In addition to producing most of the objects we use every day, China is also one of the largest producers in the world of bitcoin, the “virtual currency” alternative to normal currencies which has been talked about a lot in the last few weeks. at its first use on the stock exchange and at its significant increase in value compared to other currencies. The “mining” of bitcoins, that is their production thanks to the maintenance of the computer system that makes them work, takes place in large warehouses where thousands of computers are collected, which perform the necessary calculations to create new currency and manage its exchanges. The main factories are located in the provinces of Sichuan and Shenzhen, usually near large power plants, from which they draw energy to power their computers.
Many places where bitcoin is mined in China are in secret locations, for security reasons and in some cases to avoid problems with local governments, which do not always look favorably on such activities. Other factories are instead easily identifiable like those in the photographs, a few meters away from power plants to have the current necessary to run hundreds of computers connected to each other, and to have faster connections to the Internet.
In 2016, Chinese photographer Liu Xingzhe visited some bitcoin factories, talking to the people who run them and make sure computers are running smoothly. The factories look like a rudimentary and more artisanal version of big data centers, like those of Google and Facebook, where thousands of servers keep their services online and running. Mining computers are piled high on large shelves, often surrounded by powerful fans to cool their components.
The employees, which vary greatly depending on the size of the factory, work very long shifts and almost always sleep on site, in sometimes improvised dormitories.
The need to build systems near power plants means that factories are sometimes very far from population centers, making it necessary to travel for hours before arriving in a city. It is for this reason that many employees sleep directly in the factory. Some try to take advantage of it to mine bitcoin on their own, using part of the computers: the practice is naturally prohibited by employers, who try to keep their employees under control and sanction them if necessary.
Bitcoin factories usually work on behalf of clients located overseas, in many cases in the West. Their bitcoin assets can be controlled remotely via various applications, so virtual currency capitalists don't always have an idea of what happens thousands of miles away, where the shared network is physically active (peer-to-peer). that makes bitcoins work.
Virtual currency works in a rather complex way. Simplifying to the extreme: all the nodes (computers) of the shared network contribute to the management and security of bitcoins, a bit like what happens in file sharing systems such as Torrent. Each node competes with the others to find the solution to a cryptographic problem as quickly as possible, which serves to validate a bitcoin exchange and ensure that this happens only once and in the correct way. Each problem is assigned a value in bitcoin, so the bigger and more powerful the node, the more likely it is to get to the solution first and produce new currency for its user, mining. Chinese factories are among the largest and most powerful nodes there are, and they work on behalf of users around the world while retaining a commission for themselves.
The low costs for labor, electricity and the hardware needed to put the computers together have meant that China has become central to producing bitcoin and maintaining a large part of its system. The activity is also very profitable, especially in periods such as the current one where bitcoins have a very high value, and therefore make high revenues possible thanks to commissions.
Bitcoin factories are buzzing all the time: it's the noise produced by the thousands of fans used to cool computers, busy day and night in calculations to solve cryptographic problems. The data centers built in recent years by Facebook, Google, Amazon and other large Internet companies have become famous for the high energy efficiency achieved, made possible by the use of new generation servers that can work at higher temperatures without reducing performance and low-impact cooling systems, which take advantage of cold winds, tides and other solutions depending on where they are built. In China, everything still works the old way: servers are better able to withstand high temperatures, of course, but all kinds of fans and fans are still used to cool them. Bitcoin nodes have a significant energy impact, especially if you think that they work to produce a currency about which great doubts remain, both in terms of its stability and on the possibility that it can have a sustainable future.
