Blockchain

5 Biggest Bitcoin Mining Farms You Should Know About

Ever since Bitcoin was introduced back in 2009, this very first cryptocurrency quickly gained a lot of popularity. Not only is it the most valuable crypto, but it was also the first cryptocurrency that you could mine. So what does mining mean? Simply put, you use your own hardware to help the blockchain technology, on […]

The post 5 Biggest Bitcoin Mining Farms You Should Know About appeared first on PrimaFelicitas.

Published

2 years ago

March 13, 2020

Republished by Plato

So what does mining mean? Simply put, you use your own hardware to help the blockchain technology, on which Bitcoin was based, to record and verify transactions by solving complex mathematical problems.

As a reward for your contribution, you’d get Bitcoins. That said, back then, mining was pretty much seamless. The problems weren’t nearly as complex as they are today, and there weren’t as many people mining Bitcoins as there are today. In other words, it was a lucrative endeavor.

Some people saw an opportunity and decided to capitalize on it, thus the mining farms were created. As you might guess, mining farms are basically hardware data centers dedicated solely to mining Bitcoins. With that in mind, here are a few of the biggest mining farms you should know about.

Russia

Presumably located somewhere near Moscow, one of the biggest mining farms in the world is in Russia. It’s estimated that around 600 Bitcoins are mined there on a monthly basis, which puts Russia in the place of the most powerful countries in the mining industry that’s worth several billion dollars today.

Even after yet another Bitcoin halving, the amount of Bitcoins mined here is still worth a fortune. The hardware utilized on this farm has a hash rate of around 38 PH, which enables around 20 Bitcoins to be mined per day.

However, such a reward comes at a high price. As a matter of fact, the hourly power consumption of this farm is around 4,500KW (Kilowatts). This power draw costs 6.5 million Rubles ($103,424) per month.

China

China became the leader in mining Bitcoins. When it comes to efficient cryptocurrency mining, you need reliable hardware and that’s quite affordable in China. Moreover, rural parts of the country have cheap electricity with seamless delivery, which made the town of Dalian the hub of Bitcoin mining in China.

This mining farm mines around 750 Bitcoins per month. The hardware they utilize has a capacity of 360,000 TH, which makes up 3% of the entire Bitcoin network. However, the electricity cost for this farm is $1,170,000 per month.

Although mining is still legal in China, financial institutions have been banned from handling Bitcoin transactions. Moreover, a lot of platforms that facilitate such transactions have also been shut down. It’s also estimated that the Chinese government would crack down on mining operations, slowly but surely, closing them down one by one.

Iceland

Located in both Iceland and Canada, one of the largest mining farms under the name “Genesis Mining” choose a specifically cold climate so that they can dissipate the heat generated by mining.

This farm’s hash rate is estimated to be around 1000 GH, thus generating a lot of power draw in this Nordic country. This has earned Genesis Mining the title of the largest electricity consumer in the entire country of Iceland.

Apart from China, these two countries are also favorable for mining operations as their electricity costs are quite affordable. This is probably the main reason why the founders of this mining farm have chosen to relocate here.

USA

Dave Carlson, the founder of the “Giga Watt” mining farm, managed to turn his mining operation into a multi-million-dollar business in just twelve months. The owner of the largest mining farm in the US has begun his journey by mining with his own GPU.

Although the location of the farm is unknown due to the prosecution from the government authorities, this farm has a hash rate of 1.3 PH. However, according to Carlson, the monthly expenses of his company exceed $1 million.

Carlson chose Washington state for his mining operation due to the fact that it has the cheapest electricity in all of North America. The electricity costs in this country are $8.42 per kWh for businesses.

Switzerland

Located in the small farming village of Linthal, this mining farm is the largest in Switzerland. The owner of this farm, Guido Rudolphi has previously owned a similar mining operation in Zurich, but he discovered that the expenses were quite high to his liking.

After two years of searching, the owner finally found a farming village with favorable electricity price to house his mining operations. The only issue for him is the problem of cooling. Although this farm’s capacity is unknown, the owner claims he’s not in it for the money.

Mining farms are illegal in most countries and anyone behind such operations faces criminal charges. However, that doesn’t stop people from doing it anyway. The profit earned from mining Bitcoins can easily outweigh the risks.

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Blockchain

‘Bitcoin maxis’ like Solana, but is there sound logic to that

Published

1 hour ago

September 28, 2021

Republished by Plato

Recent changes in cryptocurrency market dynamics have fueled the popularity of altcoins like Solana [SOL]. It recently became one of the most trending blockchain platforms around on the back of its surging price.

The cryptocurrency, in fact, had a 1-year ROI of over 4,200%, despite dropping by 34% since its peak in early September. Despite the latest hiccup in value, however, market observers believe the project has managed “winning over a significant number of Bitcoin Maxis or near-maxis.”

Ikigai Funds’ Travis Kling offered this observation on Twitter when he said,

“After talking to a bunch of folks over the last couple months, it’s pretty clear that SOL is successfully winning over a significant number of BTC Maxis or near-maxis, which have previously owned zero ETH or very little ETH.”

While the crypto-space is competitive, the tech-twist to the age-old saying – “competition of your competition is your ally” also holds true. Solana is not competing with Bitcoin. Instead, it is competing with Ethereum’s position in decentralized finance, NFTs, and smart contract offerings. Given the fact that transacting on Ethereum is still a pain for some users, Solana’s cheap and fast transactions provide a better alternative to many.

Solana’s DeFi projects recently crossed $3 billion, despite Ethereum hosting the maximum number of DeFi and NFT projects. While Bitcoin “maxis” are also opting-in for smart contracts, they prefer SOL over ETH, according to Kling.

Why? According to the exec,

“I think maxis look at ETH vs SOL and think –

Well as long as its not going to be all that decentralized, might as well have a smart contract platform that can actually handle enough throughput with cheap enough fees where it can really scale, instead getting choked up like ETH.”

However, not everyone agrees with Kling’s opinions. Many believe the decentralization narrative to be wrongly used by Kling, with another Twitter user @mikemcg0 noting that Ethereum is “more decentralized than BTC.” Anyone can run an Ethereum validator,” he said, “but only a select few oligopolies can mine BTC.”

Even so, Bitcoin mining has spread out even more after the recent China crackdown. Although the process is extensive in terms of effort, time, and money, according to another user, “anyone can” mine BTC “if they have the entrepreneurial mindset.”

Now, the latest outage faced by Solana did raise questions about the level of centralization. However, that has not really discouraged those who want to indulge in DeFi, NFTs, and smart contracts. As Solana forges new contracts with Hacken Foundation and Gate.io, others institutions like Osprey Funds and Grayscale are in a race to include Solana in their respective bouquet of products.

In fact, Osprey Funds has already registered Osprey Solana Trust with the SEC.

‘Ethereum killer’ or not, Solana is en route to gaining more interest from the booming crypto-market. Even turning so-called BTC maxis in the process.

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Source: https://ambcrypto.com/bitcoin-maxis-like-solana-but-is-there-sound-logic-to-that

Blockchain

Europe Now World’s Biggest Crypto Economy: Boasts Over $1T Worth of Transactions

Published

2 hours ago

September 28, 2021

Republished by Plato

Central, Northern, and Western Europe (CNWE) has grown into the world’s largest cryptocurrency economy since July 2020. The region experienced a massive increase in trading activity since then– particularly in the DeFi space.

The European DeFi Boom

Data from Chainalysis shows that CNWE received over $1 trillion in cryptocurrency over the last year alone. This represents 25% of global trading activity. Furthermore, it is responsible for at least 25% of all crypto value received by other regions, including 34% of the value received in North America.

This makes the EU the most concentrated in the world in terms of cryptocurrency trading volume. This is partially due to increases in all forms of trading activity over the past year, coming mostly from institutional investors.

Large institutional transaction value grew from $1.4B in July 2020 to $46.3B in June 2021, coming to take up half of all CNWE trading activity. The most pronounced increases were seen on DeFi protocols, where over 80% of these large institutional transactions were sent in June.

The impact of DeFi is further established when ranking coins in terms of transaction activity in the region. Despite being the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, Bitcoin heavily trails Ethereum in transaction volume among large institutional investors. Additionally, DeFi protocols took up a majority share of funds received by cryptocurrency services in CNWE in June 2021.

The Decline in Eastern Asia

CNWE has seen significant absolute increases in its crypto trading volume. However, its new place as the world’s largest trading hub is partly due to a sharp decline in market share held by Eastern Asia– the previous world leader.

In early 2019 the region held over 30% of global transaction volume. This figure has since fallen sharply to about 15% – less than CNWE, North America, and even Central and Southern Asia.

This may be related to China’s continued push to prevent and discourage crypto trading within its borders. China re-announced their ban on crypto trading in the country days ago, and have been moving to prevent all access to exchanges within the country.

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Source: https://cryptopotato.com/europe-now-worlds-biggest-crypto-economy-boasts-over-1t-worth-of-transactions/

Blockchain

Here’s why a multi-CBDC bridge is being tested on Ethereum

Published

2 hours ago

September 28, 2021

Republished by Plato

The race to launch the first CBDC is one the world is following intently. While most have their eyes fixed on China’s digital yuan pilot, a group of countries has come together to take CBDCs a step further.

Phase 3 of Project Inthanon-LionRock saw BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre, the Digital Currency Institute of the People’s Bank of China, and the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates experiment with a multi-CBDC bridge or an mBridge.

What does this mean?

The mBridge initiative would ideally allow central banks in different countries to issue and redeem their own CBDCs across borders on a common platform – without having to depend on correspondent banks.

Meanwhile, commercial banks would be able to “submit peer-to-peer CBDC push payments.”

The BIS September 2021 report stated,

“If successful, an efficient, low cost, compliant and scalable multi-currency, multi-jurisdiction arrangement can provide a network of direct central bank collaboration, greatly increasing the potential for international trade flows and cross-border business at large.”

The report further clarified,

“The prototype demonstrates a substantial improvement in cross-border transfer speed from multiple days to seconds, as well as the potential to reduce several of the core cost components of correspondent banking.”

Here, it is also interesting to note that the project’s Phase 2 prototype was built on Ethereum. This was because the core layer of the prototype contained the blockchain ledger and smart contracts.

Notes on features

As a multiple CBDC project, regulation and compliance were functional requirements. Central banks would be able to monitor transactions in real-time, set balance limits, control the balance held by their commercial banks, and use data for surveillance.

Scalability was also part of the design to later onboard more participants and jurisdictions.

However, one complication was the wide difference in remittance charges across countries. While the global average was calculated to be 6.38% of the remitted sum, the report observed that even a percentage as low as 1% would be costly for payments in the millions of dollars.

An update from China

Alongside the mBridge project, China has also been steamrolling ahead with its CBDC program.

Changchun Mu, Director-General of the DCI of the People’s Bank of China. confirmed that e-CNY pilots have been taking place in 10 areas.

Mu added,

“Payment methods such as QR code and tap-and- go have been well-supported and innovative services such as dual-offline payment and wearable device payment have been tested for safety and efficiency.”

Meanwhile, Howard Lee, Deputy Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, suggested that an e-HKD could also be in the works.