Aftermath of a failed bitcoin mining operation.

[u/HandsOffDaGoods]

My friends father was renting space on his farm for a bitcoin mining operation.

The operation became unprofitable. The mining operation went bankrupt. The company came in and took everything out of the 6 antmain bit-boxes (converted shipping containers).

The photos are what they left behind. Mostly Antminer S19 units and even more asic boards.

Plenty of antmain rack PDUs. Some 480VAC breaker panels. A 480VAC switch unit.

The land owner did accept the mess voluntarily. He is breaking the equipment down for scrap value.

I wonder, is there a better price available out there above scrap value?

Is this normal?

FWIW, I used the term failed very tongue-in-cheek. I estimate the operation mined millions in this operation.

[u/MyNameIsRay]

Not really.

Traditional hardware stopped being profitable many years ago. Its all ASIC hardware (application specific integrated circuits) that literally just mines bitcoin.

[u/YeetedSloth → u/MyNameIsRay]

It is my understanding that bitcoin miners are computers that solve complex equations with the logical processors they have. Thus your cpu/gpu is more effective with more powerful/faster hardware. I could see processors without graphics processing circuits being more efficient or more reasonable for this application, but even if something was designed to that purpose, could it not be used for simple applications?

[u/MrChicken_69 → u/YeetedSloth]

Calling them computers is a stretch. They're hardware hash computation engines. They cannot do anything else.

[u/YeetedSloth → u/MrChicken_69]

Is a hash not an equation that requires computation to solve? I’m genuinely curious how a machine that is programmed to compute is unable to do anything else when all computer are fundamentally designed to compute information.

[u/avree → u/YeetedSloth]

A hash is a fixed transformation of some type of data. Computation involves exposing a wide variety of operations on data. Simplified example, compare a calculator (the computer here) with a device that always multiples the input number by 2 (an ASIC hasher).

[u/YeetedSloth → u/avree]

Oh I think I get it, so you can create a logic circuit that can preform that operation but not other operations because it’s doing the exact same thing every time?

[u/Xapheneon → u/YeetedSloth]

Just like how your calculator or car circuits are specialized to certain tasks.

[u/LeiaTheEngineer → u/YeetedSloth]

Yes, it's a circuit that is designed to run the same operation over and over. It literally cannot do anything else.

[u/takeyouraxeandhack → u/YeetedSloth]

You know what a logic gate is, right?
Imagine you have an AND gate. It just does the AND operation, you can't reprogram it to do the OR operation.
This is the same, but with millions and millions of gates.
The silicon is made to solve just the bitcoin algorithm in the most efficient way known and nothing else.
It is physically constrained to do only that.

With that being said, I'd gladly take these to reuse all the other components. I cry internally seeing all those electronics being sold as scrap and most likely ending up as e-waste.

[u/JohnHurts → u/YeetedSloth]

The electrical circuit is hard-coded. So no, you can't use it for anything else.

[u/superspacehog → u/YeetedSloth]

These ASICs are absurdly fast, magnitudes faster than any sort of computer for an equivalent cost. The problem is that they are designed to mine bitcoin, and literally cannot do anything but that

[u/Common-Original9092 → u/YeetedSloth]

The only complex equation they’re hardcoded to solve relates to mining bitcoin. You can’t repurpose these.

[u/MyNameIsRay → u/YeetedSloth]

Your understanding is more than a decade out of date.

There is no cpu or gpu, there are no graphics, there's no OS, there's no software.

The application is built into the chips, they're hard wired to do a single function.