Inside a Bitcoin mine that earns $70K a day

right now the world is basically in the middle of a second gold rush but the thing is it's not gold that people are actually after this time around it's Bitcoin the biggest baddest cryptocurrency on the planet but the thing about Bitcoin is that because it's a digital currency you obviously can't just dig it out of the ground of the pickaxe so to get a better sense of how cryptocurrency mining works we're here in northern Washington to visit one of the biggest Bitcoin mines in the United States and to see what goes on behind the scenes the whirring sound you're hearing is the sound of 1,800 servers computing this is a mining facility so we operate basic servers specifically for the Bitcoin blockchain protocol as you can see it's a warehouse environment our facilities manufacture about seven Bitcoin per day the servers in this room do that by solving a difficult math problem called a cryptographic hashing function in the simplest possible terms they're solving a puzzle that's generated by the Bitcoin network about every 10 minutes a new puzzle or block in the chain is released the reward for solving that puzzle is currently 12 and a half bitcoins working together all the Bitcoin miners on earth unlock about 1,800 bitcoins each day and about four tenths of one percent of those are mined in this very room that doesn't sound like a lot but when we filmed this video this Bitcoin mine generated about seventy thousand dollars a day that's 2.1 million dollars a month all in this one room these are asic processors application-specific integrated circuits the chip design is specifically to run the protocol that is Bitcoin blockchain it's code right it's specifically a chip designed to run that code at a much higher rate of speed so what you have to understand about Bitcoin is it's a commodity most of the world doesn't understand it's actually code with an underlying technology value Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are decentralized with every transaction being recorded in the blockchain ledger Bitcoin mining is essentially processing those transactions and adding links to the blockchain each link in the chain created every 10 minutes contains about 2,500 transactions it's held speculatively okay so how much money do you make every day is a function of not when we create it it's a function of when we sell it so what do we do we manufacture it continuously we hold it for when the price runs up and then we sell it we take the proceeds and we expand our operate expansion is essential because as more Bitcoin miners come online and servers become more powerful the puzzles become more difficult to solve the Bitcoin mining algorithm continuously adjusts to keep the mining rate constant one block in the chain equaling twelve and a half Bitcoin every ten minutes and the Bitcoin algorithm only allows for the creation of 21 million Bitcoin meaning the last Bitcoin will be mined in a year 2140 why would auntie when auntie is on the Columbia River we are part of what's called the mid sea Columbia string of hydroelectric dams we have sheep plentiful green hydroelectric power right here that means the cost of power is relatively cheap about $100,000 a month right now this facility is the 2 megawatt facility we are building a 10 megawatt facility now and we are breaking ground on a 20 megawatt facility and then we also have 8 megawatts where the facilities under construction in two separate locations and in addition to that we are in the process of developing projects for another 80 megawatts all at this time that growth is essential because the world is in the middle of a Bitcoin mining Gold Rush profit margins can be 70% and higher for mining operations and miners big and small are looking to cash in if you can get tech infrastructure closer to the source and not have to build out all the distribution network you drastically reduce the cost and the bottleneck so we are building this emerging technology here in Central Washington State because we're close to the source and we have a fiber backbone and this an International fiber backbone that travels right through our Valley this region is naturally situated to be one of the international epicenters for this emerging technology we call blockchain [Music]

Channel: Digital Trends

Views: 1,759,322

Rating: 4.8503952 out of 5

Keywords: bitcoin mining, bitcoin, mine, cryptocurrency, blockchain, mining, asic server, Digital Trends, technology, news, review, tech, tech review, tech news, DT daily

Id: -z4qbkQ3cK8

Length: 5min 9sec (309 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 27 2018