Bitcoin has passed the $ 9000 a few days before the Halving. Thanks to this, it has been known that the mining equipment old returned to be profitable. Although regarded as obsolete, with this context present a benefit, at least in the short term. According to the index of profitability of mining, which is monitored by the mining groups PoolIn and F2Pool, mining equipment old as the AntMiner S9 from Bitmain or the Avalon A851 of Canaan can now generate a gross margin of 10% to 20% at an average cost of electricity of $ 0.05 per kWh. For those who have adopted methods of improving the mining efficiency, the gross margin of profit could increase by up to 30% to 40% at the current price of Bitcoin. Some of these measures have merged two S9 in one or lower the voltage to increase efficiency. Also, in the case of China it has been observed an advantage in the rainy season is approaching. What happens is that this country represents approximately 70% of the power mining total of Bitcoin. When you have more rain, there is a greater amount of hydroelectric energy available to these miners, at a lower price. An estimate would be a cost of 3 cents per kWh.
Contents
How this benefit is possible even after the Halving of Bitcoin?
Yes, the mining equipment old could remain profitable even after the Halving, but certain conditions apply. First of all, must be kept constant the price of Bitcoin and the difficulty of mining, in addition to these rates of public services. In terms of mining equipment newer, can generate returns of over 60%. What is more, even you can do it at an average cost of 5 cents per kWh. Some examples are the machines of the series AntMiner S17 and S19 of Bitmain, as well as the series WhatsMiner M20 and M30 MicroBT. This is the Antminer S19 Pro from Bitmain, one of the mining equipment more new and efficient on the market. Source: Bitmain
What had been happening up to now
After the fall of the price of Bitcoin on the 12th of march, or “black Thursday” a wide range of mining equipment oldest had been disconnected from the network. In addition to generated the worst selling of BTC in seven years, there was also a fall in the competition’s mining 16% for this event. The fall of the competition of mining, together with the price spike of BTC after the 12 of march, initially helped the old machines of mining to be marginally profitable. As a result, the rate of total hash of Bitcoin rose to a maximum quasi-historical 110 exahashes per second (EH/s) in the last few weeks. But, during the same period, the price of Bitcoin tanked to around 7,000 USD for weeks. This obviously pressured the farms mining that relied on older equipment to mine BTC before the Halving. With this stagnation of the prices also cooled the wave of purchases of more powerful computers and of the first line on a large scale.
Conclusion
We know that mining Bitcoin is not easy, so that the conditions for profitability are not always insured. In spite of what has been discussed throughout the article, you can not say that there will be miners driven out of the market before the Halving. These are the miners who have mining equipment obsolete and, although they may benefit from what is happening in the market, do not have access to the resources of electricity are very cheap. Therefore, they will be expelled by those that run efficient operations. For a long time, especially waiting for the Halving, the main players have been replacing these older models with new computers more powerful during the end of 2019. Therefore, the margin remains minimal for those who have not been able to settle enough.