Across U.S., Chinese Bitcoin Mines Draw National Security Scrutiny | Hacker News Reader

Across U.S., Chinese Bitcoin Mines Draw National Security Scrutiny

nytimes.com

16 pointsperihelions18 comments

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/13/us/bitcoin-mines-china-un...

What is the use case for those bitcoin mines? I don't know anybody who is using, which isn't a good argument of course, but I also don't see on any website as payment option and (thankfully) NFT/web3 is largely a goner.

‘The state has lucrative incentives that have made it the most popular destination for Bitcoin miners in the country. One program pays cryptocurrency miners for agreeing to shut off their computers when the grid is on the brink of failure, such as during the record-breaking heat wave that hit the state this past summer. Since 2020, Bitdeer has been awarded nearly $50 million from this arrangement, according to data published by the grid operator. Those payments are subsidized by Texas ratepayers.’

This is unbelievable.

> What is the use case for those bitcoin mines?

They keep the chain going.

> This is unbelievable.

The constant draw of power helps stabilize the grid. Texas wouldn't make a deal like that if it wasn't helping them.

Huh? ERCOT might like the idea in the short run, but as the article points out the opacity of the mining operations actually makes forecasting demand and supply harder over time, since unlike 1 million houses in a heat wave the mines can just switch on (or off) instantly. States need to regulate these operations the way they do generators or batter storage failciities, which they dwarf in size.

They only switch off when asked to do so. At multi mw scale they absolutely can do forecasting.

I am confused because I don’t understand what the bitcoin crypto use case is in 10/2023. Didn’t the idea of crypto payments crash?

Not sure what this has to do with the current discussion, but to answer your question…

The best use case I have found is for collateralized lending and borrowing. Super nice to not have to ask anyone for permission.

Payments are done through other chains.

>Not sure what this has to do with the current discussion, but to answer your question… Simply curious what this massive infrastructure is used for after the crypto collpase.

Collapse? Bitcoin is up 27000x since it started.

Are they actually bitcoin mines or are they a way to leverage export restricted hardware (such as Nvidia A100 or H100) by executing compute jobs from mainland China?

They are actually bitcoin mines and the machines there don't do anything but execute a single function... sha256.

How do you know? I'm having a hard time finding more information. Could you provide more information/sources so that I could read more?

I've been in the business a long time now. I've been mining various crypto's off and on since 2014. My last farm was 150,000+ gpus before the transition to PoS.

Look up any of the bitcoin public companies. They all have twitter accounts.

Crazy conspiracy theory --- crypto is really a cyber attack aimed at the US dollar.

- China was one of the first countries to embrace crypto.

- China was one of the first countries to ban crypto after a decade of embracing it.

- China has maintained ties to crypto miners and exchanges that supposedly left China after the ban.

- Binance hid ties to China and maintained an office there for years after the ban.

- SBF and companies reportedly paid bribes in crypto to Chinese officials.

China and every other country on the planet (including the US), is certainly exploiting it now, but the original intent of crypto had nothing to do with China.

So you know the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto?

Friedcat, duh.

It seems more likely the crypto is cover for the processing to monitor data stolen from the datacenter or something.

Or it's really the CIA spying on us and blaming China

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