From 600 000 to 800 000 bitcoin miners, according to preliminary estimates, has stopped working since mid-November because of lower prices on major bitcoin and hash rate. And the total number of transactions in the network of one of the largest mining pools F2pool supporting about 11.4% of all bitcoin miners, has declined 10% over the last few weeks. Such figures lead the founder pool Chasing Mao (Mao Shixing).
To find out the reasons why miners are leaving the industry, analysts measured the total reduction in the number of transactions in the network and the average computing power of the old equipment for mining, which gives little profit.
The trend recorded F2pool, reflect, and sites aggregators. According blockchain.info full hash rate of the Bitcoin network fell from 47 million terahara per second to 41 million terahara per second in just two weeks. This is a drop of nearly 13%.
The study showed the company F2pool, most of the miners who had stopped working could probably produce cryptocurrency on legacy devices, like T9 Antminer from Bitmain. Such models have little computational power about 10 terahara per second, and for this reason, almost do not generate revenue. At least, the numbers show the profit index F2pool.
“It is difficult to count the exact number of associated with us miners, who ceased work. But in the last few days, we can see that tens of thousands are disconnected from the network. Conversations with large farms confirm this,” says Mao. — “Miners in China”.
20 Nov businessman posted on his Facebook page a photo of a man packing no mining equipment in the box, with the caption “closing is not an option, you can now sell pounds”. The post community took it as a sign of the inevitable decline of the industry, because if the equipment in China sell, what you can expect? However, Mao was quick to dispel panic:
“Those miners that are sold in kilograms, was even more outdated models that can no longer be used. So people sell them for recycling, instead used in the production further,” he explained.
However, Mao recognized that the reason for the decline of the Bitcoin network hash rate yet became not only the obsolescence of devices and the reluctance of the heads of the pools to upgrade equipment. The owner cited several factors that provoked the miners on the above steps. Among them, Mao referred to the market downturn that occurred after the hard forks of Bitcoin Cash about a week ago.
Also not the last role was played by the growth of electricity prices in China. What would be a funny reference to “Game of thrones” as it may sound, but the approach of winter in the country do significantly affect the market. The Chinese hydroelectric power plants began the “dry” season, and the cost of electricity increased by two times compared with summer rates, when water was plentiful. It should be noted that this does not affect all parts of the country. For example, in Xinjiang province, where most of electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels in thermal power plants, the electricity tariffs remain unchanged. But still the main part of the mining farms are not located in this region.
“All these factors superimposed on each other, which caused the phenomenon that we are witnessing now,” summed up Mao.
He added that the shutdown of most of the miners doesn’t mean their eventual exit from the industry. According to the businessman, mining bitcoins is always dynamic and responsive process. Perhaps when the situation stabiliziruemost, some of these miners going back to mining cryptocurrencies. But those who did not give up, in the future will benefit from the situation.
“The change in complexity of bitcoin mining usually has a delay of approximately 14 days [after the changes can see]. After waves of closures, the miners decided to remain in the industry can benefit,” concluded Mao.
