- Aug 17, 2017
- 1,610
“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.