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Hobart out swinging... whaaat iffff?!
What about putting Bitcoin miners into an atmosphere that has much less, well… atmosphere? Think about it, our atmosphere is heated by our sun. Our seasons are determined by our location in our orbit around said sun. And our weather is determined by the transfer of that heat within these variables. This makes maintenance and operations highly dynamic, with a high-level ebb-and-flow that is reminiscent of a professional athlete’s strength-training program. That’s a lot of variables to deal with in two of the most competitive markets on the planet right now.
So, why not go where no one else has gone before? Why not search for greener pastures? I mean, hell, the American West was developed thanks to men crazy enough to venture out into the wilderness in search of sites that provided dense basins and veins of stored energy.
I wanna know more about the physics here. Miners implode? Internet connection stable enough? How many seconds lost from physical space?!
Space isn't as good for shedding heat because it's a vacuum and radiative cooling is very inefficient. Presumably, that can be overcome with engineering but plentiful cold water is probably better for displacing heat.
Low orbit right above you is much closer than the other side of the Earth's surface, so there may even be opportunities to locate mining closer to wherever the center of the network is.
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Space isn't as good for shedding heat because it's a vacuum and radiative cooling is very inefficient. Presumably, that can be overcome with engineering but plentiful cold water is probably better for displacing heat.
I suspected something like this was the problem
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@Scoresby's got a post about this, but I think it was, like, on Mars.
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niiiiice, yeah but significantly further away so the time lag is gonna become a prooooblem
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that could be a problem too on moon. How long does it take for info to get back to Earth? Haven't read the article.
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no clue; author doesn't discuss it.
Quick googling says 2.5 seconds, which I suppose in managable
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I'm no pro at Bitcoin mining, but I know seconds can make a difference in snagging that block reward. Let's hope someone answers this question!
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If I were tasked with mining from space, I'd just launch a satellite that was full of miners, could connect directly to the internet, and had enough solar panels to run it. The equipment should stay pretty cool up there.
I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be profitable, otherwise someone would have done it already. I don't have an exact number for how much it would cost, but considering a satellite costs a few million, to billions of dollars, it would be expensive. Even at a modest 100 million dollars you'd have to mine approximately 268 blocks to break even.
I'm not sure of the tax implications of mining in space either.
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