Fire in downtown Chiang Mai at "Bitcoin Mine"

[webfact]

Picture: Sanook

 

Sanook reported that a large fire in business premises on Mahidol Road was at a Bitcoin mine.

 

Residents near Building #359 heard and explosion then saw smoke coming from the third floor of the three story premises.

 

Chedi Ngam firefighters arrived and found a large number of computer equipment at the center of the blaze that took an hour to get under control.

 

The premises had been rented for the last two weeks by a business doing Bitcoin mining, reported the media. 

 

This involves using a large number of computers and electricity. 

 

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[ExpatOilWorker]

Unless they are stealing the electricity,  it is even cost-effective to mine here?

[realfunster]

9 minutes ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

Unless they are stealing the electricity,  it is even cost-effective to mine here?

I am far from an expert but I believe most mines are based in cold-weather sites for the savings on the enormous cooling requirements for the heat that such a set-up produces. These guys obviously missed the memo on that !

[Mac Mickmanus]

2 minutes ago, realfunster said:

I am far from an expert but I believe most mines are based in cold-weather sites for the savings on the enormous cooling requirements for the heat that such a set-up produces. These guys obviously missed the memo on that !

17 degrees here in CM at the moment , well cold

[Walker88]

As many people in the energy field have pointed out---and as some social commenters have pointed out (re the hypocrisy of many cybercoin-investing, but 'climate conscious' Millennials), the mining of bitcoin uses more energy than the combined energy use of the companies Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google and Netflix. A single bitcoin transaction uses more energy than 200 Visa or Mastercard transactions.

 

Carbon neutral it ain't, but hey, those Millennials are 'entrepreneurs' and expert traders, on the cutting edge of 'modern finance'.

[JoePai]

With the standard of wiring in Thailand am not at all surprised

[Captain Monday]

Was the rig properly earthed?

[khunPer]

2 hours ago, Mac Mickmanus said:

17 degrees here in CM at the moment , well cold

Greenland and like areas are still much better...????

[klauskunkel]

  +   

 

=  

[hotchilli]

5 hours ago, webfact said:

This involves using a large number of computers and electricity. 

And a nail in the fuse box?

[Crossy]

We have at least one member who is mining in CM, hope it's not his rig.

 

Just a quick sum, there's 40 or so miners in the photo, at say 1,000W each that's close on 200A at 220V even without considering cooling!

 

From the linked article (Google Translated):-

 

Quote

From the surveillance camera inspection, it was found that the fire had ignited around the power line. before the outbreak The officials expected that the preliminary cause was probably caused by a short circuit. After this, the staff has coordinated with the scientific staff to investigate the exact cause again. As for the initial damage value, the appraisal is not less than 1 million baht. 

 

Quelle surprise!

[Gsxrnz]

12 minutes ago, hotchilli said:

And a nail in the fuse box?

Nuh, the nail would have melted in 5 minutes.  3/8 rebar is the recommended solution.

[Crossy]

4 minutes ago, Gsxrnz said:

Nuh, the nail would have melted in 5 minutes.  3/8 rebar is the recommended solution.

 

 

[PFMills]

1 hour ago, Crossy said:

 

 

Come on, Mr Miner, put your hand up. We won’t laugh honest 

[kidneyw]

So if they had no back up system on a set of computers somewhere else, that means they could have virtually lost everything?

[timendres]

That is one very expensive coin they've (almost) mined.

[PFMills]

1 hour ago, timendres said:

That is one very expensive coin they've (almost) mined.

Yes.   But you have to feel sad for whoever the miner(s) is/are as that was an expensive rig. Plus the damage to the shop.

[billd766]

4 hours ago, Crossy said:

 

 

I would hate to calibrate any of them.

[billd766]

2 hours ago, kidneyw said:

So if they had no back up system on a set of computers somewhere else, that means they could have virtually lost everything?

 

[SiSePuede419]

Mahidol road is...Downtown?

 

Is the riverfront "downtown"?

 

Usually, "downtown" is the oldest, most densely populated, center of the city.

 

Which would be the old city, inside the walls.

 

[Gold Star]

Just part of the Bitcoin bubble's 20% meltdown on Friday. 

 

[arithai12]

14 hours ago, Walker88 said:

As many people in the energy field have pointed out---and as some social commenters have pointed out (re the hypocrisy of many cybercoin-investing, but 'climate conscious' Millennials), the mining of bitcoin uses more energy than the combined energy use of the companies Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google and Netflix. A single bitcoin transaction uses more energy than 200 Visa or Mastercard transactions.

 

Carbon neutral it ain't, but hey, those Millennials are 'entrepreneurs' and expert traders, on the cutting edge of 'modern finance'.

Agree about mining. But many people who have bought bitcoins or other cryptos are not actually making transactions all the time, I for example do very few per year if at all. I am sure that the effort that Google puts in trying to track my every move uses more energy than that. And... what is Netflix?

 

[Stargeezr]

And what were these computers actually being used for, Think about that for a few seconds.

  Really.....

[Guitar God]

I ran over a dozen ASIC "Bitcoin" miners a couple years ago. I stopped when the "difficulty" level went up and the price of Bitcoin when down.
Depending on which ASIC machine you have, and what price BTC is at, it's still possible but make a decent profit.
The BitMain S19 Pro is currently earning $29 a day. After paying $10 a day for energy the profit is $19 per day, per machine. 17,000 THB a month for monitoring the devices and restarting them or resetting cables if a board stop hashing.
If BTC goes up 33%, like to where it was a few weeks ago, profit goes up because the energy cost remains the same. You might make $38 a day and  profit $28.

Sounds like a license to print money, right? The Bitmain S19 Pro costs $12,000.  That means your breakeven point is 21 months and probably a lot longer. That assumes that BTC will remain above $43,000. If it goes up and stays there, you may pay it off quicker. If BTC crashes, there's a point where the energy cost is higher than the income so you turn everything off until if and when it does.

Even if BTC stayed at $43.000, you're still not going to break even in 21 months. Every 90 days or so the difficulty increases. That means your machines do the same amount of work, use the same amount of energy but don't mine as many coins as before. Basically as times goes on, you make less and less profit until the miner reaches a point where it is no longer profitable to run after deducting energy costs. If you live in HK or have free electricity, they can still be used for a while until you decide the loud whining noise they make isn't worth the few pennies you make.

To give you an idea of how difficulty affects the earnings, the miners that were making $10 a day when BTC was at $8200, now would make 52 cents a day when BTC is at $43,000.

I put "Bitcoin" in quotes because while some of my miners mined Bitcoin (BTC),  most of my miners mined alt coins like DASH, ETH, LTC and SIA because they were more profitable. You can even mine some coins using (expensive) video cards.

The challenges were that you'd see a profitable coin, order the miner and by the time the device arrived, it was only half as profitable. No matter which coins you mine, all their values are based on BTC. If it goes down, they all go down. I don't know of any cryptos that are pegged against FIAT currencies.

The machines aren't like running a PC or a clothes washer. If they stop working, you're losing money by the minute and they stop working way too often.
Almost every day I'd get an alert that one or more of my miners were down. Best case I'd power cycle them, often I'd have to take them out of the rack and reseat all the cables and try again. Worst case, one of the 3 or 4 boards would die and I'd have to replace it or have it repaired and have the miner offline for a month or more.

The miners sound like flock of angry RC airplanes and a 2000W miner puts out about 1995 watts of heat so you have to soundproof the room and bring in around 150 m3/hour of cool air per machine. My setup required a 16,000 m3.hr, 2200 watt industrial fan going through the enclosure and a 18,000 btu AC running full blast on the outside of it. I paid 40K to run 200 amp service to power it all. I spend many hours setting it up and maintaining it. Some months I'd make 200,000 THB but at the point I stopped mining I think I had just barely broken even. Had I kept everything at the ready and started back up when BTC went from $18K to $50, I could have squeezed a bit more profit out.

[Guitar God]

17 minutes ago, Stargeezr said:

And what were these computers actually being used for, Think about that for a few seconds.

  Really.....

They were mining cryptocurrency. They are, or were, ASIC machines, computers that are hardwired to do one thing and one thing only; solve one specific calculation.

[Guitar God]

10 hours ago, kidneyw said:

So if they had no back up system on a set of computers somewhere else, that means they could have virtually lost everything?

No. They were almost 100% certainty doing pool mining and after a solution is finished it's uploaded to the pool so at most, they'd lose a few hours of work.
Plus the $800,000 USD worth of equipment that burned up of course.

[freedomnow]

Is this how they burn stablecoins ?

[nobodysfriend]

16 hours ago, Crossy said:

 

 

The 350 amp ' fuse ' will work the best ...

[Skeptic7]

Mining ⛏️ has a history of being a hazardous line of work. 

[Stargeezr]

So crypto currency is certainly not a green currency.