25 sats \ 2 replies \ @DiedOnTitan 16 Mar \ on: Beware of millions of ways to lose your Satoshis mining this bull market bitcoin
Thanks for the sobering perspective. This supports my observation that hashrate mining has largely become a game for large well-financed companies that can support capital intensive upfront and operational costs in order to achieve economies of scale. Public companies benefit immensely by issuing shares in exchange for cash valued at a multiple of their earnings: RIOT, MARA, HUT, BTBT, HIVE, CLSK, etc. Private miners do not enjoy this leverage.
Now we see Blackrock investing heavily into these miners, setting up ETFs, acquiring massive amounts of Bitcoin with other people's money and essentially buying their way into every aspect of the Bitcoin infrastructure that they can.
Will not surprise me, at all, to see hashrate increase to the point that it becomes unprofitable to mine Bitcoin even with free electricity. Blackrock can fund this eventuality and force all weaker hands to close shop and ultimately control 51% of hashrate. Not sure what they would do with that power because of the well tuned incentives, but it seems to be moving in this direction.
Yeah I think hashrate will grow substantially but at the end of the, the winners will be the ones that can do it economically. There are many different large players operating internationally that can compete with groups like Black Rock.
It's really going to be interesting to watch it play out. I think there's going to be room for a lot of small and medium sized miners for at least another cycle. It's really difficult, capital intensive, and labor intensive for anyone to deploy miners.
There's a lot of competition for electrical infrastructure between AI computing and Bitcoin mining. This is a growing trend and will likely be more apparent after the halving when things take off.
One big limitation for Black Rock also is the hardware side of things which is centered in China.
It will always be profitable to mine Bitcoin a free power, unless the price goes to $0.
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It will always be profitable to mine Bitcoin a free power, unless the price goes to $0.
Miners age like fish. Not fine wine. The moment they come off the assembly line, their value is decaying rapidly. With hashrate going up forever (Laura), miners might have a shelf life of ~3 years (making this # up). If the cost and maintenance of the miner does not recover enough sats to cover itself, then even with free electricity it will be unprofitable.
It is a well-understood business tactic to operate at a loss long enough to force your competition out of business.
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