Tibetan woman holding Bitcoin mining PSUs

That’s quite a grim realization. I also thought it was flowers but no, it’s some piece of technology

I wonder what the native Americans saw when the first ships approached the shore. Like, I also saw flowers. What a mind trick. Like did the brain couldn't process that she was carrying computer parts. It just seemed so foreign to me.

That's what I thought too.

Well, Super Flower is a high quality power supply OEM. They make PSUs for Corsair, EVGA and others.

More like snowdrops.

Same. I though it was a bundle of flowers and then some purses. Was trying to figure put what it had to do with bitcoin.

Summer Breeze makes me fine…

I thought too

Me too. It took me a long time to figure out what it actually was.

This would be an amazing Banksy concept.

she is, they look like mining rigs because the monks there are hip

I love this shot and hate it at the same time.

Bitcoin flowers

Banksy will basically just stencil this and made a mint. Cus social commentary and juxtaposition=megadorra

FYI, Jasmine grows on a bush with little to no stem to hold.

real world is ending up worse than cyberpunk. we got all the bad parts of cyberpunk but no hover cars and cybernetic implants.

Exactly my thoughts, this is the most cyberpunk shit I've seen this year

Harvesting cyberpotatoes

I love tech and all but this looks a bit dystopian lol.

When two world collide

IKR?

You think?

I was gonna say it looks like District 13.

i’ve been saying for years that we already live in a cyberpunk dystopia, it just came upon as so gradually and naturally we didn’t realize it. also being immersed in it makes it hard to see the whole picture

This makes it look like PSUs grow in the ground like potatoes.

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Bot can dance eloquently forever in my life.

Then what do we even need trees for? Useless trees, cut them down and make room for another warehouse for GPU mining

Truly a picture for the history books...

This is almost like a Banksy piece. Reminds me of the flower molotov cocktail guy.

Maybe they're flowers for Bender?

In another time those could very well have been tulip bulbs.

Strap in. Shit is going to get way way worse.

/r/thatfunnyfeeling

I think I’m getting the black lung, pop

Or worse, taking the units apart for scrap.

article is about China banned bitcoin mines, Those women are holding computer parts from closed bitcoin mines, probably for resell/recycle.

They were because hydropower in Tibet was cheaper than the gains from mining cryptocurrency (profitable) and there aren't a bunch of highly developed areas that particularly need all the excess power the dams generate, but since the government banned crypto mining, now they're taking apart the mining rigs and selling them. Tibet's also cold which means you don't need to spend extra to cool the mining rigs, and most ASICs are made in China which makes it convenient to buy straight from the manufacturers.

These are just workers. They have supervisors who have more knowledge of the operations, but even those guys are just workers. Owners of these machines don’t need to be in the picture. Bitcoin mines to addresses they control, that’s all they care about. They can check the progress of the mining from laptops anywhere in the world.

I replied this below but ...

```My friend said it could be any PSUs, and "It's just an editorialized caption". so I had to break out the pixel analyzer.
The boxes she is standing next to have antminer on them and the psus seem to be these:
https://www.amazon.com/Antminer-Power-Supply-APW3-Connectors/dp/B0733JRFVL```

English version on Caixin Global (no paywall)

Photo of the Day: China Says Goodbye to Crypto Mining

By Ding Gang

https://www.caixinglobal.com/2021-07-13/photo-of-the-day-china-says-goodbye-to-crypto-mining-101739627.html

Caption:

On May 3, an ethnic Tibetan woman in Sichuan province’s Heishui county holds parts of a cryptocurrency mining machine that was sent from Xinjiang for local installation, including power cords that look like a bouquet of flowers. Such machines are now being deactivated following China’s recent ban on crypto mining.

It also belongs to a gallery titled:

Gallery: China Says Goodbye to Crypto mining (no paywall)

Seconding this. I feel like this photographs captures a lot of contemporary conundrums and phenomena - social and cultural and economic - in just one shot. I'm not sure a thousand words would do this picture justice.

As an IT person with a Fine Arts degree, this picture is blowing my mind.

I love your enthusiasm for the picture, made me smile.

Implying OP took the picture

Reading this comment made me feel so slimey and privileged.

Agreed. The quality is too high for Reddit

i like it a lot 2

I don’t understand Bitcoin period. Just when I started to think it was a digital currency and thought I had it down... Now u can mine it through wires and metal boxes ? Mining digital currency through a computer? WtHell is happening ? Lmao im so lost

I was gonna comment the same. Huge horizon vibe

I loved the game but how the hell do you remember those specific names/tribes? At first I didn't even know what you were referencing and had to Google it.

It could also be that I did play it a long time ago, maybe you played it recently on PC?

I am still trying to figure what block chain technology is haha still no clue

The challenge: I’m thinking of a number between zero and a bajillion. Anyone who guesses close enough gets some bitcoin.

Mining pools: since you probably can’t guess fast enough to ever win, you get together with a bunch of other people to all guess together. If you win, everyone gets paid proportional to the number of guesses they contributed.

Difficulty adjustment: I know how fast everyone is guessing. I adjust how close you have to guess to win, so that someone wins roughly every ten minutes.

Transactions: whatever number you’re trying to guess, you have to “scramble it” with some transactions. If you win, you get their transaction fees, but it also means it’s hard to guess a specific number. If you start with 50, it might become 75 billion after scrambling.

You have to tell me your starting number and I do the “scrambling” too to make sure you didn’t cheat.

The interesting part: the number I’m thinking of is zero

This comment by /u/TheDeanMan has the absolute best simple explanation for this I've seen so far.

Right? I’m so out of the loop

Most of the explanations so far only explain "what" mining is. They don't explain "why". So here's my best shot:

Here's the problem: Digital data can be replicated at basically zero cost, but we want some notion of a digital currency that can't be replicated. We need some way to stop people from spending money twice.

Now, if someone attempts a double-spend, we need to make sure everyone agrees upon which transaction counts, and which doesn't. It doesn't matter which one, as long as we pick one and stick with it.

Here's a solution: How about we have a global history of all the valid transactions. Conflicting transactions (two halves of a double-spend) cannot both live in this global history. Everyone will take turns writing the history.

However, here's another problem: We need to make sure that no one can write history faster than everyone else combined, otherwise they could rewrite history faster than it is being written. This would allow them to go back and change which half of the double spend counts as the real one. Effectively, they'd be able to take back money they've already spent.

One way to enforce this is to hold a giant guess and check game. Whoever guesses the correct number first wins and gets to write the history that round. As long as no one party has more than half the guessing power, no one can rewrite history faster than it is being written.

This whole system relies on honest parties participating, but the problem is that it's expensive and difficult, so no one's going to do it unless they get something in return. Therefore, we all collectively agree that the winner can mint themselves a pre-agreed upon amount of money in order to compensate them for their services. They also get to collect the transaction fees.

That's right! I used to work with these all the time. One still powers my miner. They're nice because these units don't need 220w power like most ASIC PSUs.q

They are power supplies. For speciality ASIC rigs built only for mining Bitcoin.

Bitmain is the company name that makes these in particular.

I used to work at one of those. It's a terrible place to work. Some of our staff got hurt pretty bad.

Hi, old radio guy here...a track or 8 track?

So much wasted computing power at the moment.

One still powers my S9i to this day. Tough little guy.

the real cyberpunk dystopia was the e-waste we dumped along the way

Someone mentioned Horizon Zero Dawn and this pic does give that tribal-techy vibe.

Why is crypto mining considered destructive? I am not on board with any of these things but would like to know, ha

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No. The reason why Bitcoin mining plants were accumulated there is it has lots of hydropower plants, which don’t make pollution I believe.

The cables can support some weight. They're really thick and attack with bolts to the power terminals. I've personally dropped these power supplies from pretty far up and they were always OK afterwards. Q

Or a Ghost in the Machine?

http://disciples.technoslug.org/satoshi.htm

That it what it says in the title, yes.

A lot of bitcoin mining factories in China were closed due to a recent restriction. This picture was taken in one of those closed factories.

Yes.

A PSU is a power source unit. Your computer has one. (a $40 part)

The job of that part is to split voltages to multiple parts of the computer. Or in this case, multiple computers.

Each box is probably worth $20 - $140. But since it's a "bitcoin PSU" it probably has an inflated price. Example.

Think of Bitcoin "mining" as solving math problems, say like each math problem the computer solves you get some Bitcoin. Bitcoin mining isn't just getting one big fast computer and trying to get the fastest big new processor it's scaling up a single computer and taking many many smaller processing units and running them in parallel. Think of a server, it's not just one big computer it's racks of interconnected computers.

Bitcoin is a currency with a long term inflation rate of 0%. Do the math. Would billions of people want to hold USD, inflating at 25% per year, or Bitcoin inflating at 0% per year. The price of Bitcoin tells you the trend of how currencies evolve.

"Bitcoin is not backed by any government." That's a feature, not a defect. Governments will debase its currency at 25% a year until it's worth nothing. Bitcoin will always have a fixed 21M supply cap for the rest of humanity. In order to have a 0% inflation rate, it's supposed to not be tied to any government who would seek to hyperinflate it.

Mining rigs distribute the computing power of finding the next hash of the blockchain all around the world to areas that have overproduction of electricity. Bitcoin mining is designed so hostile nationstates cannot stop Bitcoin as it's hash computing power is distributed geographically. Feature, not a defect.

wait for it

Think of it as your computer solving a bunch of math problems, and any math problem it solves before anyone else you 'own'. However, the more computers that are solving math problems means they run out of the easy problems and have to solve harder and harder problems. Therefore it's not infinite as you'll run out of problems you can realistically solve in a reasonable period of time. People then agreed on the price of any given problem to be a certain value, similar to the way we agree stocks have certain values. This isn't entirely accurate, but it's the gist of the matter.

Now as for how wallets work, how people transfer ownership of these problems, and different types of coins it's gets a bit more complex.

Think of Bitcoin "mining" as solving math problems, say like each math problem the computer solves you get some Bitcoin. Bitcoin mining isn't just getting one big fast computer and trying to get the fastest big new processor it's scaling up a single computer and taking many many smaller processing units and running them in parallel. Think of a server, it's not just one big computer it's racks of interconnected computers.

Mining = computer processing.

When people are "mining bitcoin" they are running computers and a specific program.

Some computers are specially built for the special program. They run super fast for certain things. Like how video game systems are very good at computer graphics, but are much cheaper than desktop computers or smartphones. These are called ASICs.

In the end, running a group of ASICs is like running a gold mine. The more "workers" you have working in the gold mine, the more precious metals you get. The gold mining analogy is standard official vocabulary.

I've skipped a lot of technical jargon. I think the mining analogy is a bad one. This is more like a goose laying golden eggs. But you have to feed the goose expensive food. 2x more expensive than what you eat yourself.

Each goose is like a computer. The more geese you have, the more golden eggs. The more computers you have, the more these computers can process and create bitcoin.

Most of the explanations so far only explain "what" mining is. They don't explain "why". So here's my best shot:

Here's the problem: Digital data can be replicated at basically zero cost, but we want some notion of a digital currency that can't be replicated. We need some way to stop people from spending money twice.

Now, if someone attempts a double-spend, we need to make sure everyone agrees upon which transaction counts, and which doesn't. It doesn't matter which one, as long as we pick one and stick with it.

Here's a solution: How about we have a global history of all the valid transactions. Conflicting transactions (two halves of a double-spend) cannot both live in this global history. Everyone will take turns writing the history.

However, here's another problem: We need to make sure that no one can write history faster than everyone else combined, otherwise they could rewrite history faster than it is being written. This would allow them to go back and change which half of the double spend counts as the real one. Effectively, they'd be able to take back money they've already spent.

One way to enforce this is to hold a giant guess and check game. Whoever guesses the correct number first wins and gets to write the history that round. As long as no one party has more than half the guessing power, no one can rewrite history faster than it is being written.

This whole system relies on honest parties participating, but the problem is that it's expensive and difficult, so no one's going to do it unless they get something in return. Therefore, we all collectively agree that the winner can mint themselves a pre-agreed upon amount of money in order to compensate them for their services. They also get to collect the transaction fees.

Imagine if keeping your car idling 24/7 produced solved Sudokus you could trade for heroin

From what I understand, they just made a bunch of computers whose sole job was to mine bitcoins. She's holding the power supply units to those (now disassembled) computers. Power Supply Units (PSUs) are a vital part of any "computer" - phones, desktops, whatever. I believe they regulate the amount of electricity coming into the computer, making sure that each part gets as much as it needs without overloading.

That doesn't answer your full question of "what is bitcoin mining" cause I'm absolutely shit at ELI5 and there's a lot of steps to bitcoin mining but I hope that clears up what you're confused about.

I can see your confusion stems more from knowing little about computers. What she's holding are simply the power supplies for the computers mining the coins together. All computers (including your phones, tablets, gaming consoles, smart TVs, etc) have these, but these are bigger because of the power demands of mining. Cryptocurrency mining relies heavily on powerful graphical processing units (GPUs), which in general take a lot of power and produce a lot of heat. The math problem description you see elsewhere is accurate in that it's a cryptography problem. The GPU uses encryption to solve things on something called a blockchain, which (for the purposes of mining at least) is like a giant ledger system.

For more on that aspect, I would check out 3Blue1Brown for a pretty good explanation of that ledger system.

Also, side note: if you come across these things, don't hold them like the woman in the photo is. Chances are they're about to resell some fucked up PSUs.

These are PSUs that were powering mining rigs which were just made illegal.

The boxes on the lower right are for ANTMiners. If you search for those, you’ll see how the mining gear actually looks like.