Vice Media Will Release 24-hour Chinese Bitcoin Story on Snapchat
| Updatedby Zhanna Lyasota · 3 min read
Vice Media will release a report filmed inside a Chinese bitcoin mining company on Snapchat.
Update: According to Motherboard, the mine they visited is one of six sites owned by a secretive group of four people, part of a huge mining operation that generated 4,050 bitcoins a month, equivalent to a monthly gross of $1.5 million.
The group’s six mining farms comprise eight petahashes per second of computing power, brute force of which, as of October, accounted for 3 percent of the entire Bitcoin network.
In summer, temperatures inside are more than 100 degrees, and a constant deafening buzz is always present due to the dozens of industrial fans required to maintain a steady temperature for the site’s 3,000 ASIC miners—custom-built computers specifically built for mining bitcoins. The workers of the mine live inside the facility itself, returning home just four or five days a month.
Earlier: VICE Media Inc., a media company and digital content creation studio operating in 36 countries, will release a movie filmed inside a Chinese bitcoin mining company on SnapChat, a photo messaging application that has developed into a destination for news and entertainment with its new feature Discover.
“We’re super happy with how that content seems to be striking a chord. We thought there’d be some overlap; Vice is the leading Generation-Y media brand, and Snapchat, some of it, is a Gen-Y platform,” Drake Martinet, head of platform at Vice News, said in an interview with Bloomberg.
According to Derek Mead, the editor-in-chief of Vice’s Motherboard channel, the idea is a story based on 24 hours in a computer room. The company has sent a team of reporters to northeast China where they interviewed workers in a computer room where the digital currency is created. The story focused on the human element, the people who spend the day there, Mead said. One can view the film footage on Snapchat for 24 hours, after that it will disappear from the application and will be moved to YouTube.
“It’s a relatively new audience, and a different audience from what we have on other platforms,” Derek Mead said during the interview, adding that was a challenge for Motherboard, an online news magazine that covers the intersection of technology and culture.
Vice is one of SnapChat’s 11 initial partners in Discover, a new feature which allows users to see content from such brands like National Geographic, Vice, Yahoo News, People, Daily Mail, Comedy Central, Cosmopolitan, CNN, Food Network, and ESPN. Users are able to watch daily stories composed by artists, publishers, and SnapChat’s editorial staff. These stories draw attention to full screen photos and videos, amazing long form layouts, and gorgeous advertising.
SnapChat has become a full-grown media entity: in addition to the popularized messaging that it launched with and Discover feature, the company has even launched its own original series, called “Literally Can’t Even.” Besides, the service partners with AT&T to find popular video stars from YouTube to create content.
There is no doubt that filming a story based on 24 hours in a computer room of bitcoin company will make a positive impact on the digital currency. The 10-minute long video will motivate people to be engaged in bitcoin industry, attract new bitcoin entrepreneurs and prompt founding new start-ups.
