In October of last year Motherboard gained access to a massive, secretive Bitcoin mine housed within a repurposed factory in the Liaoning Province in rural northeast China. This is the infrastructure that keeps the digital currency’s decentralized network up and running, and its operators are profiting big time. The mine they visited is just one of six sites owned by a secretive group of four people, part of a colossal mining operation that, as of our visit, cumulatively generated 4,050 bitcoins a month, equivalent to a monthly gross of $1.5 million.
