The Last Mine Standing
How to mine cryptocurrency with renewable energy, in 8 slides
On the 18th of October 2018 our CMO, Malcolm Cannon, got up on stage at Talenteco’s Smart&Green conference to talk about Cyberian Mine, the future of Proof-of-Work and how renewables are the only responsible source of energy for cryptocurrency mining.
Here’s a rundown of what he had to say…
He began by explaining how our internal mission statement is to be the ‘Last Mine Standing’.
Cryptomining is a margins game. The only way to succeed to is to reduce costs at every step in the process. Whether it is optimising the use of Bitmain discount coupons for retail investors, or buying hardware in bulk for an even better deal, the key to success is maximising your chances of reaching full ROI as soon as possible.
Once you have mined more crypto than you could have bought for cash, everything else is pure profit.
That’s easier said than done though — but at Cyberian Mine we give investors a fighting chance to come out on top.
With our €0.06 kWh all-in hosting we offer some of the lowest-cost facilities on the planet. We can offer this price thanks to the ultra-competitive energy prices in Irkutsk, the low ambient temperature that allows us to rely on natural cooling for the machines and the relatively inexpensive labor costs of our local engineers.
The flip-side to the opportunity of substantial gains from, for example, Bitcoin mining, is how much of a hedge it can be against falling prices. If you had bought Bitcoin at the top — instead of through mining — your direct investment in the cryptocurrency at the start of 2018 would have significantly dropped in value by now.
Whereas, as long as the facilities you host your machines at are able to produce more Bitcoin than you need to pay for your costs then you would not have needed to switch your machines off and would still be working toward a good ROI. The current generation of Antminer S9s have been running for more than two years now. And in facilities like ours, they are still churning out large enough rewards that our customers can continue to pay the bills every month.
That’s not the case in every mining location though. If Bitcoin prices continue to fall in the short to mid-term, as they very may well do, then only a few regions in the world will offer conditions that continue to be profitable. If you want to invest a portion of your portfolio into cryptomining as a hedge against further drops, then you need to be smart about where you put your machines.
In this worst case scenario, Siberia is part of the last 17% of locations that can survive the drop. We’ve already had customers relocate their machines from Norway and we’re currently making arrangements for new customers to move from the Netherlands, Belgium and the Czech Republic.
Another thing to consider for the long term profitability of mining investments is whether you believe Proof-of-Work consensus models are here to stay.
Unsurprisingly, at Cyberian Mine we are pretty confident that PoW is here for the foreseeable future. Let’s be clear though, this confidence extends only as far as Bitcoin and perhaps to some of the more interesting PoW privacy coins such as Zcash.
The reasons behind our beliefs are pretty simple. PoW works. It’s a reasonably mature technology now, having been implemented for Bitcoin 10 years ago, and it is the foundation for the censorship resistant backbone of the network.
The developers that continue to support Bitcoin are a relatively conservative group, and this conservativeness is one of the main things that allows millions of users to trust Bitcoin.
It makes sense.
We’re willing to store our life savings in Bitcoin, because we are pretty sure that we’re not going to wake up tomorrow and find that the rules of the game have changed. Bitcoin core developers know this, and they have fought hard to maintain the status quo in the past couple of years.
Even with the inherent benefits of PoS — including the reduced impact to the environment from excessive energy use — the chances of moving away from PoW are slim to none.
Here’s the thing.
PoW does use a lot of energy.
Even if that’s nowhere near as much as the banking sector — as this research shows the retail branches of banking, alone, account for 10 times the amount of C02 than the Bitcoin network.
That doesn’t mean we can’t do better.
There’s no need to mine crypto currencies with non-renewable sources of energy.
When we first launched Cyberian Mine we learned of a mining farm in the South of Germany that was still running on diesel. And the strange thing was, that diesel wasn’t even cheap. It was costing the farm more than 10 cents per kWh.
We can kind of understand that some people can’t get past the financial incentive to try and find the cheapest source of energy, regardless of the environmental impact — but we hope that more and more people will realise that they do not need to compromise.
Our energy source for our facilities in Siberia are 100% renewable hydro electricity. As investors continue to see that they can mine without burning fossil fuels we expect to benefit from their wishes to relocate to a more green solution.
Another reason why we believe we will end up as the ‘Last Mine Standing’.
We aim to be part of the solution.
That’s why we are constantly looking for partnerships in the blockchain space that share our ideals.
We’re currently in the process of helping one of our customers mine bitcoinClean (BCL) with one of our preinstalled Antminer S9s.
bitcoinClean aims to overcome the issue of vast energy consumption with high carbon emissions for mining digital currencies by exclusively using renewable energy. Therefore bitcoinClean introduces the proof-of-greenness protocol to verify the use of green energy.
bitcoinClean will be the first coin mined only with renewable energy. It relies on a network that is powered by Solar, Wind, Hydro, Thermal, Biogas or Tidal energy. Every node must undergo a peer review to participate in the network.
We want to make bitcoinClean the currency of the future for everyone who cares.
The returns are pretty good too, so we will point a few of our own machines to the pool the team at bitcoinClean are creating for us.
Another interesting project on our radar is Greeneum.
Greeneum is a decentralized platform that rewards you for supporting an eco-friendly future.
Their platform will eventually allow energy producers to label the power they produce in a secure and transparent manner. Meaning that investors looking to mine responsibly will have even more tools to ensure that the energy they use is 100% renewable.
We’re talking to them now about how we can showcase the credentials of our green energy.
The time is now.
The simplest way to get started mining is to purchase one our of preinstalled Antminer S9s. We will point the miner directly to your crypto wallet, and you’ll start earning the same day.
If you’re looking to relocate several miners and take advantage of our low prices and green energy then please reach out to info@cyberianmine.de
