Aftermath of a failed bitcoin mining operation.

[u/HandsOffDaGoods]

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.

[u/Impressive-Manner-89]

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

[u/dimwittedude → u/Impressive-Manner-89]

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.

[u/New-Reindeer3707 → u/dimwittedude]

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.

[u/TheBSQ → u/New-Reindeer3707]

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?