Quote from: xenog on February 26, 2014, 12:56:53 AM

Blackouts wont damage miners. Power surges damage miners. There have been two brownouts in Caracas during 2014. If it becomes too much of an issue, gas is extremely cheap too. I would buy a generator. Power surges and voltage variations will be dealt with using appropriate equipment.

Miners have a limited lifetime because of the increase in difficulty. Operating older unprofitable miners in Venezuela can bring new life to them.

I have my own mining hardware, and the facility is being prepared to receive this hardware over the next couple of weeks. I will be buying additional end-of-life older ASIC hardware myself to plug it there, but there is enough space, cooling and energy in the building to host more hardware than what I am bringing in.

When all is said and done, if the Bitcoin price stagnates, and the power efficiency of chips stop increasing dramatically, mining power will stabilize at a point where it is barely profitable at EU/USA electricity prices. Having cheap electricity is advantageous.

My own operating costs are three times less by sending this hardware there. This makes the difference between breaking even and making a profit on an ASIC investment. If I add other miners hardware, my own operating costs would lower even more. Scale is good.

The reason data centers are in developed countries is because they are cooler, and they have good Internet links. Venezuela has little undersea fiber connecting it to the rest of the world, therefore bandwidth and latency are a problem for most services. Also much of the country is steady at 27-35°C throughout the whole year. My facility is in at an altitude of 1500m over sea level near Caracas, so theres better electricity and Internet connection than in rural areas, and temperatures are much lower than at sea level (16-22°C). But it is not in the city center, so the space itself is cheap and theres land to continue building more space for mining as required.

For the trust issue, and escrow, that can be done. We definitely need to discuss that further. Is there anyone who has older ASIC hardware that is nearing the edge of profitbility?

Power surges really is troublesome , with high power voltage needs for mining and power surges comes along the hardwares or other electrical parts may get damaged. My gpu along with my asic hardwares was luckily not damaged but my avr and ups was damaged. My fault was not asking the assistance from an electrician when I set up my miners. Right now I sold all 5 of my asic miners including my 2 s5 antminer and 1 s7 which I bought from bitmain.