Bitcoin Mining Mega Farm Burns Down, 2-Hour Block Time Recorded

Dovey Wan (@DoveyWan) is reporting that a major fire at a Bitcoin mining farm in China was captured on video. Details about the story are still emerging.

Fire Allegedly Destroys $10M Worth of Mining Equipment

As @OGBTC already broke it, here is the real footage of a local mega farm caught on fire…

Which claimed a lost of $10M worth of mining machines pic.twitter.com/bMihmIwTNO

— Dovey 以德服人 Wan 🪐🦖 (@DoveyWan) September 30, 2019

It’s currently unclear where the facility is located in China, but it had roughly $10M worth of mining equipment which was all lost. The story was first reported by Marshall Long (@OGBTC) who posted a photo of the fire earlier today. https://twitter.com/OGBTC/status/1178672341225738240 Rumors have been circulating about the fire possibly being connected to strange happenings on the Bitcoin blockchain. As Wiz (@wiz) on Twitter writes, the fire is an odd occurrence given that there were no blocks for ~2 hours. “Probably just variance,” he writes, but the timing is strange.

hmm, no blocks for ~2 hours, how much hashpower did that fire take out? probably just variance but curious timing 🤔 pic.twitter.com/xVKxqnViMC

— wiz (@wiz) September 30, 2019

Specifically, block #597,273 was mined 119 minutes after its last blockchain. As Antoine Le Calvez (@khannib) writes, this has happened only ten times in Bitcoin’s history. The last time was in May 2014.

Block #597,273 was mined 119 minutes after its parent.

This happened only 10 times in Bitcoin's history, last time in May of 2014.

Assuming blocks come in 10 minutes in average, this interblock time has a 0.000679% chance of occurring.

— Antoine Le Calvez (@khannib) September 30, 2019

More details are still emerging about the Bitcoin mining facility in China. Yet, some are already comparing the event to 2014 when a similar story broke of a fire at a Bitcoin mine. It was then that millions of dollars were lost in equipment. Although some were claiming that the video was actually from then, the burning building in the video posted by Dovey Wan appears to be a different structure entirely.

Questions Over Bitcoin’s Hashrate Remain

There has been some controversy over Bitcoin’s hash rate as of late, especially after it dropped from 98,12 EH/s on Sept 22nd to 67,38 EH/s on Sept 23rd. It has since recovered completely as BeInCrypto has previously reported, but the slight hashrate crash spooked some in the industry. There is currently an ongoing controversy over whether the sudden dip was a statistical anomaly or whether there were greater factors at play. We can expect details on the alleged fire in China as the story develops over the coming days. Is it possible that Bitcoin’s hash rate was affected by this fire at all? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. 

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Images are courtesy of Twitter, Shutterstock.