The recent slip in crypto market, has questioned the health
The recent slip in crypto market, has questioned the health of the crypto mining industry. It looks like the market crash really enraged some Chinese cryptocurrency miners, who decided to lash out by dumping their ASIC miners on the street. If you are not familiar with crypto mining, check out our guide on what is cryptocurrency mining?
Miners are selling the machine as scrap metal to cash in whatever is left of its worth, post Bitcoin’s price plummet that has hit a new low. Only the most efficient miners are still active on the network. The ASIC devices are not profitable anymore, hence a video circulating on the iternet clearly displays crypto miners selling their ASIC devices.
(Read more about: Bitcoin Mining Pool Explained)
The devices are currently being turned off, until prices shoot up again, and this effectively helps in reducing the cost of electricity.
According to Dovey Wan, Founding Partner at Primitive, F2Pool
“The current miner are sold by ‘pund,’ more of a parody. The fact is – say if you can’t mine with S9 with profit, someone with better unit economic will buy at a very low price to ‘recycle.’”
It is important to understand the concept of a turn off price here as well. A turn off price is the price level at which mining Bitcoin is no longer profitable for a miner. For Bitcoin miners, the turn off price is $3,800 dollars. Only those miner devices will survive, who have better installations and more efficient equipment
Bitcoin’s hash rate also reduced significantly in the last few months. Bitcoin’s hash rate was 61 million TH/s in August but it has since then, dropped down 44 percent.
Most miners are thus turning off their operations and several investors are dumping old generation devices such as the Antimner S7 or V9.
According to Hu Jue of Si Hua Mining,
“When ASIC rigs become obsolete it is common for large Chinese mining farms to sell them as scrap metal. Of course, old models are out of the game, as the picture shows. But that doesn’t represent the majority.”
So the question remains, is cryptocurrency mining, still profitable in 2018?