RMC ASIC miners will be sold in OLDI retail stores. Retail sales of miners will begin in Russia for the first time The Chinese and large Russian companies have invested in RMC tokens

Demand for video cards has sharply increased in Russia. Top models are used for mining - the production of cryptocurrencies. The unprecedented demand is now explained by the sharp increase in the bitcoin rate, which has almost reached $3,000.

Against the backdrop of demand, prices for the latest video card models have also expectedly gone up - some of them have 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%.

Sellers are already experiencing a certain shortage of video cards with the required characteristics, Damir Valitov, OLDI retail manager, noted: “We are seeing demand for certain video cards related to cryptocurrency and mining. Demand has increased many times, they ask very often. There is definitely not enough goods for everyone in Moscow. It started around March, and at the end of May it probably reached its peak, when demand exceeded supply.”

In the markets computer technology also excitement. So, Savelovsky shopping center hung with ads "Mining here!". The most powerful video cards are sold out almost instantly, said electronics salesman Yegor: “Demand exceeds supply so much that it’s just 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 now. The sellers generally do not have any 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, a miner must clearly understand several things - what coin will he mine, where will he put his miners, his farms, what is the price for electricity at this location.

The price of electricity makes up the majority of the costs in the mining process, except for the purchase of the equipment itself.

And, finally, how soon he will 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 exchange rate will be, at least approximately the forecast. This is, of course, much more difficult. 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, Andrey Shevchishin, a senior analyst at the Forex Club group of companies, is sure. “Now this boom is more speculative, the market is overheated. In my opinion, the excitement that is now formed, this two-fold increase in value in a short period, has formed a boom not only in investment, but also in mining. But there is talk about professional miners, as, for example, they work in China, then these are entire farms that consume a huge amount of electricity. In fact, according to some estimates, mining today is no longer so profitable. The number of people who do this reduces the overall result. Plus, the cost of mining continues to decline, ”the expert argues.

The rate of bitcoin has increased by $300 in a week, and Ethereum cryptocurrencies - by $25.

Victoria Feofanova

Russian Mining Ccompany (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, devices for mining. Invest-Foresight found out about it in the office Internet Ombudsman during the signing of the document. As Sergei Bobylev noted, miners have not been sold anywhere in the world in ordinary retail to individuals so far.

© Roman Oplev / Photobank Lori

Contract withOLDI

Until now, miners can only be bought through the website. According to Sergei Bobylev, the miners are sent to the buyer in a box in which there is nothing but the device itself, or, if there are documents, then they are in Chinese.

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

RMC sells three types of Pantech miners; a new Sunrise s11i ASIC miner at 16 nm will go on sale soon, with a computing power of 22.6 TH / s, power consumption of 2.3-2.5 kW, on Bitfury chips. It costs $4,000, is water-cooled, and can heat a room at the same time (however, this is more of a problem in the summer). RMC is the only company in the world that produces such water-cooled miners. The sellers claim that such a miner can earn $500 in the pool per month. The miner gives up to 20% of the power to the bitcoinrussia.ru pool. Selling miners are configured by default to this pool, which also generates RMC. But if the user wishes, he can tune in to another pool of miners. The seller company will teach how to change the pool, how to change the wallet, if the buyer wishes. But the bitcoin-russia.ru pool is more convenient in terms of use: you do not need to register with it, as you will have to do, for example, in the Chinese pool.

Executive Director of OLDI Computers Denis Smirnov announced that OLDI receives the status of a master distributor of RMC miners, will provide 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 data of the Kontur.Focus service, CJSC Oldi LTD belongs to Evgeny Golubev and Dmitry Nikitin, the company's revenue for the past year, according to the same data, amounted to 170.6 million rubles.

Prospects and risks

According to RMC estimates, today the annual sales of miners 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 take 30-35% Russian market miners: after all, RMC remains the only company in Russia that produces miners. The remaining 65-70% will be occupied by Chinese and other manufacturers. Today, there are two major manufacturers of miners - the Chinese Bitmain and the American Bitfury. Russia, increasing its mining capacity, will serve the world's cryptocurrency transactions, RMC says.

But mining has a number of risks. 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 the consumption of an electric stove; one miner per network does not give any overload. 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 still a risk of a ban on investments in bitcoins for individuals. Miner owners - individuals who mine cryptocurrency - can be classified 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 the 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 announced 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 the miner (or the node that adds a new block to the blockchain) actually performed the calculations.

The transition to PoS in the Bitcoin blockchain at RMC is considered almost unbelievable: 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 controlled, unlike Ethereum, where there is a clear leader - Vitalik Buterin. But even for Ethereum, according to RMC, PoS does not seem like a near-term prospect. There is no mathematical proof that Proof-of-Stake is a reliable method of consensus, unlike Proof-of-Work. If, nevertheless, this transition in the two main cryptocurrencies happens, then there are other altcoins that will require mining.

The Chinese and large Russian companies have invested in tokensRMC

On August 7, RMC announced the start of the development of a new generation multicellular processor and miners for cryptocurrency mining. To do this, 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, while $37 million was collected in rubles. RMC tokens were bought by several large Russian companies, as he told Invest Foresight Dmitry Marinichev whose names are not revealed. In addition to Russians, Americans, Japanese, Koreans and even Chinese participate in the ICO. 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,” Sergei Bobylev comments on the situation for Invest Foresight, “it can regulate ICOs only in its own country. Once, the Chinese regulator stepped on a rake when, at the beginning of this year, they closed all cryptocurrency exchanges, and all transactions flowed to Japanese exchanges. After 4 months, the People's Bank of China said that they did not close anyone, and the exchanges reopened, but in the end, the first place in terms of the volume of cryptocurrency transactions went to Japan.

RMC is holding an ICO to launch the 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 the miners on video cards. The new processor will be household, 28 nanometers (nm), 256 cells, with a computing power of 22.2 Th, it will mine any altcoins that work on Proof-of-Work technology.

“Russia is becoming a crypto-friendly zone? asks the professor rhetorically Artem Genkin, who defended in 2006 the first doctoral dissertation in Russia on the private monetary system. “The impression is that nation-states are starting to compete for crypto capital. It's only the beginning…".

On September 7, the RMC holding held a closed meeting for journalists, where it signed the first distribution agreement in Russia 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 unimaginable.

I would compare the classical economy with a horse-drawn carriage, it moves, it is important, it is good, and somewhere deep down I even feel sorry for those cabs who are used to driving it.

Sergey Bobylev, the ideologist of the project and the developer of miners, spoke next and emphasized how important access to distribution networks is for the global market:

Sergei Bobylev:

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

This is not a friendly purchase at all, this purchase is more 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 manner SX5, works on the principle of a heater. If you connect it to the power supply, you can heat a room of 20 m. 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 company S11 is presented on the website of the company called 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 gives out 22 TH / s, which bypasses Chinese competitors several times, Sergey said.

The RMC holding is currently sole manufacturer in a world that manufactures and sells water-cooled miners to individuals.

“Miners of this type are now working both for private individuals for heating in houses 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 with a consumption of 1.8 kW.

If we look at the Irkutsk region, which is home to about 2% of the population in Russia, and how many households live in rural areas, and this is about ⅕ of the part, we get about 0.4% of the population of Russia. Today, these 0.4% do not have gas and are 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 on our devices, then we will increase it to 80%.»

According to Sergey, the cost of electricity when heating a house with a miner is 4 times lower than when using standard heaters and boilers.

Sergei Bobylev:

“Let Japan live on transactions, but we will service these transactions.

“Today we are signing an agreement with 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 quoted more than once that mining is the same as knitting socks. While you are sitting at home and 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 emphasized that since RMC miners are produced in Russia, this is a Russian product, which, like any other product produced in Russia, can be freely supplied and sold on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Sergei Bobylev:

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