I have been a miner for two years, from being hot to being completely cold.

On both sides of the 150-meter-long warehouse, there are more than 20,000 rumbling machines densely packed together.

The lights are dim, with only the LED lights flashing green. Amid the noise, there are also the sounds of blowers and air conditioners, which ensure that the warehouse does not turn into a sauna. However, the hot and irritable atmosphere is lingering.

There is a slogan on the wall of the mine: "Time is money."

Entering the mining circle for the first time, making a lot of money

In early 2017, Ah Shui first walked into this "mine" in Ordos, Inner Mongolia. A colleague told Ah Shui that this computer room was used to "mine" Bitcoin, so it was figuratively called a mining mine. But why would a virtual thing be called "mining"? Ah Shui still couldn't figure it out.

The colleague couldn't explain it clearly, so he asked Shui to ask the team leader. The team leader, who wore black-framed glasses and looked like a tech geek, must have explained it to many people. He patiently told Shui the principle behind it: "In fact, compared to mining, obtaining Bitcoin is more like the gold rush that both the United States and Australia have experienced."

"The reason why you see that the scale of mining farms is so large now is because it is becoming increasingly difficult to get prizes. More and more miners are participating. There are now hundreds of mining farms like ours in China alone, and most of the newly built mining farms are in uninhabited places such as Iceland and Russia. But at the same time, the prizes for a single game are getting smaller and smaller. This was a mandatory requirement set by Satoshi Nakamoto when he created Bitcoin." The team leader patiently explained to A Shui.

“So we have to put a sign on the wall of our mine saying ‘Time is Money’, because time really is money here – the sooner you try, the more likely you are to get new Bitcoins.” At this point, the team leader suddenly stopped and looked at A Shui.

Ah Shui was still trying to process what he had just said, when he suddenly realized that the team leader was disliking him for wasting work time.

It was the beginning of 2017, and one Bitcoin was worth about $1,000, or more than 6,000 yuan. Obviously, there was no reason not to participate in a game that gave out huge bonuses every 10 minutes.

Time flies, and Ah Shui has been working in this mine for a year. Ah Shui made a lot of money by mining and buying and selling various digital currencies, and was known as "wealth freedom" in the currency circle.

Deeply engaged in the mining industry, a bleak ending

At that time, the price of Bitcoin had reached nearly 20,000 US dollars, and the blockchain, currency and mining circles were booming. Seeing that the mining machine business was so profitable, A Shui made up his mind to open his own mine and become his own boss.

A Shui began to investigate the location of the mining farm and determined that the average cost of electricity was about 0.3 cents. Later, with the recommendation of a friend, A Shui signed a contract for a site covering nearly 1,000 square meters in a remote mountain village in Sichuan, which was large enough to accommodate nearly 20,000 mining machines.

After selecting the site, Awei quickly hired people and began to build the mine in full swing.

"Building the factory, purchasing equipment (high voltage electricity, transformers... but not including mining machines), etc., cost a total of nearly 2.5 million." It took more than a month for A Shui to complete the construction of the mine.

After everything was arranged, the investment promotion phase began. However, at this time, the entire digital currency market was in decline. The price of the currency kept falling, leaving Ah Shui, a first-time mine owner, completely unprepared.

People who come to consult A Shui start to hesitate after asking about the electricity price, and then there is no follow-up. There are quite a few people who come to consult A Shui. According to A Shui, most of them are mine owners who have a large number of mining machines, but they did not reach a cooperation with A Shui due to cost issues.

In May this year, Bitcoin briefly rebounded to $10,000, and then continued to decline, falling to a low of $3,652.06 in November.

Awei, who originally only planned to do the mining machine hosting business, now just wants to reduce costs as much as possible and transfer the mine as soon as possible.

Entering November, Bitcoin led the decline and the entire currency market shrunk severely.

Today, the price of Bitcoin has been fluctuating around 27,000 yuan. With the electricity price in Sichuan being 0.3 to 0.4 cents per kilowatt-hour, mining machines have long been unable to bear the mining costs.

"Currently, many machines have been shut down because there is no profit anymore and we are even losing money." A Shui is well aware of the difficulty of transferring the mine, but he still has a lucky mentality, as if such a fluke will make him feel more at ease.

Recently, there was a hot news search about mining machines being sold by the kilogram. It is obvious that his investment was not in the right place. Now A Shui just wants to sell the mine quickly and withdraw from the mining circle.

It’s not that Wei has never thought about buying mining machines at a low price, waiting for the bull market to come, and putting them in the mine for mining. After all, there is not a single mining machine in the mine he built.

But considering his recent failed investment experience, A Shui thought about it and finally gave up.