Bitcoin Forum

So, I was thinking, for the long term, even if Bitcoin goes below USD 6000, no worries, 5000, 4000, much the same. Hodl for the long run.

But, the vitality of Bitcoin is maintained by the continuous mining of Bitcoin. On an average these mining costs are USD 3000 to 3500 approximately. So, what happens when Bitcoin falls to that level?

Maybe the mining rigs won't mind bearing losses for a few months if they sense an upside later on. But, what if they don't, and start bailing out?

In that case, USD 3000 or whatever the lowest cost of mining Bitcoin will effectively become the null point. If Bitcoin falls to that point, downwards beyond that is a steep vertical cliff wall, and an inevitable fall to Zero.

Some Googling fetched this result:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/15/bad-news-for-bitcoin-miners-as-its-no-longer-profitable-to-create-the-cryptocurrency.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/15/bad-news-for-bitcoin-miners-as-its-no-longer-profitable-to-create-the-cryptocurrency.html)

CNBC feels that mining will continue even after the Bitcoin price falls below the cost of mining because, China! It seems that the primary motive behind Chinese mining ops is to push money overseas, and this result is achieved by Bitcoin mining even at some, or a significant, loss. Not a game for the faint hearted, but the Chinese miners are built of sterner stuff.  :)

If the price of bitcoin is below the mining price, the first time it will get a bad impact is bitcoin miners, then the traders and temporary bitcoin holders. they will feel panic and might stop their activities.

BTC market value is declining rapidly. If it continue to fall it’s market value then who are used to earn BTC by BTC mining will be demotivate to mining BTC.

If Bitcoin price is falling  for a long a time but mining will also continue .There will be no change in the bitcoin  mining even there is price falling in the market.

I think that the mining would continue to move since only big farms are involved in mining and not individuals so they could bare the loss for sometime with an idea of recovering when price bounce backs again.

nonsense. if anything the cost of mining is about $6000 which has been calculated by silly speculators. but in reality cost of mining will always remain near bitcoin's current price because that is how mining and difficulty works.
if price goes up there will be more miners, more hashrate, higher difficulty, less profit, "higher cost of mining". and if price go es down it will be the opposite.


this article is how pure bullshit looks like. CNBC does that a lot :D
you know how you can determine that? it is easy look at the date of the article (it is from 5 months ago) now go to one of those hashrate chart sites like bitcoinwisdom,... and look at how hashrate has been increasing over the past 5 months. how can it be increasing if it was no longer profitable 5 months ago and price has been falling for the past 5 months? :D

For short term there will be panic in holders but then big buyer will take it as a good opportunity to buy for long term.

A lot of the miners will start to shutdown their mining rigs and they will switch to other coins that might still be profitable to mine. As a result, the overall hashing power will drop and consequently the difficulty will drop too, so it might become more viable for some of these miners to fire up their mining rigs again.

The whole protocol was developed to be self-sustaining and to re-adjust when one of the parameters change.  8)

Nothing very critical, there will be less miners, some nature will be saved. Mass mining is not a necessity, but a camouflage to financial scheme, which BTC is. Although it will not be "reasonable" to mine in many countries, mining power is in ridiculously huge excess anyway. That much mining is not needed, most of it is just a waste of energy. Many people dont understand information technology enough. Bitcoin mining, like it is today - is a ridiculous overkill by means of collective computing power for just validating transactions.

If BTC continues dropping, speculating on it will at some point become pointless. If all altcoins fall too, cryptocurrencies will be history.

I feel like I've seen this kind of topic before but the cost of mining will readjust itself based on the bitcoin price right now, if the price keeps dropping then a lot of miner will stop mining, the difficulty goes down and the cost to mine will go lower aswell, the opposite will happen when the price goes up as there will be more people that want to mine that make the difficulty increase.

The question of modifying the mining algorithm may open up, that in this case ASIC devices will be unnecessary.

Miners are often doing it due to future speculative prices so they will be hodlers instead. Without miners dumping the price will flatline and eventually rise again so it will never go down to zero

Unfortunately, that will be the end of transactions if minors stop mining because of the reason. Miners tend to be moody these days and they are getting less profit. There are holders who mine and keep it until the price increases. Hopefully they will continue to do so.

Google gives me this result about BItcoin Price falling below mining cost
https://www.streetwisereports.com/article/2018/02/05/what-happens-when-bitcon-goes-below-the-cost-of-production.html

It does not affect the miners, knowingly that these miners are came from a big company. because they know If the price go down there are some possibility that it might pump again. so there's nothing wrong with that.

I think people will still keep on mining. Since the beginning it had always at some point cost more money to mine btc. Smart people mine even if it is for a loss, because they know at some point their investment will pay off and it will be 4 or 100x's more than what it costs now :)

But honestly with all the attention crypto has garnered in the last year and a half btc falling that low would cause a lot of panic in todays market I'm not quite sure exactly what will happen. But I do know that mining won't stop completely but maybe a lot of people will drop out of the pools.... maybe

You'll probably loss your capital as a miner, but fear not just keep on mining... There will be a time that Bitcoin would be seek by many people so the price will increase crazily...

From my perspective nothing will be happened until the Hash rates are up but if price fall negatively nothing will be happen their value will be same.

This value will be remain same until the hash rates are up based on this if the price fall also their value will be same like before. So it won't be dying

this is not possible! if the price falls below $ 5,000, then production will not be relevant! miners will not want to lower their cost! on this in the near future we will see the turn of the crypto market!

The best option is to stop mining for now. When the price of Bitcoin rises again, we will have thousands of miners waiting for this moment. And if you are a miner and have working capital to mine at a loss, and you believe that Bitcoin will return to highs in the future, then mining can now be a good long-term investment. It is an expense that will be rewarded in the future.

BTC mining is wellknown for earning BTC in a safe way. It’s help to being BTC transection fee less. But if BTC continuously going down then it will felt very bad effects on BTC mining.

Actually it won't be dying and if this hash rates up there will be no problem because the miners will be mine and this value will be remaining same in the market.

I don't really agree to it. The cryptocurrency market is always unstable and I believe that the dump is temporary. Soon the price of Bitcoin will start rising again. The miners will not suffer loss because Bitcoin can never go out of the trend.

I think just the opposite. BTC will be continued mining though the price becomes low. I don't think the market volatility can go so that far that it becomes unbearable for miners to bear the cost. If it becomes lower than $3500, the miners will continue mining, as they know the price will grow up.

According to the expert reports and my own realization, mining will eventually pay off and give profit if you don't stop it out of frustration. Another thing we need to consider is that, not all the countries have the same electricity billing system and some miners might take advantage of that and keep continue to mine even when the price falls below the profit range.

If bitcoin prices fall deeply. I do not think anyone else is going to exploit bitcoin anymore. The cost of mining is too high.

Hashing power depends on the number of active miners and directly affects the Bitcoin difficulty meaning that the more people give up mining the less difficulty it will be for the rest. So if a lot of current miners decide to stop mining due to unprofitability the hashing power will decrease and in turn lower the mining costs. I think this equilibrium prevents Bitcoin from becoming permanently unprofitable to mine in case of unforeseen extreme circumstances that can destroy the market.

I don't think that the price of Bitcoin will ever fall below the cost of Bitcoin mining. But even if that happens, I don't think the miners will stop mining Bitcoin. This is because the cryptocurrency market is always unstable and the price may start pricing at any moment.

Nothing much to be honest. As long as the hash rates are up, then even if the price falls to a negative value, this coin will still have a value in the market.

I believe nothing will happen to mining. I have seen people mining BTC when it was being sold in the market for 1,000$ only and I don't think it will ever fall to that level ever again. The thing with mining is the startup cost is quite high but eventually you'll start making profit if the electricity bill doesn't surpass the market price.

First of all it is very much impossible that bitcoins price will gonna fall even below the mining and if it happens then the existence of bit coin will become disappear which is impossible.

most of the people start mining bitcoin went the price was very low and if i'm not wrong then it may be 1k and how could it be possible to fall the price below 1k.

What You write, is nonsense. If You believe, that BTC has something to do with crowdsourced hashing, then lessening reward is in direct correlation with hash rate.

Right now, it doesn't look like mining will stop as recently Bitcoin experienced an all time high hash rate which just indicates that the miners are mining coins with twice the intensity and effort. Even if the price of BTC falls below the cost of mining, the miners can get profit in the long run as they can easily continue to mine with same rig over and over again.

Hopefully, it won't fall to that level. Miners are fams that understand the process of bitcoin investment. Most bitcoin investors do not look for short term returns but the long-term effects. They might panic but trust me. They will hold on till bitcoin gain grounds again

When the price of electricity is higher than buying bitcoin directly they will shut down their miners. When it rises above what they can buy for money they will start their miners.
The fewer miners there are, the more profit there is per miner for those who are left, so the amount of miners will reach some equilibrium.
They will most likely not turn off their miners, but they will shift them to something else than bitcoin. If there are no other coins they can mine than bitcoin there will just be less mining.

Even if price keeps dropping, I'll keep buying because I think price will eventually rise again and see new highs. I'm prepared to wait years for the big turnaround. But for miners, aren't most of them about immediate gains?
Speaking in economic terms, why would someone (not motivated by the ideals of crypto-currency) mine something if its value is less than the cost to mine it. In the real world, be it real gold or drilling for oil, or other, if cost is greater than reward, a business does not invest in such things.

If it's lower than the cost of mining, then some small mines may go bankrupt, and there won't be people coming to the market right away to buy bitcoins because some big mines have very low electricity.

I think the tipping point of mining activities would come, and it would most likely lessen at a big percentage the amount of people who are mining for coins. I say that because it would not make sense to continue on something that you would only get a loss in the end. For every business venture that people do in the cryptocurrency market, it's always aimed to get something back whether it's profit or asset. Also, I think that right now, it is slowly reaching that point because it has become harder to mine since the market cap of many coins are reaching its peak.

you shouldn't really concern yourself with the cost of mining and the bitcoin price, some comments already explained why not so i won't repeat. the only thing that we do need to consider these days specially is the fact that people believe $6000 is the cost of mining and they also believe that price wouldn't fall below it because it will become impossible to mine. although wrong but this little belief makes $6000 even more stronger than before.

Will in this case if bitcoin fall because of mining ,there must be a big tendency thats theres a big factor effect in the worlds of cryptocurrency,i thinks its hard to recover when the markets value falls down and maybe all crypto coins would been affected,because mining is one of the big factor thats make the blockchain works and cause a big effect to the crypto worlds.

Firstly, Chinese miners and equipment manufacturers for mining will not let Bitcoin price drop to a level where mining becomes unprofitable. Secondly mining equipment can be used not only for mining Bitcoin, but also for encryption, calculations for AI, modeling and so on. Therefore, I see no problems for miners associated with the drop in the price of Bitcoin.

Well, I think some will stop mining and some other continue.  If nobody wants bitcoin anymore or bitcoin have no value, all miners will stop.  Nothing to worry about.

Yes you are right. Bitcoin is future gold. Bitcoin future is bright. If bitcoin falls down over the mining cost, as a result, some of bitcoin mining country will stop there mining.

If BTC continue to decreasing it's market value it will felt very bad effect to BTC mining because many lose their interest to mining then.

I think it will be a very hard for bitcoin. I hope that bitcoin will not go to this much low. But anything can be happened in the crypto world. If it happens, it will be one of the worst times for bitcoin.

I agree with you. This is a dynamic process and if Bitcoin was to become too expensive to mine then the whole value would readjust itself.

I think the bitcoin network hash power will drop dramatically
and that will lead to bitcoin being less decentralized than before
but I'm not sure that can happen
because the development of hardware for mining bitcoin will always be updated

It will going to be a disaster then. I think majority of people will leave the bitcoin market if this happens. But from my opinion it doesn't seems to be happened. Let's hope for the best for bitcoin.

that's why these theories about mining cost are so silly. if difficulty goes up too fast, the more marginal miners will only mine at a loss for so long before shutting down. then difficulty adjusts downwards. it doesn't matter what it costs to mine BTC, because it can always cost less (or more).

if a miner is mining at a loss, why wouldn't they shut down? they can buy BTC instead wasting money on electricity, if they're so bullish.

This price is quite low for bitcoin. Bitcoin is having positive feedbacks from all around the world. So i think bitcoin will have good time in upcoming day. I am waiting now for the bullish market to come.

If the value of the bitcoin falls deeper than their value, the diggers will no longer worry about upgrading the mining machines. By then, Bitcoin may be up again, as the user demand is larger than the supply.

Honestly i think mining will continue. Lot's of big farmers are already in total profit, and lots of them without any or almost with any electricity costs. It would be needed BTC to make a huge drop, probably to bellow 100 bucks or something, and even that...
Now there are several possibilities, since btc still is the strongest coin and leads the fluctuations of other coins, if all the other coins drops 2 and any of them takes the lead to become the primary trading pair, ppl would still continue to mine btc. If any other takes the lead, even there ppl wold continue mining as it will take a long path for btc to stop being one of the strongest coins.

You have ignored what so far has been mined is still there in the market. BTC will find its way even if the price hits $1000 or less. I don't think it will ever happen and price will rise day by day.

There is no guarantee which cryptocurrency’s price will be increased or decreased. Recently the price of bitcoin was high. But it can be changed at any time again.

I don’t think that this market cycle will be the same in the next year also. Because there are ups and downs in the crypto market. So, the cycle will be changed also with the coin’s value.

I believe that the mining cost goes majorly with the activities that goes on in the blockchain and at that if the price of bitcoin in the market goes down I believe the mining farm will also run on a less cost except for electricity supply.

Bitcoin is down now but it will dominate again like last year. Undoubtedly bitcoin is the leading currency in the world. According to the chart it seems that bitcoin will rise once again and we will happy for it.

I understand that the users gets very worried about the market cause this place is very unpredictable but if you can cope with the condition and be supportive for the market then this kinds of situation will be easy for you

If this really happens then it will be bad news. Buy Bitcoin still has the power to do something good in the market. The price may have dropped a bit, but it did not end. It will turn and the price will be very fast. It exceeds $8000 by the end of the year.

it is very bad news but it will recover and bitcoin turn again. bitcoin price will forward it may be $8000 or $10000 in the end of year. you have to wait for increasing price don't be frustrated. it will do something good. because bitcoin are more secure and potential. it is made by advance technology.

if bitcoin price fall down than you should wait for increasing price. bitcoin price should forward immediately. it turn quickly because it is more demandable in crypto market. people increasing their investment when price are go down.

Bitcoin mining cost is always changing. It depends on number of miners or hashrate. It means difficulty is always changing. So if bitcoin price decrease to 5000 dollar, the mining cost will decrease too.

If this happens, it will be a very bad image on crypto generally and might discourage people to enter into bitcoin, and also most miners will feel so discouraged, infact i wouldn't wish for the situation to degenerate to that extent

i agree with you.i think $3500 is the perfect for mining. i think when anyone mining bitcoin they should think for long time investment. if anyone hold it for long time then he will get profited.

mining bitcoin at any price ithink it's not a big deal. you have deal according to market situation. ups and down is natural process. you have to wait for the right time.

Mining is good source of profit but if mining cost is higher than coin price miner will not get their desired profit. Since this market is so much unstable so we should analyse the market and its present price for our safety.

Even if Bitcoin is below 6000 dollars, 5000, more than 4000, I will hold it for a long time. Bitcoin has a great future and it is highly advantageous compared to any other investment. I'm trying to recover my current status and try to buy some bitcoin too.

Seriously, it will not be "reasonable" to mine in many countries, mining power is in ridiculously huge excess anyway. That much mining is not needed, most of it is just a waste of energy. Many people dont understand information technology enough..

People will continue to mine because the chance for $20,000 Bitcoin always has a chance of returning so you were always mining for a profit even though at the time you were not.  Gotta believe. 

The truth is that mining has high risks as well as direct purchase. If the price falls below the cost of production, it is a dangerous situation, because no one has a guarantee that it will rise again, then when it occurs and the price is good, it is best to sell a part to recover the investment from mining, too much accumulation can have the risk of very large losses.

There has been a decline of mining video cards of nvidia maybe some miners are cutting losses because the cost of mining and what they earn is inbalance. But mining will never go out of business as long as there are users who uses bitcoin as payment. There are big firms who is promoting and doing business through mining btc im some countries like china.

What I have in mind is bitcoin. I will make it a wealth asset and a source of investment because bitcoin has many advantages over other currencies or even compared to gold and silver

even you, you know the best answer, of course miners will stop mining, there is no profits on that if the price of bitcoin falls below the cost mining. miners switch to the other one coins that suitable in mining to make profits. when bitcoin continues falls down below miner fee, the production in mining will less and the circulation of bitcoin will slow to reached the max supply.

Miners dont mind the price because most of them dont look at the current price but they are looking on the future price of Bitcoin, even though lets say bitcoin lose its value below the cost of their mining expenses most of the miners will stay mining and only few of them will quit.

Lets say there quite a big number on few of them, then those who continue mining will get more profitable because of those who stop mining.

It would make sense to shut off the miners, and may smaller guns will do that. But I think the big guns will continue mining because Bitcoin is not going anywhere.

It will give big impact for miners if bitcoin price below mining cost. Miners will move to mine others profitable coin because peoples who involve in crypto must be looking for profits. Maybe bitcoin transaction will more slower than before price drop

Miners also think business if the cost they incur is the same as the current market price, so I believe they will stop mining and move to other businesses or investments.

bitcoin is maintained by the continuous mining of bitcoin an average these mining happens when bitcoin fall if anything the cost of mining is about $6000 which has been calculated by silly speculators. but in reality cost of mining will always remain near bitcoin's current price because that is how mining and difficulty works.if price goes up there will be more miners, more hashrate, higher difficulty, less profit and if price go down it will be higher in some other time...

When Bitcoin drops too low, Bitcoin operators will die because of the cost of digging Bitcoin. Of course, there are two sides to it, so many people are rushing to exploit Bitcoin, which causes the market to have too many Bitcoins and keep Bitcoin prices down at the moment. This has affected the market and also the owners of Bitcoin.

At the same time they might seek for something for them to have a replacement to mining that will cost less and they can earn more. If people tends to love what they are dong, they will probably seek for ways. Therefore if it happens some may leave crypto but those who believes in bitcoin will probably find there way.

I think that the miners will not allow lowering the cost of production! if it happens they will receive losses! they will have to quickly return their lost positions and again raise the price! so that in any case everything will be fine and the price of bitcoin will grow!

I think people will stop mining Bitcoin if this ever happens. The issue with mining is that there are a lot of complexities that need to be overcome before starting the mining process. If there is no incentive. then people will be discouraged from the cryptocurrency mining.

I believe that people who extract bitcoin in large quantities, they will still get it even if the coin falls down.

i think it won't matter as we know that the price of bitcoin of January last year was at $1k or much lower and we don't heard any problems with those miners. Those miner will also go with the flow along with the price of bitcoin. Yeah they will be affected but it's part of the volatility of the bitcoin price and they know that before they put up there mining rig.

Most of the miners believe that Bitcoin's mining is still paying off, even if there is a further decline in value. For some groups of miners, the breakeven point is about $ 4,400.

BTC's mining costs will also change with the price of the market!
When the market price is low, many mining unions have withdrawn due to cost problems, and the mining difficulty of BTC is reduced, and the mining cost is also reduced!

Till the date bitcoins have value - mining will be profitable. There  will be just less miners that will produce less hashpower, which means that bitcoin transactions will be secured by less "proof of work" and cost of mining will be getting lower per GHS because of the technolo9gy advancements. Faster ASIC chips and lower power consumption. So, always there will be a reward for miner.

The first one who will be affected by this was the Bitcoin miners , and then everybody who is under of crypto system . As of today there are lots of post about the panic they experienced when this fall happen it will be doubled , and there will some who will give up .

We must consider the fact that Bitcoin mining is not the casual part-time activity. It is a serious business and we should leave it for them who treat with that proficiency. When it comes to the business, not every day is a sunny day and hence the business should have long-term vision and mission with the strategies. Specifically in the case of mining, one should consider returns on a longer time period if he is expecting sustainable profit from it.

I think mining costs will adjust according to the current price of bitcoin, when the price rises that happens is there will be more people who want to mine which makes the difficulty increase. Conversely, if prices continue to fall, many miners will stop mining, difficulties will come down and the cost for me will also decrease.

I would to say that all bitcoin miners are not normal individuals and mostly they are big mining farms. So they would not mind such decline in prices.Such mining farms have already earned tremendous income from bitcoin mining and so they actually know it's potential.So they would not take such a foolish decision of quitting bitcoin mining.

Surely you will not profit on that if the bitcoin price drops below the cost of extraction. As bitcoin continues to fall below the cost of mining, output will be less and bitcoin traffic will slow to reach maximum supply. Lets say there are quite a large number on some of them, then those who continue to tap will get more profit because of those who stop mining.

Whenever the price of bitcoin falls far below the cost of mining, then the miners get discouraged and leave bitcoin mining.  The cost at which to mine bitcoin with electricity has been so so exorbitant and these has to be look into. Most miners sells there mining equipment and get a rest from mining for some time.

People will simply stop mining until it is profitable again and no doubt people who have access to free or extremely cheap electric will continue to mine so it will not stop completely and as others have pointed out it is a self correcting system so the difficulty will reduce to make it attractive to mine.   

Its true, i am believe miners like others bussinessman. They will calculate the cost and the bitcoin price and if the price below production cost, they will shutdown the production until the price getting better.

for the country with cheap electricity prices, it might still be able to run at a price of 3k USD, but for countries with electricity prices above 0.2 USD, they are certainly better off closing their services, because it is no longer profitable
there must be a balance between the price of bitcoin and the price of electricity so that mining can be carried out fairly
IMO, the fair price for bitcoin is 6k USD so that miners still get commissions that are in accordance with their work

i think the miners will stop mining bitcoin, and then all bitcoin amount will not mined and it will mined after the price of bitcoin increase more than the mining cost

Additions to your Point.

If Bitcoin falls to that point, downwards beyond that is a steep vertical cliff wall,
Next HashRate Drops  * Currently happening *
Next 51% Attack
Then a Network Death Spiral , No BTC can be moved
Then an inevitable fall to Zero.

Since there are people with free electricity there will always be someone who will be able to profit through mining.
Just those who pay for power will have hard times.

then mining will die as it did today, bitcoin has dropped below mining costs and many miners have sold their mining tools. and I think the remaining total bitcoin supply will remain intact.

Some miners will stop mining, so Bitcoin mining difficulty will decrease, and it will bring some new miners.

i see they still hopt BTC rise up. but i think the end is coming. we have to face with it

Hey, check statistics (https://www.blockchain.com/explorer) and no mining dies. even when bitcoin has mined a total of 21 million mining systems will remain alive. The strength of bitcoin will be in the mining system unless there is a fairer transaction confirmation method in the future.

Don't count on it.   ;)

On the Instability of Bitcoin Without the Block Reward
http://randomwalker.info/publications/mining_CCS.pdf


26 page read, explaining why btc is toast without block rewards.

more miners will give up,

currently mining bitcoin is only profitable in china, and icleand on an industrial scale, bitcoin isnt even the coin of the small guys anymore its the coin of the big miner boys now.