[2017-11-12] Analyst: “In 4 years BTC mining won’t be profitable anymore”

[ChromaticStar]

According to Christopher Chapman, an analyst at Citigroup Inc, that might not be a bubble problem or fork which would eventually kill bitcoin, but the staggering energy costs associated with mining of the digital gold.

As Citigroup report states, the price of bitcoin required for mining to stay profitable in 2022 stands at $300 000 — according to the calculations, current growth trends, and electricity use. The amount of power consumed in the process of emission by that time would be enough for the whole Japan...https://en.bitnovosti.com/2017/11/10/analyst-in-4-years-btc-mining-wont-be-profitable-anymore/

This is a major issue . Without mining bitcoin will die eventually .
All the expenses and equipments used in mining the bitcoin is making it a very tacky task to handle . Many individual miners have come forward and complained about this that they don't get a proper reconginition and payment for mining . Mining does take alot of effort and time . That is one of the main reason many bitcoin miners are backing up BCH and taking higher transaction fees for bitcoin mining . This might lead to a huge problem in the near future. Bitcoin miners have earned a lot through mining before but due to the limited amount of bitcoin production and all the tacky methods they are shifting their focus into something that is easy .

His analysis is incorrect. Mining profits are diluted as more miners enter the market. If miners are complaining about their lack of profits, it's because there are too many of them competing for the same block reward and transaction fee resources.

It's a tough world, mining booms and busts are nothing new. They will simply need to shutdown and take the loss so that mining becomes more concentrated and profitable to the remaining miners.

[DannaWonder]

According to Christopher Chapman, an analyst at Citigroup Inc, that might not be a bubble problem or fork which would eventually kill bitcoin, but the staggering energy costs associated with mining of the digital gold.

As Citigroup report states, the price of bitcoin required for mining to stay profitable in 2022 stands at $300 000 — according to the calculations, current growth trends, and electricity use. The amount of power consumed in the process of emission by that time would be enough for the whole Japan...https://en.bitnovosti.com/2017/11/10/analyst-in-4-years-btc-mining-wont-be-profitable-anymore/

The computation is based on current trends wherein most of the profit from mining are coming from the blocks that are being solved to mine new bitcoins, but once more and more people are using bitcoin then more transactions will be made and the transaction fee will compensate income from mining.

[Wayan_Pedjeng]

OK.. Let's look at the current situation now. The miners are getting as much as 10 BTC from just transaction fee, from each of the blocks which they mine.

[hatshepsut93]

Mining was introduced with only one simple goal - to prevent double spending. In Bitcoin's network costs of double spending attack outweigh potential gains from this attack, making it unprofitable, thus discouraging people from doing it. In the future, when Bitcoin's value will be very high, it might be more attractive than today to try to make a double spending attack, so it's important that the network has to always be secured by enough hashpower. But again, there will be a new self-regulating mechanism for it - if Bitcoin's value will be high because of interest from users, the total amount of fees per block will also be high, so more hashpower will be working on securing the network. If the interest and price will be low, than double spending attack will also be less profitable, and less hashpower will be needed.

[Isaak Bitcoin]

The bitcoin course will grow to this level or more sophisticated equipment will be created. Perhaps ASIC in 4 years will have much higher technical characteristics.

[richardsNY]

OK.. Let's look at the current situation now. The miners are getting as much as 10 BTC from just transaction fee, from each of the blocks which they mine.

If miners are doing enough effort to spam the network, they'll fetch like 3-4 BTC per block, in an ideal situation (ideal for the miners obviously). In some cases you see blocks include massive fee amounts, but that's more a mistake from a user/service playing around with manually created transactions. It from time to time happens that you'll see these large block fees pop up, but it's not a frequent occurrence. If the network isn't operating under a huge load of spam, blocks mostly contain like 0.5 to at most 1 BTC in transaction fees.

[darkangel11]

I do not believe that bitcoin will go bankrupt. But I am sure that bitcoin will require constant upgrading. Without it can not exist even the world's most trusted mechanism. I don't understand all the intricacies of bitcoin mining but I don't understand why it is impossible to increase the number of transactions. It was the decision to increase the size of the block. The more transactions the greater will be the remuneration of the miners.

Where in this article or discussion is anything about bankruptcy.
They are simply stating that mining might become unprofitable. What they fail to understand is that not only difficulty adjusts but also the price. Years ago you were mining a bitcoin worth $7, now it's $7000. If we continue the exponential growth in those 4 years we might have a coin worth $50k. This will be more than enough to bring miners into the business.

[Guardian.P]

in 4 years, much can change, for example, the price of bitcoin, new machines for mining, perhaps very cheap electricity. It is very difficult to predict something