Bitcoin Forum

As mining is no longer profitable won't the POW algorithms go to shit? They'd be at a real risk of 51% attacks for some coins.

The whole POW Model needs the network to be very busy just for security and to function


It reminds me of when NXT got released and BTC miners worked out it was more profitable cracking NXT loggings then mining coins themselves lol

Right now mining is still profitable as long as you live in country have cheap electric cost and you have a good mining rigs. Many new coins created using POW algorithm doesn't really have any utility and usefulness, when the coin lost it's adoption, the developer either change it to POS algorithm or abandon it. At least other coins beside Bitcoin e.g. Doge, Litecoin and Monero will still exist since they have a lot holders.

Mining is profitable for many people than can produce cheap electricity through their solar panel systems. Its also profitable in some Asian countries because energy sources are rich so its cheap to produce electricity in overall. I think pow mechanism won't easily die because investors (or buyers) think pow concept makes value of currency stronger mentally. Its like physical proof. So there will always be some pow coins. Including Bitcoin.

It might be as profitable when crypto mining started, but I'm sure there are still miners around the globe, otherwise most of the small altcoins are going to be dead by now. And with that, profits are still going to be made, no matter what.

So I try to look at which altcoins are still making money for miners, and surprisingly, there are still some,

https://whattomine.com/

There are some making 100%++ in 7 days or so. Of course, this might not be accurate, but at least you can gauge it.

Mining is still profitable if you can get the right gear and the electricity price is reasonable. There are many miners still operational and making big amounts in profit. So I am not sure from where did you get that info that mining is not profitable!

But there is one concern though. Individual miners are already out of the game. Now only big scale miners are making money. Unless the mining companies are able to find an alternative source of free energy like wind or solar, there will be a time when mining will become unprofitable. We may need to find a solution then.

It's said mining won't become unprofitable, because miners only sell their bitcoins for a price that can pay for the mining costs, plus some liquid profit for themselves. Theoretically they would never accept mining at loss. So the market has to adjust itself to the currently costs of mining operations.

Less bitcoins mined per block = more expensive bitcoins. And mining profits remain stable...

It depends on the profit margin. If you can make 10% of your investment in 1 month, then some people can accept it, and build on it. Also relatively cheaper sources of electricity are coming up these days

We don't have the same situation as per our countries. There are countries that produces cheap electricity and that's beneficial to the miners there and won't be thinking about the cost a lot.

Whilst some miners sees that it's no longer profitable, they've got faith in what they do so this is what they do. They keep their operations and running their miners, collects the coins that they've been mining, hold it and then will be eventually sold to the market when the price increases.

And that takes a lot of patience to happen because they have to sustain the cost through their other means but, not all miners has the capacity to do that strategy.

There are really a lot of factors to be able to be profitable in mining. Cheap electricity is one of the biggest factor on determining how much profit you can get from mining, Weather is also a factor in it given that it is much suitable to mine on a cold weather country. If you only want profit, There are still active POW coins that can be mined and if you have the certain qualifications like cheap electricity, cold weather, good space for mining rigs , etc. you can still be profitable on it. Miners unload their mining rigs and the mining cards have surge the market for a really cheap price as ethereum transitions to POS. You can possibly get a cheap mining rig today with way more less starting capital.

1 hour of attack on bitcoin costs $1,038,703 (https://www.crypto51.app) at the moment. And from what i have understood others can kick you out of the network after just one double spend so i am not sure if that would be worth it. Maybe with altcoins or if you were planning to short bitcoin at the same time with 100x leverage and people would sell in panic. That would be illegal as hell but i guess it would be hard to prove as trading with inside information.

Well , that's something new it seems . Can you point a PoS coin that is mineable ??? As far as i know ( by definition ) there is no such coin .

1 hour of attack would cost that much in case you could rent half of the hashrate , which is pretty hard with rented hashpower . One other case is you own the miners with half of total hashrate , that means that you have made a tremendous investment and you want to depreciate it . Third case is to bring new miners and gain the control of network , which means that the investment should be double than in the previous case . So , i think no one would try to double spend by attacking the network ( remember that you can double spend only your transaction ) as he should find someone to take a load of money without any confirmation . Not to mention that if he acts honestly , probably will earn more .

Yeah it's shit. So many collusions happened with miners in any of POW blockchain. ETC has proven that if 51% one of disadvantage from POW. There's also another point that can be discussed and what will you get as a buyer from POW coin other than bitcoin? You were just giving miners your money. You get nothing from what you have bought.  :D
More nodes = more decentralized. what's who POW is working but POS is almost the same. More validators = more decentralized.

There are so many bad stories that happened with POW coins. The worst thing is the collusion between miners. They act like they were parties who have been owning the coins. The buyers and holders have no power and miners decide everything. lol.

If mining is no longer profitable, then I think people have stopped mining, and the market will soon collapse rather than develop as it is now. It is true that when the market is in a bear season, many people have to stop mining and sell their machines, but if you live in a country with cheap energy costs, mining can still generate some profit for you. I also like mining, but because the conditions do not allow it, I can only invest a small amount, if you have a large capital, you should mine, I believe that mining will bring better returns than investment.

Mining is still profitable at least when it comes to bitcoin, now if you are talking about altcoins specifically then I will admit I have no idea if this is the case, however if miners remain unprofitable then this only means they need to get better at their job like any other business or employee has to, and even if they remained unprofitable at some point miners will begin to go bankrupt and the ones that remain will become profitable again now that there is less competition, this is a process which takes place everywhere and I do not see why it should not happen to miners as well.

If you have unlimited capital, maybe mining is still profitable. Most people don't have it but they still want to mine. Let's just imagine if to do mining, we need good hardware, at least new releases, which are very expensive. If we don't have much money, we won't be able to afford it. Maybe we can buy mid-range hardware, but can we get a commensurate reward covering monthly costs, including electricity? If the cost of electricity in your country is cheap, the rewards you get by mining using medium-type hardware won't be much. So please calculate how much the total cost you will need before you start.

For altcoin, I don't think you need to have new mining hardware, of course, it will be advantageous, but there are still I believed that you can mine even with some old mining hardware. However, we will all agree that it will take a lot of electricity, so mining is strictly for countries with abundant supply of it and probably the weather as well, like it should be cold or something to minimized the heat being produce by this mining gear. So most likely, they are in Europe. Just Bitcoin mining, most of the biggest farm are located in West Europe.

I think PoW is only effective with coins that's already big enough in term of capitalization, also it's always come back again with how much profits you could generate by mining, after all the lesser the miners the more reward you can get so I doubt that the miners will just gone.
the fact that bitcoin miners are still existing till today only means that mining bitcoin is still somewhat give you quite the margin of profits, but yes majority of new coins are using PoS because it's just more easy.

Even though you can mine altcoins using used hardware, it doesn't guarantee that you will get a lot of rewards because there are bound to be lots of people who will have the same goals as you. After all, the price of the altcoin is still low and you have to hold it in until it goes up to a high price and you never know when it will start increasing. So it all depends on choosing the coin so you can get lots of rewards and you also have to think about electricity costs in your place. It will be a big expense if you can't calculate monthly costs.

Yes in my opinion those days of mining for profit are long gone now. If you add up costs of your electricity bill and hardware and your time it just does not seem to be worth it. And there might be other conflicts that prevent you from making profit.

If you want to make profits just buy and hodl. It is as easy as that and less work for you to do so you can spend your time doing other things. Just give it some more time to end this 'bear market' and will be worth your wait.   

Depends on the altcoin. If it was a top altcoin then the difficulty of mining it is high so any existing gadget to mine it won't just work like a charm but you need a dedicated mining hardware for them. Of course there are still cheap altcoins out there which is mineable for the majority but they aren't only worth it due to their cheap price so we can only end up destroying our machines and paying more for the electric bills.

Mining is still profitable as long as you are on the right place and you have the right equipment. If not then you better just invest or do trading instead. We must realize that earning a profit in crypto is not only limited to mining.

I think in this time many projects are coming which are on the basis of mining and you collect free coins I can't say that all mining projects are real but not anyone easily say that its waste of time because like pi mining many people use this and they easily got profit to this app and they gain free earning only the basis of mining.

Yes, it's true that there are many cryptocurrency mining projects available now.
However, it's important to keep in mind that the cryptocurrency market is highly volatile and the value of coins can fluctuate greatly. Some projects may have hidden fees or limitations, and others may simply not be legitimate

Mining stopped being profitable when Bitcoin started to skyrocket like crazy and whole world jumped into it trying to make money out of it. Then later on only people who could effort massive big Crypto mining centers were able to continue making profit despite of pay electricity bills etc.,

There will always be equilibrium in the system but you are right if one group monopolized all of the miners then security is at risk.  People and groups will always be interested in mining because once enough people shut down profitability will spike (if price stays neutral or goes up).

Coins without any failsafe against 51% attacks are destined to fail anyway. Even without much network activity, miners will still need to mine new blocks in order to generate new coins, and generation times for new coins should also be lessened as time goes on in order to not exhaust the limited supply of the coin in a short span of time. Great example for this is the PoW system used in bitcoin. It has come to a point that it became unprofitable to perform a 51% attack against bitcoin hence why not a lot of such attempts were made again in recent times.

But yeah, if the coin is really shitty, you can expect a lot of miners to instamine and dump the coin as it hits the exchange. That'a why there isn"t a lot of new altcoins using PoW as an algorithm anymore.

Will always be profitable as long as your node continues and as long as you can pay the bills and maintenance of your mining rig. Maybe it is just not the right time to sell what you have mined but waiting for a bullish trend to occur would be better than to settle with the current market price. My neighbor is mining Bitcoin for years already and according to him, it is still profitable on the current market price but he still choose to not sell and to just wait for an uprise movement to occur. But we do have different capabilities; some would be in need which will somehow push them to sell early and that is fine but as long as you can endure the market situation, holding to both miners and investors, would be better for sure.

When was the last time mining was profitable? What year? Because of increased hash rates, energy prices, equipment prices, etc., it's long since been a not good way to make money, unless we're talking about industrial farms. Investing that kind of crazy money in equipment to wait 1-2 years for the equipment to pay off? It's easier to invest in some projects and wait for a good profit. In my opinion, it's a much more rational allocation of your money than trying to make money from mining.

Well, I believe OP that mining is still profitable but not like before when the competition is low. Many mining businesses had close down and announce bankruptcy because of their huge expenses and this it means that their earnings aren't enough to sustain their business. But of course, mining is still here and remains giving its services until it was still needed. Crypto is still alive and growing, so we can expect more people to have mining businesses as well but the question is - how long they could sustain the competition and survive by earning a small profit?

Depending on factors such as Bitcoin price, electricity costs, and competition, mining Bitcoin using the Proof-of-Work (POW) method can be profitable or unprofitable. When Bitcoin prices are high and electricity costs are low, mining can be profitable. With increased competition and electricity costs, mining revenue margins can become narrower and less profitable. Before deciding to invest in Bitcoin mining, it is crucial to take these factors into account and do proper research.

Some analysts argue that POS systems will become more popular and profitable in the long run because they are more energy efficient and environmentally friendly than POW systems

I have a different opinion on this.

As is currently happening with all the SEC action/FUD on Stablecoins and staking I believe the crypto industry will revert back to PoW.

Even Ethereum is not safe from the SEC.

The only thing that seems to be safe from the SEC is Bitcoin.

Why because it is truly decentralized in all ways and I see other Layer 1 blockchains which will also want this protection from the SEC.

This means more PoW Cryptocurrencies which means again more miners.

Which will most likely mean higher prices eventually for PoW coins which again entices more miners.

I am agreeing with you in this point. I think bearish season is one of the big reason for that loss in mining. Specially for small miners who pay their mining  bills like electricity bills and hardware bills from the output of their mining. And for the bearish market the worth of mining coin is also low and in this case many miner's have facing problems with paying the electricity bills. Moreover, the global economic recession that has been prevailing since the war between Russia and Ukraine, and as a result of which the price of electricity is increasing day by day.  I think overall mining miners are struggling right now.

If mining isn't profitable then no one will be mining bitcoin so it literally means the miners are making profits and the profits depends on their expenses and current market trend, as of now we are in bear market we can't expect much to make but one who keep holding until the reversal of market will make huge money, but with one rig you can't make millions you needs lots of them to create more hash powers but generally no one is started doing mining because of the prices of those things are getting crazy high day by day so one who did as early as possible are making thousands of dollars a day or even for an hour.