Bitcoin Hash Ribbons Indicator chart shows that hard time has been existing recent months for Bitcoin miners.
https://www.bitcoinmagazinepro.com/charts/hash-ribbons/

It is bad, but not worst.
https://charts.bitbo.io/miner-capitulation/

Big and strong miners with deepest mining capital resources and best risk and capital management as well as strongest survivalability will continue their existence and operation. In long term, Bitcoin blockchain keep rolling onwards, and strongest Bitcoin miners will continue earning profit.

Weak miners have to capitulate mostly in a bear market, some shortly after a Bitcoin halving, and others even during a bull market by over leveraging and lack of ability to survive in market crash and sideway.

I couldn't figure out how they measure "Hashprice" (for global mining revenue not just their own company in Delaware, US) and how it can be as low as 5 years ago when price was 1/10 today! Specially when there isn't even a fixed global electricity price that plays an integral role in measuring revenue! Even the difference between prices is so massive that makes it impossible. For example in the US itself the range is from $0.10/kwh to $0.40 and when you go global the range grows even bigger, for example here our rate starts at $0.0007/kwh.

But the situation where some complain about their revenue mining bitcoin is not a new one. We have seen this many times and each time they talk about "death spiral" just because they don't understand how bitcoin mining and PoW works.

I would rather say that this is a clear sign that the real bull run is about to begin.


As with previous halvings, the system will be self-regulating. Besides worrying about what might happen 4 years from now I don't think it will do any good. Maybe you could also consider what will happen if in 4 years the bitcoin price in $ is 7 figures.

Also similar to these previous times where bitcoin had a low price and mining was not profitable for some miners, they can loan money to maintain and continue their company's cashflow. There will also be others that will turn off their mining farms which will certainly help the miners that continue to mine.

Mining might become more centralized, however. But this might also be temporary depending if these miners that left will come back and mine again.

as always..
asic farms dont play to the whims of daily price. only hobby miners jump in and out

asic farms plan out 2 years of mining non-stop.
 - they buy hardware in bulk for a 2 year lifecycle. (which they spread costs over 2 years)
 - they do electric contract deals to buy enough MW/GW to cover the 2 year of mining and get preferential rates

for instance in america.. domestic(residential) electric cost is average of $0.15/kwh..
 industrial is average of $0.08 but with preferential rate can be $0.07 or below

the most economic electric price on planet is still ~$0.04/kwh

so lets do some math using current numbers
network hashrate: lets call it 900exahash average this quarter

using this as example


288Thash  4.9kw   $3456unit cost

900,000,000thash/288 = 3.125m asics
3.125m * $3456105000blocks3.125btc = $32,914 hardware cost per btc

3.125 *4.9kw = 15,312,500KW used per hour
$0.04kwh= 15,312,500 *.04 6/3.125= $32,666 electric cost most efficient on planet + $32,914 = $65,580btc
$0.07kwh= 15,312,500 *.07 6/3.125= $57,166 2 year average contracted US industrial + $32,914 = $90,080btc
$0.08kwh= 15,312,500 *.08 6/3.125= $65,333 monthly average US industrial + $32,914 = $98,247/btc
$0.15kwh= 15,312,500 *.15 6/3.125= $122,500 monthly average US hobby residential + $32,914 = $155,414/btc
$0.50kwh= 15,312,500 *.50 6/3.125= $408,333 monthly average international top premium + $32,914 =$441,247/btc

as you can see planets most efficient miners and us miners on 2 year bulk industrial contract can profit

this means that those in US monthly industrial, US monthly hobby and international premium countries are not profit mining and more likely to just buy from the market at a discount, which adds support to the market to not be a 'zero bottom' economy.
which is why market did not dip below $70k this year due to $65,580btc most efficient on planet being the ultimate support bottom
 
anyways
so american hobby miners switch off asics and instead are market buyers, as are the more premium countries. such as the pacific islands like japan and hawaii
UK, EU are also in the above orange and below red so they too are market buyers presently, as its cheaper to buy rather than mine

---

also worth noting the most premium cost on planet is a future ATH market test of ~$440k tops presently.
this is normally the economic ceiling whereby everyone on planet can mine for less than $XXXk meaning the market will test to and no one on planet thinks its profitable to buy when the true bitcoin market economics plays out the expectant ATH this autumn/winter

so if hashrate stays at ~900exa for next 6 months dont expect a $1m btc ATH this autumn/winter

What @franky1 left out on the expense side is the additional cost of cooling, rent on the space, labor, taxes, and other general things in running a business.

What was left out on the profit side was the resale of the equipment when they are done with it, the very little bit of coins that you can merge mine and grabbing money from other people to get paid not to mine on heavy use days: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/03/texas-bitcoin-profit-electricity/

You can look at the base numbers and extrapolate from there if you can or cannot make a profit but there are 1000s of other factors to think about besides just cost of equipment and power.

-Dave

You hope everything in the 2nd paragraph covers everything in the 1st.

Banks, and real corporate investors want to see all of that in writing. With all the possibilities of what may or may not happen.

Talking about it here, yeah, 100% what you posted is all you really need and the rest of the numbers can kind of fake themselves.

But in the real world, where these industrial miners mine that the article in the OP was talking about it's all factored in.

In the end it does not matter that much here, since I doubt too many people on this forum are about to drop 10s of millions of $ to setup a large industrial mine.
And the ones running smaller setups, have a different set of things to deal with worry about.

-Dave

We are actually about 2.9 years away from the next halving - late March 2028 or thereabouts.  But yes, as you say, the system is self-regulating and there is no logical reason to think that it won't continue to be so in the future.

Are they predicting bear season for miners again? If so, this isn't new. We have been through many bad winters for the miners especially. It's not like it's the end of the world, although some people act like it is.