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Inside the Largest Bitcoin Mine in The U.S. | WIRED - YouTube
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bitcoin hit one trillion dollars market
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cap this year this has inspired some
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bitcoin operations to expand especially
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in the wake of the recent government
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crackdown of miners in china
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the ban on mining in china has caused a
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mass exodus to the united states to
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russia and to any other areas where
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mining facilities are available welcome
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to rockdale texas america's new crypto
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mining hub this building that's directly
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behind me inside of the buildings we
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have this shelving that's a thousand
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feet long 20 feet tall and there are
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just minor after minor after minor
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afterminer
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we went inside north america's largest
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bitcoin mine to understand how it works
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and its energy footprint
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what is a miner it is a small computer
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they call it an asic miner it is made to
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solve problems and when they solve that
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problem it feeds into the bitcoin
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network when it feeds into the bitcoin
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network you receive a reward to help us
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understand crypto's reward system a
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little better we spoke to blockchain
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expert bettina warburg that's what
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mining is it's a process by which people
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are contributing computing power and
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earning a reward for essentially
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participating in this process that
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secures a network everybody's using the
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same software that allows them to
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connect together and participate in a
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governance structure that's shared it
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seemed like only yesterday that one
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person with a handful of computers
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crunching numbers in their apartment
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could make money from mining bitcoin so
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how do we go from there to here
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just like with many industries you start
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small the guy in the garage started the
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process he mined bitcoin i believe the
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reward was around 50 bitcoin for every
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block reward now it is at 6.25 in some
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ways cost equals energy expenditure this
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is just the nature of technology we see
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updates and innovation and people
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driving margin and driving their cost of
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operation down in order to reap the
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greatest reward so you get mining
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operations that happen
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in places where power is less expensive
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typically mining operations go where
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energy is cheap
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right now texas has some of the lowest
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kilowatt hour prices in america that's
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due in part to a deregulated energy
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market which means several providers
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compete to snag big customers like
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windstone
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there's environments like iceland russia
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china canada areas like iceland and
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canada have a cooler environment there's
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probably less dust in those areas the
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miners run at a cooler temperature
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cryptocurrency is about the low-cost
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provider texas is becoming a hotbed for
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other
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cryptocurrency facilities in fact
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shenzhen based bitmining is coming to
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texas
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and beijing based bitmain a company that
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designs circuit chips for bitcoin mining
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is moving into the decaying aluminum
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plant down the road from windstone
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according to the oak ridge institute for
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science and education one dollars worth
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of bitcoin takes 17 megajoules of energy
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to mine that's more than double the
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amount of energy it took back in the day
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to mine one dollars worth of copper gold
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and platinum
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the machines require more power and more
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power requires larger capacity bigger
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transformers higher voltage ultimately
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the energy intensiveness comes from the
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fact that solving these mathematical
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puzzles is challenging and you have to
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expend a certain amount of compute power
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against it to be the fastest one to
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actually solve the puzzle and putting as
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much computational energy into that
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challenge as possible increases your
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ability to actually win it's
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intentionally inefficient
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each building is a hundred megawatts for
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each 100 megawatt building you can fit
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30 000 new asic miners in it in a
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bitcoin mine the consumption is
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basically taken by the miners each miner
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has about 3 000 watts that it's pulling
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an older miner an older generation the
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s9 which was released in september 2017
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was only pulling 13.50 the miners now
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are at 3 000. so at capacity this
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facility will have 750 megawatts of
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electricity flowing through it enough to
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power 150 000 texas homes during peak
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demand that's a lot of juice
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how do they manage to keep all those
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miners cool our ideal goal is to keep
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the ambient temperature
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around 81 degrees there's a lake about a
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mile from here and so underground we
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have a 8-inch line with a thousand gpm
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pump where we pump literally the water
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through this mile long pipe into the
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facility and it actually goes into
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holding tanks that then recirculate the
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water and it pumps it back into these
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evaporative cooling walls that are 12
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feet tall water is actually dripping
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down the wall of that evaporative
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cooling cell and then as the air comes
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through it it actually cools from 16 to
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20 degrees difference between the front
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of the wall and the inside of the wall
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the miners have fans they have intake
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fans and there's thousands of those fans
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running and they actually suck control
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the ambient air through the miner and
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then there's an exhaust fan actually
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pushes the air through the chips and
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into the heat aisle as it goes through
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the miner it then heats up because the
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chips that's a processing so it gets
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really hot and then we capture the heat
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on the inside of the heat wall and then
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it is evacuated out of the building
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through a quote-unquote chimney-like
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environment inside the heat aisle it
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literally feels like an oven
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one windstone employee estimates that it
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can get as hot as 140 degrees fahrenheit
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in here
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so the s9 has a hash rate of 13.5
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terahash the new s19s are 110 tara hash
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hashrate measures how many computations
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a miner can do usually in a second so
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how much money can each miner
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potentially make each day currently a
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s19 with 110 tara hash the profitability
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every day for one machine is 30 usd
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okay so 30 bucks times 30 000 miners
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times two big buildings
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nearly two million dollars a day for a
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facility this size we have a full staff
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of 120 employees we work 24 hours a day
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three shifts there are definitely some
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increased efficiencies on the horizon
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such as faster processing chips for the
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miners cooling them in immersion
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technology but at approximately 73
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terawatt hours annually bitcoin's energy
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consumption is more than the energy it
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takes to run every single television set
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in america i think ultimately
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the energy consumption question is a bit
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of a what is it relative to when we look
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at our financial system as a whole or
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even just wall street to power wall
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street which runs almost entirely off of
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computation today anyway and high
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frequency trading algorithms when you
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look at mining just to earn bitcoin well
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that's not necessarily so awesome
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according to the digiconomist's bitcoin
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energy consumption index one bitcoin
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transaction takes more than 1500
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kilowatt hours to complete that's more
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than 50 days of power for the average
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u.s household
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bitcoin is
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what i like to think of as a calculator
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so it's a sort of old-school
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very clunky system that gets the job
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done and you look at what's happened
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with newer blockchains like ethereum two
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and dfinity is that they've actually
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implemented a totally different
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system
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for
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essentially doing the same thing and
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ethereum is upgrading to more energy
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efficient way of securing the network
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and the future will be about a lot of
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these different internet computers
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battling it out for adoption so you'll
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see dfinity near flow polka dot all
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kinds of networks really uh
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serving as the optimized internet
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computers ultimately
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the value will come from the amount of
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applications and
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tools and things that you can build and
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do on top of
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this computing architecture you know i
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think all technology
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creates energy consumption in certain
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patterns and ultimately what we have to
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do is make sure that what we're
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building is something that's worthwhile
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and that we actually want in our society
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