Bitcoin Forum

http://qz.com/316898/the-gold-rush-days-of-bitcoin-mining-are-over-and-not-because-of-the-price/

For all the volatility in bitcoin pricing, 2014 may be looked back on as a year when bitcoin began to move past the proof-of-concept stage and toward a mainstream market. Some 6.6 million bitcoin wallets have been set up so far this year, according to Coindesk, a fivefold increase over 2013. And 75,000 merchants now accept the digital currency, including giants like Dell, Expedia and Overstock.

But one area of the bitcoin economy is maturing much faster than the others, to the point where profits are increasingly harder to come by and consolidation and diversification are already happening: the mining of bitcoins. For years, bitcoins were mined largely by a far-flung network of desktop hobbyists. But increasingly, a smaller group of companies building large data centers set up for the sole task of mining new bitcoins.