This is a conversation whose most important point is about the possibility that the remittance banks are blocking payments to the ASIC based cryptocurrency miner manufacturer Bitmain. Any one who reads this who has information on this topic is encouraged to comment.
MrX: I just got a letter from the bank today that the remittance banks are starting to block wire transfers to Bitmain. I have a few orders that are fine but looks like BTC/BCH are going to be the only way to place orders soon. Thought I'd pass that on. My bank uses Baker's bank for remittance on intl wires. Not sure how wide spread that is yet. So, just an fyi.
VonFirstenberg: Who is blocking? China or is this a friendly little whollop in the ass from our lourds and masters the private central bankers care of Jamie Dimon? and when did you transfer last?
MrX: The latter. My last successful transfer was this morning. This afternoon, the bank manager called to let me know.
VonFirstenberg: @#%^#%&
MrX: Had nothing to do with my bank. I guess banks use central banks for wire transfers and it was the central remittance bank that blocked it
VonFirstenberg: but on our side of the ocean then?
MrX: The bank emailed me the letter after the call. Yeah our side
VonFirstenberg: Bill Still's "The Money Masters" if you have not already watched. This is going to drive miner prices through the roof for a bit
MrX: Personally, I'd prefer if my buyers used BTC since it would simplify the order process. Shame new miners are scared of it a little.
VonFirstenberg: Well it's going up because it's not being used in a liquid fashion
MrX: Plus, coinbase's one week hold on bitcoin buys doesn't help.
VonFirstenberg: beats me what they are thinking. They'll just keep US citizens out of crypto but not going to stop many other people
MrX: Meanwhile all the big banks are rolling out farms
VonFirstenberg: They must have seen some huge capital flows. oh so that's it. They're taking over for our own good us rubes can't be trusted.
MrX: Fidelity just launched a big btc/etc farm
VonFirstenberg: location?
MrX: They haven't said, other than that it's operational with custom hardware
VonFirstenberg: Custom hardware? and not bitmain's? If it is their own …..dang. They're serious. They serious about taking over should have known it
MrX: https://themerkle.com/fidelity-investments-cryptocurrency-mining-operation-is-now-profitable/ My guess is that antminer prices will go down in the us with limited buyers and paypal blocking transactions
VonFirstenberg: You know come to think about it this was their only play wasn't it? Was there any other strategy that a stodgy old banker who does not like to work too much could use?
MrX: Proprietary miners like fidelity will drive hash rate up making it unprofitable for small shops
VonFirstenberg: yeah especially if they have sub 16 nm IC's in the miners
MrX: Mining is the closest thing in the world to a perpetual motion machine. Produces more electricity/cost than it consumes
VonFirstenberg: And they'll have cheapest electricity going right next to the hydro station
MrX: 8nm are in use right now on proprietary systems
VonFirstenberg: My theory is the hashing algo needs to be dynamically selected to prevent somewhat who is doing the chip? any indications?
MrX: I'll have to dig it up, read a piece on it the other day. 4nm already in testing
VonFirstenberg: That's ahead of Intel
MrX: funny thing is, this will probably drive monero XMR through the roof
VonFirstenberg: oh yeah thinking the same was we typed
MrX: let me see if i can find the source. Here's one article from June about 7nm http://www.eenewsanalog.com/news/globalfoundries-launches-7nm-asic-platform IBM is making the chip
VonFirstenberg: Consulted with a chip designer last week. as of last week this was my opinion http://www.amarketplaceofideas.com/tracking-progress-practicality-introduction-semiconductor-products.htm unless IBM is ahead of that road map. using their own in house foundries
MrX: The article I read, which I can't find now but I'll keep looking, stated that 8nm was deployed in a proprietary bitcoin mining operation with custom hardware. Putting dots together, I assumed it was Fidelity. I've been testing some Dell PowerEdge r610s for Monero mining but haven't comitted yet. I have 19 units on a rack and they're doing pretty well. Each is about 90% of the S9's output less power use though.
VonFirstenberg: Meaning dollar wise?
MrX: yeah profit/electricity
VonFirstenberg: hey I have an observation for you: I sensed Bitmain really opened the flood gates about 3 weeks back
MrX: about 13-14 USD/day each for me with my electricity rates.
VonFirstenberg: perhaps they had advanced knowledge of this banking obstacle?
MrX:They had a lot of bad orders. eBay guys who placed orders to sell online but never paid. I called them.
VonFirstenberg: ah ok. That was what I thought earlier until you mentioned
MrX: My guess is that eBay and PayPal scrapped their orders. I had that happen to us once. 21k USD in orders that they put a 180 day hold on
VonFirstenberg: you are paying what for a kW*hr?
MrX: .17
VonFirstenberg: is about 13 here. Looking for other options here. we talked about this but I forgot
MrX: I get about 5900 h/s on the r610s at about 500w for XMR I've been watching XMR and Bytecoin (which I like but everyone else seems to ignore) Bytecoin is trading at 0.00130 right now. So it's probably a better investment coin than mining coin.
VonFirstenberg: LOL that's almost a homophone
MrX: USD
VonFirstenberg: probably why they ignore. bad name choice
MrX: yeah. It is easy to mine and uses cryptoKnight so no real advantage to GPU over CPU That makes it a "who has the bigger electrical main" competition really to run all the CPUs Plus, Dell PowerEdge units are massive. They need a full depth rack, ECC RAM etc..
VonFirstenberg: LOL tanks
MrX: seriously, but at least parts are easy to get.
VonFirstenberg: yah I hear that got a empty plant over here for 400k USD with a 1MW main
MrX: There is no part of my soul that wants to setup GPU racks. So I'm looking at other options
VonFirstenberg: 80000 ft ^2
MrX: That's a pretty good price. I've been looking at converting shipping containers. They're cheap and Google and HP have been using them for server pods forever.
VonFirstenberg: with big fans I assume? I was so hoping that the imminent death of the petrodollar was going to kill the Central Banking War Machine.
MrX: https://es.pinterest.com/pin/537195061789427790/
VonFirstenberg: idea being they are quite portable? self contained so you place out on the bare ground
MrX: Really… all of this freaking out by the banks is a good thing for crypto. In their own way, they have given it validity. Most people won't really absorb it until after 2020 (like Prodigy or AOL were to the internet). By that time, prices will be much higher and even small investments/mining today will yeild high rewards to those mining miniscule profits today
VonFirstenberg: no structure required. yeah I was thinking that same brainwave thinking maybe I should just keep sucking down the high power bills here
MrX: Yeah, self contained, plug and play. Get electrician to wire up a cable (similar to a generator) and plug into the unit. The unit has it's own subpanel and wiring.
VonFirstenberg: but it's going to have to be put in a more secure fenced in location or the night zombie crank headz will be looking for copper
MrX: I think that mining has about a 3-4 year shelf life for small groups. After that it's going to be too costly to do. I think that for the average joe, investment becomes the only option at 2021. The game right now is accrue as much as you can before then. That's true. I'd actually rent an aircraft hanger or warehouse and park them inside. Easy to move if you change facilities, load them on a truck and drive them to the new location.
VonFirstenberg: well it becomes a technological arms race as you described. Unless some bright spark finds a way of kiboshing that it's already one for that matter but this takes it up 5 notches
MrX: Honestly, I don't know that it will be necessary. After 2021, I think there will be some twists in the plot and other areas to focus on that might be more profitable than mining. We're just playing the mine/hold game now.
VonFirstenberg: yeah. but that's a bit scary because it's like the Cambrian explosion in evolutionary terms what looks like it's a big hit today may be replaced by something totally unimagined
MrX: If the big banks are fully involved, they'll make BTC available as a transaction option on debit cards/ credit cards etc… They'll have it at POS systems in retailers quickly. That could be good if you have some in reserves. Let them mainstream the technology for us. I think that escrow will become a bigger business than mining post-2021. But, who knows for sure. What we do know is that Fidelity built a farm that is profitable. They're only going to scale it from here until it isn't profitable anymore. It's hard to compete with a few billion in investment funds. I can see a market for consumers though in mining. But not the way most think.
VonFirstenberg: well it will drive BTC up like a rocket for a while but if you sell some service or product to Fidelity?? that could be pretty sexy too if you could get a bead on it
MrX: Imagine low-income housing coming with a bitcoin mining unit or two, they produce coin which pays the electric bill of the tenant and any extra profits go to the provider. Free electricity for the tenant, small profits on each unit to the provider. Put a few thousand of those into service and you don't need a data center and you have distributed mining.
VonFirstenberg: was just thinking about mounting up some miners in the blower area of the furnace in the front house on my lot summer is a problem but winter is gold
MrX: I did that. I have 3 S9's at home by the central heating return. I'll just say that we don't use a lot of fuel in the winter here.
VonFirstenberg: and in summer?
MrX: Well, I put a return into a small server room I have at home. In summer, I have one A/C unit that kicks in and a couple of exhaust fans that keep it to about 79degF in the room.
VonFirstenberg: when / if do our lourds and masters the central bankers say "it is illegal for you to be involved in CC" ?
MrX: I use recording studio sound panels in there.
VonFirstenberg: oh yeah to keep the buzzing hornets out of your head
MrX: I think that would be difficult with Fidelity and other banks involved. Also, it's the same race as Napster and any other distributed network Unless they come up with a simpler solution like Netflix and Pandora, people will mine. They won't be able to stop it really.
VonFirstenberg: well then don't they just roll up Fidelity with a buyout?
MrX: The only other thing they can do is just drive the difficulty up so much that you need super computers to mine. Price out the competition
VonFirstenberg: well if they have the threat of raiding you? call you a "Nork collaborator" since the Norks are getting into BTC. Treat you like a counterfeiter but you are right the long term sol. is to drive up difficulty. That throws a net around Tiamat
MrX: If they make it illegal to mine, I will likely stop mining. Most of my BTC income comes from setting up data centers, consulting and support. Likely, companies like Fidelity will mainstream it into a job classification for future employees. The gold rush will probably end soon when the big gold miners show up. Until then there is still money to be made. I think the goal in clamping down on ICOs is to streamline the process for big banks to focus on a couple proven cryptos
VonFirstenberg: But your AOL analogy is correct
MrX: Whatever the porn industry and drug dealers use is likely the currency that will survive. lol.
VonFirstenberg: They may be focusing too early? well if you believe what many say the CIA / banking is the biggest dealers in drugs of all so ………
MrX: I think so. But remember that Google was a takeover of AOL and AOL was a takeover from Yahoo and Yahoo was a takeover from Prodigy. There are still a few laps out there.
VonFirstenberg: but if big banking gets in now do they freeze the field?
MrX: Not in company name of course, but in userbase. Hard to say. It may be useful to have miners at first for them. I imagine that Fidelity or Morgan Stanley won't be able to shove BTC down consumers throats until they demand it. My guess is that they want to be prepared for that now. Realistically speaking, it would be more profitable for Apple to make bitcoin miners at 100 USD and sell them at 2000 to miners than it would be for them to build themselves a mining farm and wait 6 months for ROI. Silicon Valley tolerates banks because they fund them. ICOs bypass banks to fund start-ups. We might be seeing a war between banks and silicon valley right now.
VonFirstenberg: So far from what you say I see the banks winning. They can print themselves a "loan"
MrX: So, all this could just be focused on startups who consume billions in USD to fund highly profitable startups. The banks want to keep that money so this might just be their approach to that. That's likely. It also depends greatly on the international market. I can always jump on a plane to the UK and exchange for Sterling then deposit in Barclays and fly back to the US to extract USD.
VonFirstenberg: Same people own the Fed Res. probably are the controlling hand behind BOE.
MrX: I think that due to the international nature of BTC, it would be hard to put it in a box. China is only doing it because there's a presidential election on Oct 18 and the sitting president is not doing well. He's a communist (literally) and the communist party hates capitalism and btc. They will likely reverse course after the election.
VonFirstenberg: They have fought and won many battles to be the ultimate puppet masters and from what I have seen it aint that easy to tame a Chinaman. Bully for the Chinese I say. They show a respectable stubborness in the face of tough conditions and if you have been following capital controls and those same chinese ability to evade and circumvent……..
MrX: That's true. I think that the safe goal is to make a small mount of money during this time. Stay off the radar, jump through the hoops and come out ahead. I don't think any empires will be built by the common man on the back of BTC today. Maybe a couple of years ago you could go from rags to riches. Today I think you can go from a ford to a mercedes.
VonFirstenberg: unless you do an ICO
MrX: I'm watching Japan. As goes Japan, so goes the rest of the world in 15 years… lol.
VonFirstenberg: or some such. Why do you say that about Japan? ( all I know about Japan comes from a 5 foot tall fireball I knew. But all that knowledge was in the arts of pleasure) You saw they are claiming a 7nm miner out next year
MrX: Japan is almost always the first country to adopt next generation ideas and technology. Typically, we don't have the same use/saturation for nearly 20 years. Japan was largely Cell phone as we were just picking up our first units. Japan is legalizing BTC as a national currency soon, as an example. But they are vastly ahead. They've had highspeed rail for nearly 30 years and we're just starting. They are saying one is already in use actually for proprietary ASIC Miners (undisclosed company)
VonFirstenberg: yes as you said. The arty I saw was about a Japanese company.
MrX: They are getting heavily involved. Amazing what you can do when you have almost zero military budget. lol.
VonFirstenberg: and a nation of above average IQ.
MrX: That's true. It's also impossible to become a Japanese citizen.
VonFirstenberg: That japanese gf was a good worker and easy on the eyes. Usually the better looking the girl the more lazy she is
MrX: Venezuala and Nicaragua are talking about adopting BTC as national currency as well.
VonFirstenberg: told her "if you want to walk the grand canyon with me you have to train" ….so she would do 4 Squaw Peaks ( 1100 foot altitude change bottom to top )
MrX: Zimbabwe and a few African nations who have had difficulty with inflation are following suit.
VonFirstenberg:They need it the worst but that will really shut down their printing press button pushing finger
MrX: It could be, that Bitcoin mining becomes an offshore process in 10 years.
VonFirstenberg: something tells me Venezuela is in no position to design miners
MrX: No, but neither is North Korea. lol.
VonFirstenberg: I ran into a guy who was involved in a BTC mining operation in Cidade de Oeste next to Foz de Iguacu ( great big water falls….huge water vols ) Yeah I figured the Nork story was agitprop to try and smear BTC and those that would compete with the banking cartel
MrX: The banks are afraid, as they should be. I don't think anyone could reasonably think that their end would come without a lot of flailing about. Here's another thing to consider. Take fidelity for example. What happens if they mint a ton of BTC, then "panic sell it all".? Market price goes through the floor with a massive sell off. Plus, they could also bundle the bitcoin they've been mining into mutual funds/IRAs etc… At that point it's pure profit for them.
VonFirstenberg: right now unfortunately the moves you described don't look like flailing to me.
MrX: I'm not sure. Napoleon brought a lot of guns to Waterloo. Hitler brought a lot of guns to Russia.
VonFirstenberg: Yeah but England had the Rothchild's on their side.
MrX: Didn't work out so well in the end.
VonFirstenberg: I would not bet against the Bauers. Both cases ( Napolean / Hitler ) looked like people who would not comply with bankers wishes
MrX: There's an old saying. If you're not at the table, then you're on the menu. They might just be building chairs for the table as well.
VonFirstenberg: wars are won in the banking boardrooms. There is probably going to be a boom of sorts though right? even though it may all end up in bankers mitts
MrX: I think that's true. Sadly, I don't think there's enough real information about motive to make a plan. My thoughts tell me, mine as much as you can mine before 2020. We have this president for better or worse who won't interfere with the banks too much. After that, it's anyone's guess. I'll probably liquidate all crypto assets in 2020 and see what's happening. Keep my machines mining until they tell me not to and evolve some sort of plan in the meantime. I think there are other areas of blockchain to tap into still. The other issue is going to be transaction processing. There could be a hardfork after 2020 that rewards transaction processing without block generation.
VonFirstenberg: And those booms money gets spent quite easily
MrX: I pay a lot of attention to the guys with money who also understand technology. I used to work at MIT so I can do a reasonable sniff test on most of what they say. The techno-rich, believe BTC will hit 500k USD in 2020. I'm inclined to agree if history is to be taken into account.
VonFirstenberg: BTW: No president screws with the banks. Citigroup picked Obama's cabinet for the most part
MrX: We've had a couple. I can see Trump throwing a curve ball if it doesn't look like he'll win reelection. He owes a lot of money to banks that I'm sure he'd rather not pay back.
VonFirstenberg: Only encouragement is Trump's portrait of Jackson ( I killed the bank) in the Whitehouse. oh that could be delicious
MrX: Likely, the USD will switch to a cryptobacked structure. Much like the change from teh gold standard to the fed standard. The USD could be blockchain based in 20 years
VonFirstenberg: yeah but in competition you have the Chinese buying oil in what will become "the gold trade note". It's a foot race
MrX: That might be why the big banks are getting involved.?
VonFirstenberg: which? Big banks have CC to worry about but they also have death of petrodollar in the east to play against too. They have to be EXTREMELY concerned. All that money from Saudi et al was recycled through the NYC money center banks
MrX: China's lack of regulation at all levels will likely allow them to be the next major superpower. They can build an entire city in weeks because of lax building codes.We just can't compete with that. I'm personally ok with China taking on the world's problems and for us to settle back into a UK style role in the world. But, we'll have to see how it shakes out. Oil is dying and money has to be based on something… Maybe BTC-Baron is a term we'll hear in the future. On that note my friend, I have to jump off the computer. I have to run the kids to school early in the morning. It was good talking, I'm glad I've made a new friend. My wife is sick of hearing about bitcoin. lol
VonFirstenberg: News of Oil's death is premature. Tally up the things around you that involve petrochemicals. Woot. Scary how dependent/ You're killin me over here. ok we'll talk soon cause if we don't I'll fucking explode
MrX: My only trick was to put a bitcoin wallet address monitor on her phone, so she could see the pool deposits magically appear all day long. All right, Fred, we'll talk soon. Have a great evening!
VonFirstenberg: oh yeah beau. Not to be too naughty but women are cheap and they do love the moola. You toos!
10-4-2017 UpDate:
This looks like Bitmain's loose ordering and payment status readout on their website made a fraction of buyers panic enough to complain to their banks. It took BM over 2.5 weeks to confirm a payment I made. I was starting to sweat so I know how they felt.
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