How Russia got carried away with the production of cryptocurrencies. RMC ASIC miners will be sold in OLDI retail stores The Chinese and large Russian companies have invested in RMC tokens

Russian Mining Company (RMC) Internet Ombudsman Dmitry Marinichev, businessmen Sergey Bobylev and Boris Zyryanov signed an agreement with retail network OLDI for the sale of miners, that is, machines for mining. Invest Foresight found out about it at the office the Internet Ombudsman at the time of signing the document. As Sergei Bobylev noted, miners have not been sold to individuals anywhere in the world until now.

Contract withOLDI

Until now, miners can only be purchased through the website. According to Sergey Bobylev, miners are sent to the buyer in a box containing nothing but the device itself, or, if there are documents, then those are also in Chinese.

“This is not a friendly purchase at all, and it is far from retail in all legal parameters,” says Sergei Bobylev.

RMC sells three types of Pantech miners; the new Sunrise s11i 16nm ASIC miner will be on sale soon, with a computing power of 22.6 TH / s, power consumption - 2.3-2.5 kW, based on Bitfury chips. It costs $ 4 thousand, is water-cooled and can simultaneously heat the room (though in summer it is more of a problem). RMC is the only company in the world that produces such water-cooled miners. Sellers claim that such a miner can earn $ 500 per month in a pool. The miner gives up to 20% of the power to the bitcoinrussia.ru pool. The miners sold by default are configured for this pool, which also forms the RMC. But if the user wishes, he can tune in to another pool of miners. The seller company will teach you how to change the pool, how to change the wallet, if the buyer wishes. But the bitcoin-russia.ru pool is more convenient from the point of view of use: you do not need to register in it, as you will have to do, for example, in a Chinese pool.

Executive Director of OLDI Computers Denis Smirnov announced that OLDI will receive the status of RMC miners master distributor, will carry out a guarantee for sales and service.

The OLDI retail network has existed since 1992, consists of 17 electronics hypermarkets, an online store and is the exclusive seller of MSI peripherals in Russia. MSI is the world leader in the gaming industry. According to the service Kontur.Fokus, ZAO Oldie LTD belongs to Evgeny Golubev and Dmitry Nikitin, the company's revenue for last year, according to the same data, amounted to 170.6 million rubles.

Prospects and risks

According to RMC estimates, today the annual volume of miner sales in Russia is $ 180-200 million, and in 2-3 years these sales will grow to $ 1 billion. At the same time, RMC itself intends to occupy 30-35% of the Russian miner market: after all, RMC is still in Russia remains the only company producing miners. The remaining 65-70% will be taken by Chinese and other manufacturers. Today there are two major miner manufacturers - Chinese Bitmain and American Bitfury. Russia, increasing its mining capacity, will serve the world's cryptocurrency transactions, RMC says.

But there are a number of risks involved in mining. RMC does not seriously consider the risk of a ban on mining in apartments and houses for Russians: the consumption of electricity by a miner is comparable to that of an electric stove; one miner does not give any overload per network. In addition, there are limits on energy consumption for consumers. But today, few people mine in their apartments, especially in Moscow, since energy tariffs for individuals in Moscow are very high - 5.38 rubles. for 1 kW. Therefore, the ban makes no sense both from the point of view of security and from the point of view of the economy. It made sense to introduce it in 2011-2013, but not now.

There is also a risk that individuals will be banned from investing in bitcoins. Miner owners - individuals who mine cryptocurrency - can be categorized as such investors. But this ban can be circumvented by using foreign crypto exchanges.

There is still a risk - and it is probably the most serious - of the transition of the Bitcoin blockchain and Ethereum blockchain to PoS - Proof-of-Stake. Then there will be no mining, and, accordingly, miners will not be needed. The main developer of the Ethereum blockchain Vitalik Buterin reported that Ethereum will switch to PoS in September. Today, most cryptocurrencies are mined, that is, they work on the Proof-of-Work consensus protocol. Proof-of-Work is the ability of a network node (node) to verify that a miner (or a node adding a new block to the blockchain) has actually performed the calculations.

The transition to PoS in the Bitcoin blockchain at RMC is considered almost incredible: it is unlikely that the Bitcoin miners who manage the community would have deprived themselves of their earnings. In addition, this is a large community that is not centrally managed, unlike Ethereum, where there is a clear leader - Vitalik Buterin. But even for Ethereum, according to RMC, PoS does not seem to be a near-term prospect. There is no mathematical proof that Proof-of-Stake is a reliable way of consensus, unlike Proof-of-Work. If, nevertheless, this transition happens in the two main cryptocurrencies, then there are other altcoins that will need mining.

Chinese and large Russian companies invested in tokensRMC

On August 7, RMC announced the development of a new generation of multicellular processor and miners for cryptocurrency mining. To this end, RMC launched an ICO on August 28, during which it intends to raise $ 100 million. By September 7, as a result of the ICO, about $ 40 million was raised, with $ 37 million collected in rubles. RMC tokens were bought by several large Russian companies, as he told Invest-Foresight Dmitry Marinichev whose names are not disclosed. In addition to Russians, the ICO is attended by Americans, Japanese, Koreans and even Chinese. Although on September 4, the People's Bank of China banned ICOs in the country.

“The Chinese Central Bank cannot prohibit Chinese investors from investing outside the country, even in Singapore,” Sergey Bobylev commented on the situation for Invest Foresight. “It can regulate ICOs only in their own country. Once, the Chinese regulator stepped on a rake when it closed all cryptocurrency exchanges earlier this year, and all transactions flowed to Japanese exchanges. Four months later, the People's Bank of China announced that it had not closed anyone, and the exchanges reopened, but as a result, Japan took the first place in terms of the volume of transactions with cryptocurrency. "

RMC is holding an ICO to launch production of a new type of miner on a new multicellular processor. The company claims that the energy efficiency of this miner is 35-200 times higher than miners on video cards. The new processor will be a consumer processor, 28 nanometers (nm), 256 cells, with a computing power of 22.2 Th, it will mine any altcoins powered by Proof-of-Work technology.

“Is Russia Becoming a Crypto-Friendly Zone? - the professor asks a rhetorical question Artem Genkin, who defended the first doctoral dissertation in Russia on the private monetary system in 2006. - The impression is that nation states are beginning to compete for crypto capital. It's only the beginning…".

Demand for video cards has grown sharply in Russia. Top models are used for mining - the production of cryptocurrencies. The unprecedented demand is now explained by the sharp rise in the bitcoin rate, which almost reached $ 3 thousand.

Against the backdrop of demand, prices for the latest models of video cards also went up as expected - some of them doubled in price in just a month. And, for example, the shares of the manufacturer of video cards AMD this week rose in price by almost 9%.

The sellers already have a certain shortage of video cards of the required characteristics, noted Damir Valitov, retail manager at OLDI: “We are seeing demand for certain video cards related to cryptocurrency and mining. Demand has increased dramatically, people often ask. There is definitely not enough goods for everyone in Moscow. It started around March, and at the end of May it probably reached its climax, when demand exceeded supply. "

In the markets computer technology too hype. So, Savyolovsky shopping center is hung with announcements "Mining is here!". The most powerful video cards are sold out almost instantly, said the seller of electronics Yegor: “Demand exceeds supply so much that there is simply a shortage. The cars have not yet arrived in Moscow, but they have already been sold out. This has been happening for about a week and a half. In general, the sellers do not have cards, everyone. Send calls to suppliers, suppliers are even selling to us at different prices. "

The interlocutor of Kommersant FM - Artem Gurevich - has been mining for four months and has already assembled 18 so-called "farms" - complexes of devices for the production of cryptocurrencies. But before investing in a farm, you need to understand what virtual currencies are currently in price, the miner advises: “Before buying equipment, the miner must clearly understand a few things - what coin he will mine, where he will put his miners, his farms, what is the price for electricity in this place.

The price of electricity accounts for most of the costs of the mining process, apart from purchasing the hardware itself.

And finally, how soon will he be able to recoup the cost of his equipment. To buy equipment, roughly speaking, for 200 thousand rubles and simply expect that someday they will return is not very correct. It is much more correct to understand in advance what kind of currency it will be and what the rate will be, at least approximately the forecast. This, of course, is already much more complicated. Cryptocurrency is very volatile, but it is desirable, of course, to at least have some assumptions in advance and, based on this, already choose which currency to mine and which hardware, which components to buy. "

Due to the high demand, mining is now not so profitable, says Andrey Shevchishin, senior analyst of the Forex Club group of companies. “Now this boom is more speculative, the market is overheated. In my opinion, the excitement that has now formed, this twofold increase in value in a short period, formed a boom not only in investment, but also in a mining boom. But there is talk about professional miners, as, for example, they work in China, then these are whole farms that consume great amount electricity. In fact, according to some estimates, mining is no longer so profitable today. The number of people doing this reduces the overall result. Plus, the cost of mining continues to decline, ”says the expert.

The bitcoin rate increased by $ 300 over the week, and the Ethereum cryptocurrency - by $ 25.

Victoria Feofanova

On September 7, the RMC holding held a closed meeting for journalists, where it signed the first Russian distribution agreement with OLDI computers for the sale of miners.

The press conference was opened by the founder of the project Dmitry Marinichev:

Dmitry Marinichev:

“The old economy with banks, investment companies, with a classic IPO, such funding, such an economic boom, is simply impossible to imagine.

I would compare classical economics with a horse-drawn carriage, it rides, it is important, it is good, and somewhere in my heart I even feel sorry for those cabbies who are used to driving it. "

Sergey Bobylev, the ideologist of the project and the developer of miners, followed up and emphasized how important the access to distribution networks is for the world market:

Sergey Bobylev:

“This is a truly unique event in the sense that until now no other miners have been sold in the store at retail. In any country in the world, including China, miners could be bought only by ordering through the site, and the complexity that the buyer faced reached the point that there was nothing in the box except for the miner.

This is not a friendly purchase at all, this purchase is more likely for professionals, and it is very far from retail in all legal parameters and parameters of simplicity and ease. "

At the moment, the company has already developed several types of miners. The youngest manners SX5, works on the principle of an air heater. If you connect it to a power supply unit, you can heat a room 20 m away. technical specifications, the miner uses the SHA 256 mining algorithm and has a processing power of 3.8 TH / s.

One of the most promising miners of the S11 company is presented on the company's website under the name SUNRISE, it will go on sale at the end of September this year. To date, this is the most powerful model of air miners for users, it produces 22 TH / s, which several times bypasses Chinese competitors, Sergey said.

RMC Holding is currently the only manufacturer in the world that produces and sells water-cooled miners to private individuals.

“Miners of this type now work both for private individuals for heating in homes and on large farms. Suffice it to say that now a farm of about 5 MW is being built near Ryazan completely on water cooling - Sergey Bobylev, project ideologist, instrument developer. - The main model, which was emphasized during the presentation, was a miner with a computing power of 13 TH / s and a consumption of 1.8 kW.

If you look at the Irkutsk region, which is home to about 2% of the population in Russia, and how many households live in countryside, and this is about ⅕ part, we will get about 0.4% of the population of Russia. Today, this 0.4% does not have gas and is heated by electricity. If all this population is supplied with our equipment, then the total capacity of this equipment will be approximately 25-30% of the total computing power in the world. And if we also make heating with our appliances, we will increase it to 80%. "

According to Sergei, the cost of electricity for heating a house with a miner is 4 times lower than for standard use of heaters and boilers.

Sergey Bobylev:

“Let Japan live on transactions, but we will serve these transactions.
"Today we are signing an agreement with the dealer network" OLDI computers ", this will help individuals to purchase our equipment in their usual format in stores and receive expert advice."

During the press release, Elina Sidorenko was quoted more than once that mining is the same as knitting socks. As long as you sit at home knitting socks, there are no questions for you. Problems only arise when you enter the market and start selling these socks for fiat money.

Sergey stressed that since RMC miners are manufactured in Russia, this is a Russian product that, like any other product produced in Russia, can be freely supplied and sold in the territory of the Russian Federation.

Sergey Bobylev:

“We are signing this agreement so that our products will finally find buyers, at the final stage it is individuals who will receive direct income and benefits in the form of heat. "