Hello all,
Would like to ask for some advise and potentially offer a collaboration as well. The forum has been heaps informative and ive learnt alot here frm trudging and trawling the forum so a great big thank you in advance!
Abit of background about how much I/We know about Bitcoin. (I continuously refer to me and Us as we as a company intend to invest in building a Bitcoin Farm)
Sometime in 2012, i stumbled across "the Silk Road" forum and the whole TOR phenomenon. Got online, got on Silk Road and even attempted to order a thing or two. Paid with Bitcoin, which i bought off someone else at a rate i cant remember. I do know it was nowhere near what it is now.
I delved abit deeper on my free time about understanding more about Bitcoin and Bitcoin Mining. I attempted to "mine" bitcoins using a PC at home and was able to mine 1 coin in a month or so if im not mistaken. I may be wrong as its been a couple of years now so apologies in advance for any mistakes in chronology.
I was contributing to a pool called "slush's pool" at that time and with abit of research, it seems this pool is still around so i could "log in" through the Slush's pool website to see how much Bitcoin i had earned and i could cash out into my Bitcoin wallet.
Anyhow, due to the shallow nature of my mind, i assumed the currency wouldnt take off as at that time, its primary function was for the purchase of illicit goods. Or at least thats how my shallow mind made it out to be.
Now ive seen otherwise and it seems the future of this currency may be exponential.
After further research, it seems that now people use dedicated ASIC rigs to mine for Bitcoins that mining for Bitcoins has become an industrial sized operation occupying acres and acres of space.
This is where i have some questions and i was hoping someone could fill in the gaps and maybe we can take this further together as well..
1. Electricity Cost : Ive come to understand that the biggest hurdle to overcome is electricity cost in mining. Besides the real estate location being the physical location where you house the mine farm, the electricity cost is a large hurdle.
Is there any "other" substantial operating costs besides electricity?
2. There are some "LARGE LARGE INDUSTRIAL SIZED" Bitcoin mining operations ive read about online.
http://money.cnn.com/gallery/technology/2013/12/17/bitcoin-mine/1.htmlhttp://www.thecoinsman.com/2014/08/bitcoin/inside-one-worlds-largest-bitcoin-mines/These articles write about large industrial sized Bitcoin Mines.
In these mines, are the equipment used standard "buyable" equipment that i can find on the internet or are they custom made and custom designed?
Meaning, if i wanted to replicate what they've done, would i go out and buy 5,000 x Spondoolies SP35 Yukon or Antminer of some kind?
Or is the equipment they use custom designed and built for them alone and not bought off the shelf like the 2 above quoted items?
3. Obsolete rate of equipment
Looking at this site :
http://www.rigwarz.com/It would seem that the ROI (return on investment) for the equipment is approximately 1 year (365 days). Im assuming that this takes into consideration an "average" power cost into the calculation to generate the balance of the profits? If so, what is the rate of electricity?
Also reading the above 2 articles, it would seem that the rate of improvement and upgrade for the efficiency and speed of these ASIC rings is substantially fast!
Would your rig be still relevant in 1 year, being your ROI? If it stops generating enough Bitcoin after 6 months due to the increase in difficulty of the algorithms, i would not even recover my investment, much less make a profit?
OR
Perhaps once a miner becomes 6 - 7 months old, due to the increase in difficulty of the algorithms, my rig will generate less return BUT i can continue to add more and more rigs incessantly and the old rigs doesnt necessary become obsolete. It can continue running, just less efficiently as new rigs. Am i correct?
It only becomes unfeasible when it consumes more money in electricity than it can produce in Bitcoins. Am i correct?
4. Mining Pools.
I generally understood that you had to join a "mining pool" as no 1 individual can mine successfully due to the difficulty. Would an industrial sized operation also need to join a mining pool? And if so, how do you identify the best pool? If your farm is substantially large, can you contact the pool owner/administrator and work out how to start a partnership?
The reason why we are asking is as follows.
We currently operate a "plastics manufacturing business" here in South East Asia. We operate approximately 250 plastics processing machines here over a factory/warehouse space of around 13 acres. Our products are items like microwaveable takeaway containers, meat trays, deli trays, foam insulated cups, foam trays, take away boxes, straws, drinking cups (starbucks frappucino, 7-11 Slurpee), party plates, party cups and many others. Our products are exported globally to many many countries.
Due to the heavy consumption of electricity of our plastics processing machineries, we have a LARGE supply of electricity and a very very attractive rate from the utility company as well alongside with "off-peak" rates for consumption after 8pm and weekends.
We have been interested in starting a large industrial scale Bitcoin mining operations in our existing factory areas. We have twin 11 KVA incoming high-tension supply (approximately 6,000 amps) and capacity to upgrade to higher amounts in our own substation on-site.
Hence, the same thing that has made our plastics manufacturing successful thus far, being low electricity cost, we hope will allow us to mine Bitcoin effectively as well.
Although, further research tells us that equipment that may take 1 year to recover the cost on, may become obsolete in 4 - 6 months. Further, the volatility of the rate of exchange to common world currencies (USD, EUR, JPY) makes it unfeasible.
We are still extremely interested and would like to invest a large sum to create a commercially viable operation in the long run.
As the technology evolves very quickly and we dont constantly monitor the technology, as for us it is a business rather than a passion, we would also like to know if there are any forum members that would like to join us as a consultant, imparting knowledge and just filling in a few blanks here and there. I think our general understanding is somewhat sound but alot of help is needed. Once we've cleared the preliminary "blanks" and gotten a full understanding, we are happy to offer the person a share/stake in the operations which means an included stake in the equipment/assets as well. Basically a full business partner and part owner of the entire operations.
I understand that we may not have a thorough understanding of the concept as a whole and our understanding may be rudimentary so please accept my apologies in advance if ive made any mistakes above either in concept or understanding. Looking forward to having more information and someone to work together with too!
Have a great day!