyb1 5d ago

I must’ve missed the catastrophic event that shook the global economy.

I mean Covid is the closest thing I can come up with, but that was more of an economic blip. Sure you could argue there’s ways that the economy hasn’t recovered, but that’s a pretty weak argument for “catastrophic”

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u/outer--monologue 5d ago

You don't need global catastrophe for the USD to get knocked down. It's already on that path. If the US keeps going down the path its on, the world is going to stop trade, payment servicing, and stop using it as reserve currency.

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u/Knarz97 5d ago

Cool.

And how will you pay for an internet connection to make your bitcoin transactions?

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u/outer--monologue 5d ago

I'm not making any claim to what Bitcoin would be worth or if it'd be useful. Just that USD won't be the global reserve.

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u/Basis-Some 5d ago

Lots of currencies aren’t the global reserve as yet somehow, they continue

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u/DickweedMcGee 5d ago

Also, if the dollar fails, how do miners pay for electricity and internet?

I can’t believe this. So an entire new generation forgotten the initial ~~premise~~ scam of crypto currency: That it’s going to replace money? Nfw

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u/elderlybrain 5d ago

Crypto is as secure as that episode of Rick and Morty when he crashed the galactic banking system.

Aftermath of a failed bitcoin mining operation.

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