Great Power Industry: You're a private company building an aircraft carrier?

Ant Group, Silicon Valley, USA.

This is a newly established company, and its main product is mining machines! Even a fool would know that this company is backed by Wall Street bigwigs.

When Bitcoin first appeared, it was possible to mine enough Bitcoins with a regular computer. However, as time went on and countless users flooded into the market, it became increasingly difficult to mine Bitcoins. A regular computer might not be able to mine one Bitcoin in a year, and over time, it might not be possible to mine one Bitcoin in ten years.

This requires specialized mining machines, which use a large number of chips and have very high computing power; one machine is equivalent to a dozen or even hundreds of ordinary computers.

Moreover, this is quite different from a supercomputer.

Supercomputers mainly use CPUs to perform various complex numerical calculations, while mining machines mainly use GPUs to perform a large number of concurrent calculations. A mining machine may only need a few CPUs to coordinate the calculations of the GPUs, while the number of GPUs can range from tens to hundreds, or even thousands!

"This is our latest Antminer S3. This miner uses 189 high-end graphics cards produced by Loongson Technology, with a total hashrate of 1TH/s. Based on the current mining difficulty, it should be able to mine two coins a month," engineer Huang Daxun explained to the boss, Schroeder.

Schroeder nodded: "Yes, not bad. This kind of mining machine is probably the fastest in the world."

"Yes, it's currently the fastest, but it's also the most expensive. Each chip in this high-end graphics card costs five hundred US dollars, so the cost of one mining rig has already climbed to over one hundred thousand US dollars. To maintain a certain profit margin, we'll set the selling price at two hundred thousand US dollars..."

“Well, don’t worry,” Schroeder said. “Wall Street is expected to push the price of Bitcoin to over $10,000 within three days. A machine like this only needs to mine 20 Bitcoins to break even, and any further mining will be profit. So, it’s still profitable for the mine owners.”

Bitcoin has created an entire industry chain, the first link of which is mining. Mining machine manufacturers are making huge profits, and the first batch of mining bosses are also making a fortune.

That's right, this is mining. It's a concept proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto. Generating Bitcoin requires CPU power and time, which is similar to mining gold, requiring a lot of resources. In this way, Bitcoin is injected into the economy, just like injecting gold into the economy.

If Bitcoin can be generated without any investment, then what value does Bitcoin have?

Huang Daxun nodded: "Okay, then we can rest assured. Next..."

Before he could finish speaking, the female secretary had already rushed over, her high heels clicking on the ground.

"Boss, Engineer Huang, something terrible has happened!"

"What happened? Has the value of Bitcoin dropped?"

"No, it's still rising."

"Oh, that's good, then we have nothing to worry about."

"No... this news is terrifying. Loongson Technology, a subsidiary of Dongfang Laiyang Group, has announced that, in order to cooperate with the 315 Gala, they have decided to impose technical restrictions. All the chips they produce will be unable to engage in mining, a waste of electricity and time..."

A deafening roar... it was as if the sky was about to collapse.

Huang Daxun's face turned pale instantly: "What did you say?"

“I have already called the channel suppliers, and they said that the upstream supply has been cut off and they are working hard to modify the hardware. After the modification is completed, mining will not be possible.”

"Damn it, what are these yellow-skinned monkeys thinking!" Schroeder immediately exploded: "We mine, buy their chips, and they can make money! It's such a good thing, and they refuse! Are there really people in this world who won't make money? Aren't they idiots?"

From a capitalist's perspective, this behavior is simply incomprehensible! They have money to make, yet they choose to give it up, turning their backs on money—it's incredibly foolish!

“Yes, if we can’t get the goods, or if the goods we get are unusable… then…”

The sky has fallen! He looked at the Antminer S3 that was being built in front of him and was on the verge of tears.

However, Schroeder recovered quickly.

“If Loongson doesn’t allow it, we can use products from other companies. It’s not like we’re the only country in the world that has this product! We also have graphics card companies in the US, so we can import from our American companies!”

Huang Daxun took a deep breath: "That's probably not easy... We do have graphics card companies in the US, but their products are very outdated. Their most advanced products have less than one percent of the computing power of Eastern products. If we use domestic products, it means that the number of chips used inside our mining machines will increase to tens of thousands, the cost will be higher, and the failure rate will be greater..."

The domestic ones are too bad, they can't compare to the East at all. If Silicon Valley's products were usable, they wouldn't have gone to such lengths!

"Then there's only one way!"

"any solution?"

"The Easterners won't redesign the chips; they'll only improve upon the existing ones. Simply put, they'll monitor or block our mining operations. All we need to do is crack this restriction. Mr. Huang, this is about the future of our company. You technicians need to work hard!"

"Yes."

Three days later, the first batch of modified chips was obtained, and Huang Daxun and others immediately began their research.

In the chip industry, there is a famous black box theory. Apart from the chip manufacturing company, other companies do not know what the inside of the chip is like. They can only use it based on simple functional diagrams and descriptions of each pin. They can use it, but they do not understand the principles. To them, the inside of the chip is a black box.

Previously, Dongfang's technical staff also faced this problem. When Dongfang decided to give up the research and development of ultra-large-scale integrated circuits, the chip was a black box to them. They didn't know what the inside was like, or whether there were backdoors!

This works, but without understanding the underlying principles, it becomes even more difficult to crack!

At this critical moment, the people at Ant Group once again demonstrated their brilliant minds. They studied the chip repeatedly and found the right solution in just one week!

"By simply connecting a line between pins 467 and 523 with a pencil, you can bypass the blocked function!"

The pencil is obviously for conducting electricity; this method was used in previous CPU hacking attempts, and it can be used again now! Of course, you can also connect this wire directly to the circuit!

"That's great!" Schroeder said. "Right now, only the mining machines produced by our Antminer can meet the global demand, so we can further increase the price of our mining machines..."

Previously, 200,000 yuan allowed miners to recoup their investment in a year; now, 300,000 yuan means they can recoup their investment in a year and a half. Anyway, they have no other choice!

dong dong dong...

Just then, the secretary came running over.

"It's not good, it's not good!"