The life and death of a mining farm: 3 million yuan was spent to build a mining farm, but no mining machines were put into operation

"I just want to get rid of the mine as soon as possible and focus on my clothing business." After three months in the mining circle, A Wei found that the mine of more than 1,000 square meters that he spent nearly 3 million to build turned out to be a hot potato that he couldn't transfer. A Wei is a mine owner with more than 1,000 square meters in Xingyi, Guizhou. He built the mine in July, completed the construction in August, and tried to transfer it in September, but the transfer failed. Behind what no one asked about was the loss of 3 million. After a lot of trouble, A Wei's mine has not yet had a single mining machine stationed.

Text丨Yi Xiaodian

3 million bear market to build a mine

"Mining Equipment Transfer" is accompanied by six photos of the mining equipment, from transformers to wires, voltage boxes, high-voltage cables, incoming cabinets, outgoing cabinets, negative pressure fans, water curtains, etc.

Awei sends the same content in his circle of friends 3-4 times on average every day, and has been doing so for two months.

In the comment section of every circle of friends, Wei himself will leave the same comment: 3150 all-copper transformer, high-voltage cable, incoming line cabinet, outgoing line cabinet, negative pressure fan, water curtain, low-voltage distribution cabinet, 630 circuit breaker, 16 square copper wire, sockets and other equipment, all the above equipment are brand new.

He wanted to quickly sell the newly built mine and all the equipment.

However, in the past two months, Awei has not been able to achieve his goal in either receiving the mining machine hosting or transferring the mining farm.

After all, the direct factor affecting the business of mining machines and mining farms is the price of coins. If the price of coins is lower than the cost of starting up mining machines, miners will not start up the machines, and it will be difficult to do mining farm hosting business or mining farm transfer business.

According to market conditions, the price of Bitcoin has shown a downward trend as early as the beginning of 2018. The highest price at the beginning of the year was US$19,875.85, and it has now fallen below US$3,900.

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.

During the rebound in May, influenced by the favorable market conditions, Awei decided to open a mine.

In June, after investigation, Awei confirmed that the average electricity cost of the mining farm was 30-40 cents. Later, with the recommendation of a friend, Awei signed a contract for a site covering more than 1,000 square meters in a remote mountain village in Xingyi, Guizhou, which could accommodate 20,000 S9 mining machines.

Compared with the mining equipment, the annual site rental of the mine is only tens of thousands of yuan. In Wei's opinion, this part of the site cost can even be ignored.

After selecting the site, Awei quickly hired staff and started building the mine in July.

"Building the factory, purchasing equipment (high voltage electricity, transformers... but not including mining machines), etc., cost a total of nearly 3 million." After more than a month, Awei finally completed the construction of the mine in mid-to-late August.

In September, we entered the investment promotion stage.

But at this time, the entire virtual currency market was in a state of decline. The price of the currency kept falling, leaving Ah Wei, a first-time mine owner, completely unprepared.

"People who come to consult me ​​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 Awei. According to Awei, most of them are mine owners who have a large number of mining machines, but ultimately they did not reach a cooperation with Awei due to cost issues.

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.

When Bitcoin fell below the S9 shutdown price, Awei's mining farm, which mainly hosted S9 mining machines, was no longer in demand.

Only build a mine without buying coins

Wei knew about Bitcoin in 2015. In 2016, some of his friends made a fortune from mining. He had planned to start building a mine as early as 2017.

“Buying mining machines and building a mine will make you feel more stable and secure.”

At that time, Awei obtained information about mining farms and mining machines, investment advice, etc. mostly from Baidu and advertising news.

Due to the lack of information sources, Awei was unable to find suitable mining resources in 2017.

On the other hand, this is not the only business that Ah Wei is doing, and he is not in a hurry. He also has a clothing wholesale business.

In fact, in 2015, Wei had learned about Bitcoin on the Internet. However, he did not show much interest in it.

"I learned about Bitcoin a long time ago. The price was only a few thousand at that time, but I didn't enter the market," said Awei.

In 2016, several friends of Awei bought some mining machines for hosting and started mining. Later in 2017, the number of mining machines of friends gradually increased to 20,000.

At that time, when friends went to host mining machines, Awei also accompanied them.

“When I was looking for a hosting place with them, I thought I could also build a mining farm. Compared with cryptocurrency speculation, I am more optimistic about building a mining farm because it will be more stable.” Awei said that the idea of ​​building a mining farm has always lingered in his mind.

When my friends started mining, the price of Bitcoin was not high, so they never sold it.

"I spent tens of thousands of yuan to buy more than one Bitcoin, and also spent tens of thousands of yuan to buy some Ethereum. In about a month, I doubled my profit on Ethereum." In 2017, two years after he had been exposed to Bitcoin, Awei finally tentatively bought Bitcoin and Ethereum for a preliminary trial.

In 2017, when Bitcoin was rising sharply, a mining friend of Awei took advantage of the high price and sold all the coins, making a fortune. The tens of millions in profits finally made Awei tempted.

He became even more determined to build a mine, and he must build a mine.

"My friends have quite a lot of mining machines. Two or three people have about 10,000 to 20,000 mining machines, and all of them are hosted in Sichuan and Yunnan." Awei calculated in his mind that if the electricity price is the same, if only two or three friends come to his mine and host it casually, the mining business can be started easily.

In June 2018, when a friend introduced him to a suitable electricity price and venue, Wei had only one word in his mind: do it.

When Wei had prepared all this, the market was colder than anyone expected.

A mine without a single mining machine

The difference between Awei and Captain Yu, a miner who has been working in the mining circle for many years, is that Captain Yu has abundant resources and knows the lowest electricity prices across the country.

When Captain Yu heard that the mine was built in Guizhou, he blurted out "super big pit".

Today, the price of the currency is about 27,000 yuan, and with Guizhou's electricity price of 0.3-0.4 cents per kilowatt-hour, mining machines have long been unable to bear the mining costs.

"Yesterday, the computing power dropped by another 40,000P, and more than three million mining machines were shut down." Captain Yu sighed, saying that the downward trend in coin prices corresponds to a reduction in computing power, and behind the daily reduction in computing power is the difficult and real survival situation of mine owners.

In such a situation, who would be willing to lose money to invest in a mine? Ah Wei himself was very clear about this truth.

"Currently, many machines have been shut down because there is no profit anymore and we are even losing money." Awei 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.

While Awei was in contact with the transfer of the mine, he also heard about the business of buying second-hand mining machines.

I have heard that someone bought S9 machines in batches of 100 or more, with each machine costing 600 yuan. The miners bought can be resold or used to mine.

It’s not that Wei has not thought about buying mining machines at a low price 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, Wei thought about it and finally gave up.

Continue to go back to the clothing business

“After all, I invested three million real money, so of course I’m disappointed with the virtual currency market. There’s nothing I can do about it, so I’ll just take it as a lesson.” A Wei even smiled when he said this.

After taking a look around the virtual currency market, Wei deeply felt that the initiative in the virtual currency market is in the hands of others.

Ah Wei's investment philosophy is that the initiative should be in your own hands. You can only try it within the scope that you can control.

Although both are investment products, Awei believes that stocks and Bitcoin are different. The daily fluctuation of stocks is limited to 10%, while the price fluctuation of Bitcoin is unlimited, which makes Awei feel insecure.

“Although you have bought virtual currency, the price may not drop much after you wake up after a sleep.” Awei is well aware of the current situation of the virtual currency market.

Therefore, two years after he came into contact with Bitcoin, he finally tried to buy virtual currency for the first time. Later, compared with speculating in cryptocurrencies, he was more willing to invest in physical mining farms.

But his investment in the field of cryptocurrency was obviously not at the right time, and Wei now just wants to get out of it as soon as possible.

Even though the mine is still there, he is unwilling to stay in Xingyi, Guizhou for another day.

At present, he has returned to Guangzhou and is doing his old business - clothing business.

"Guangzhou Shisanhang is a world-famous clothing wholesale center." Awei is proud of the clothing wholesale business he has run for many years, and he is more familiar with it and feels at ease.

After three months of devoting himself to the mining industry, Wei is finally ready to get back to his own life.