Meet The Manic Miner Who Wants to Mint 10% of All New Bitcoins

[Turk.]

by Jon Brodkin Mar 27 2014, 1:00pm AEST

As Bitcoin mining chips crunch numbers, a Raspberry Pi directs traffic.

1.4 million chips and 5,000 Raspberry Pis power absurdly large mining operation.

In a couple of large buildings near the Columbia River in Eastern Washington, where hydroelectricity is cheap and plentiful, Dave Carlson oversees what he says is one of the largest Bitcoin mining operations on the planet.

At any given time, Carlson's goal is to account for seven to 10 percent of the entire world's Bitcoin mining as measured by processing or hashing power, he said. At the moment, he's slightly below that target but doesn't expect to remain below it for very long. The operations are fueled by thousands of mining rigs containing more than 1.4 million BitFury mining chips, while Raspberry Pis loaded with custom software direct traffic on each rig.

"We were looking for the lowest cost, highest volume production, tiny computer controller that had the ability to integrate with another electronic board design. There are many out there, but the Raspberry Pi is something like 40 bucks," Carlson told Ars.

"GH" is one billion hashes per second, and "TH" is one trillion hashes per second.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CjldZLXiAU

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[Shiranui]

Damn. I thought it was going to be about this:

[Sammyinnit]

When it said he's making $8m a month, is that spendable in the real world as cash, or is that just bitcoin 'assets'? By rights, what's worth 8m in assets today could be worth nothing tomorrow...