Crypto Opinions & News Bitcoin Miners Are Playing a High-Stakes Game of Chicken

[vtqhtr413]

“IT’S KIND OF a last-man-standing situation,” says Fred Thiel, CEO of US-based Marathon Digital Holdings. His crypto-mining company, among the largest in the world, has found itself—like the rest of the industry—in the path of a perfect storm. Over the past year, the sector has been battered by a slump in the price of bitcoin, combined with a spike in the cost of energy and an increase in mining difficulty—a reflection of the amount of computing power directed at the bitcoin network, which dictates the proportion of coins miners are able to win. At the height of the 2021 boom, profit margins in the mining business rose as high as 90 percent, says Thiel. But now, they have “totally collapsed.” If the price of bitcoin does not rally, he says, there will be “a lot more pain,” and firms that are only marginally profitable today will find themselves “very underwater.”

Bitcoin Miners Are Playing a High-Stakes Game of Chicken

In the bitter crypto winter, companies are making deep cuts to survive a new challenge.

www.wired.com

 

[MuzzMelbourne]

A combination of “immaturity, poor planning, and greed” has led miners to the brink of collapse

Dangle a $65K carrot and you'll attract plenty of donkeys. $1.50 is my long-term prediction. After all, it has zero functionality blockchain wise.

Always has been a game of diminishing returns given the nature of Bitcoin halving. Even though there will be coins to mine until 2136(?), making a quid from it will be more about luck than sheer computing power and interest in it will dry up way before supply, IMHO.