In the dusty sandy land around Ordos in central Inner Mongolia, under the blazing sun, sits one of the world's largest bitcoin mines. Surrounded by coal-fired power plants, rare earth mining sites and the remains of abandoned, unfinished buildings, the Bitcoin mine of Bitmain Technologies is a sign of a new economic life in the region.

Every 10 minutes, a new block of data is added to the Bitcoin blockchain, the accounting ledger that records every currency transaction. Every 10 minutes, whoever recently used their computer to add the block receives a brand new Bitcoin in their digital wallet. Miners repeatedly run SHA-256 hash functions as fast as they can, competing for the right to add a new block. Essentially, they and all the other miners on the network are competing in a game of luck, with the reward being more than $8 million worth of Bitcoin every day.

A new study by researchers at the University of Cambridge shows that more than half of Bitcoin wealth flows into the wallets of Chinese miners every day, who have most of the hash computing power on the Bitcoin network. The Bitcoin system values ​​efficiency and hard work the most, and Chinese miners are close to professional hardware manufacturers and have access to cheap land and electricity, so they naturally become beneficiaries of the Bitcoin system.

In addition to its huge mineral reserves, Bitmain is also the largest supplier of Bitcoin mining application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). Bitmain's 21,000 machines can perform nearly 250 trillion hash calculations per second, and the Ordos mine alone controls nearly 4% of the computing power on the Bitcoin network.

On July 12, photographer Stefen Chow and I visited the Bitcoin mine.

Designed for endurance

Bitmain's mining machines are engineered to withstand extreme temperatures and changing environmental conditions. "Our mining equipment can operate in both hot and cold environments, and sometimes in simple data centers without temperature control," said Peter Holm, head of integrated circuit design at Bitmain. "An important task for administrators is to control the fan speed, voltage, and frequency of each ASIC at startup and when the ambient temperature changes. The firmware algorithms are carefully tuned." Nevertheless, the machines must be protected from the heat and dust of Ordos as much as possible.

The cost of failure

Despite all the efforts to protect ASICs from dust and heat, equipment still breaks down in the effort to earn digital wealth. Based on the current value of Bitcoin, each Antminer S9 earns its owner an average of $18 a day. When all equipment is working properly and the price of Bitcoin is over $4,000, the Bitcoin mine in Ordos can generate at least $300,000 a day. But every time a machine breaks down, the profit drops slightly.

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