BTC mining becoming less profitable, many countries not allowing BTC mining

[siddartha1492]

I think we all know the fact that BTC mining consumes lot of electricity and many cities/countries are banning Bitcoin mining or charging heavy bills. The cost of mining is rising, places to mine are become less. And this will only get worse as the mining difficulty will rise. And not only that, as per this Cointelegram post, the profit margin has drastically lowered. https://cointelegraph.com

How do you think this will impact Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin itself. Do you think mining will become way more centralized due to this? Do you think mining difficulty will be brought down (I know this option is almost impossible)? Maybe we will have new mining hardware? Or mining will become a loss service and there will be almost no Bitcoin miners left?

I would really like to hear your opinions on this topic.

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[1715165963]

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[Haley craft]

I think, this world will still be a lot of power resources of the country is surplus, so the bitcoin of the mining industry can be transferred to these countries, because it can not only increase the income of these countries, but also can make full use of resources,

[Herbert2020]

I think we all know the fact that BTC mining consumes lot of electricity and many cities/countries are banning Bitcoin mining or charging heavy bills.

what?!!!!
more and more countries are joining bitcoin mining. big companies are starting their ASIC chip manufacturing, and a lot of people are starting to work on creating their mining farm in their country.

here are a couple of news links
https://www.coindesk.com/samsung-is-now-building-bitcoin-mining-chips-report-says/
https://news.bitcoin.com/japanese-internet-giant-gmo-launches-mining-business/
https://news.bitcoin.com/russia-ready-for-migrant-bitcoin-miners-influx/
https://news.bitcoin.com/businessman-buys-two-electric-power-stations-to-do-bitcoin-mining-in-russia/
https://www.slavorum.org/largest-bitcoin-farm-in-russia-earns-millions-of-dollars-each-month-on-a-secret-location/
http://uk.businessinsider.com/canada-quebec-bitcoin-miners-mining-2018-1
https://globalnews.ca/news/3978151/canada-bitcoin-mining-prime-destination/


what you are referring to here is an FUD saying New York banned bitcoin mining, whereas in reality they said the power companies have the authority to charge more from bitcoin miners.
i have no clue who are the idiots who are mining bitcoin in NY where electricity costs are HUGE though!

[audaciousbeing]

I think we all know the fact that BTC mining consumes lot of electricity and many cities/countries are banning Bitcoin mining or charging heavy bills. The cost of mining is rising, places to mine are become less. And this will only get worse as the mining difficulty will rise. And not only that, as per this Cointelegram post, the profit margin has drastically lowered. https://cointelegraph.com

How do you think this will impact Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin itself. Do you think mining will become way more centralized due to this? Do you think mining difficulty will be brought down (I know this option is almost impossible)? Maybe we will have new mining hardware? Or mining will become a loss service and there will be almost no Bitcoin miners left?

I would really like to hear your opinions on this topic.

Gradually mining is becoming more expensive is not something we are just hearing with the continued increase in cost but one thing I know is that so far the profit margin has not turn to zero, there will always be people mining only that they will be ready to accept lower margin and the high margin they have enjoyed in the past would at least console them for now. On the centralisation of mining, even though that is not what we wanted but eventually that is what we have to face but there is a consolation there too in that it gives room for other people to focus on other areas in making bitcoin better rather than everybody relying on mining.

In short, this is another major challenge that will happen in crypto but I am just optimistic that it would be settled just like the era of high fees when it seems its never going to reduce but it has happen with the lightening network and SegWit, the attention has shifted to another area.

[Patatas]

I think we all know the fact that BTC mining consumes lot of electricity and many cities/countries are banning Bitcoin mining or charging heavy bills. The cost of mining is rising, places to mine are become less. And this will only get worse as the mining difficulty will rise. And not only that, as per this Cointelegram post, the profit margin has drastically lowered. https://cointelegraph.com

It is very obvious from the bitcoin's ecosystem that mining won't be profitable as rewards decrease eventually.However government banning mining because it consumes too much electricity is bullshit.There are 100 other industrial processes which consume more electricity than any of the miners.Not sure if the article writer needs a topic to ramble about.

How do you think this will impact Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin itself. Do you think mining will become way more centralized due to this? Do you think mining difficulty will be brought down (I know this option is almost impossible)? Maybe we will have new mining hardware? Or mining will become a loss service and there will be almost no Bitcoin miners left?

The answer to all of that is just "NO".

[ss890]

I think we all know the fact that BTC mining consumes lot of electricity and many cities/countries are banning Bitcoin mining or charging heavy bills. The cost of mining is rising, places to mine are become less. And this will only get worse as the mining difficulty will rise. And not only that, as per this Cointelegram post, the profit margin has drastically lowered. https://cointelegraph.com

How do you think this will impact Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin itself. Do you think mining will become way more centralized due to this? Do you think mining difficulty will be brought down (I know this option is almost impossible)? Maybe we will have new mining hardware? Or mining will become a loss service and there will be almost no Bitcoin miners left?

I would really like to hear your opinions on this topic.

Bitcoin mining operation is very important to run the transactions of bitcoin smoothly. So there is no question about the bitcoin mining getting vanished at all. If no mining then how could you transact and who will confirm your transaction. There will be no meaning to the whole idea behind the bitcoin running on the blockchain.
Considering the electricity consumption, I think big industries do take up heavy electricity for their products and services. It doesn't matter if bitcoin mining is consuming lot of electricity. I mean there are big IT companies in the world who consume lot more electricity than the bitcoin mining operation, they have more heavy instrumentation which get cost of electricity hyped to higher rates. I dont think any country will have any problem with that as long as they are getting paid from the consumer.

[suolong]

In many people's view, mining is a waste of resources. I never think so because we will pay for it, but most importantly, the cost of mining is too high now. Many people think that bitcoin is no longer available. How much profit can be earned.

[Za1n]

A recent example of this is the motherboard article detailing the ban Plattsburgh, New York just put in place. While the headlines seem to spell doom and gloom and makes it look like the city is against Bitcoin miners, when your actually take the time to read the article it explains the reasoning.

Plattsburgh has cheap power due to a hydroelectric dam on the St. Lawrence river and residents pay only 4.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. However, this comes with a catch in that they only have an allotment of 104 megawatts of power per month. This allotment was plenty when just the residents of the city used it, but now bitcoin mines are moving in and causing the city to exceed its allotment. When this happens they need to pay the going rate on the open market and forces everyone, not just the miners to pay extra for the power usage overage.

So I don't know about you, but if a big factory (of any kind) moved in near you and caused your electric bill to go up by $100-$200 a month by no fault of your own, I think you would be pissed too. So this ban, which is actually a temporary moratorium, is a cooling off period in which the community can come together and figure out the best path forward.

Myself i think the ultimate solution would be the miners are free to use the cheap power up to the point of the city exceeding its allotment, but then they should be the ones to pay any costs over this as they are the cause of the excessive usage.

In any event, this is definitely not a case of a city just banning Bitcoin mining outright because they hate it or want to see Bitcoin fail like many fud-sters try to spin these stories.

[zafirawijaya03]

I just hope this condition is not too long, because everyone still needs bitcoin mining

[Xester]

If bitcoin mining is less profitable then why are they still mining bitcoin. The reason why bitcoin mining have become less profitable is because of competition. Those who have less hashpower have the tendency to not mine bitcoin at all compared to those who are owners of vast hashpower. This means that if many are leaving bitcoin mining then it is a good news to the remaining bitcoin miner since the competition was lessened.

[Pursuer]

whenever bitcoin price goes down, mining it becomes less profitable the same way when price goes up mining becomes more profitable. but it has no relationship with countries allowing or not allowing bitcoin mining!!!

and you are forgetting that mining and the profitability of it is a dynamic thing. it will always remain profitable. when price drops miners who can't find the profit or  don't believe in the long run, will leave and difficulty will drop so it becomes the same level of "profitable" as before. and it is similar to when price goes up and more miners start mining so difficulty goes up so that profitability comes down to previous levels.

[yanifitri20]

Hopefully this does not last long, so bitcoin mining would be easier without any ban by some countries. And if it says that BTC mining consumes a lot of electricity and many cities / states prohibit Bitcoin mining or heavy filling. not the right reason,

[happness2]

Bitcoin mining has become increasingly difficult, which means that the cost will increase. Plus the fierce competition, mining is not a good choice. I think we can choose to dig other cryptocurrencies. But is the profit among them? Will reduce, I do not know, after all, I am not a miner.

[sidebyside]

I think now mining is no longer effective. cost too large. Why do not we use human resources to exploit bitcoin to replace expensive machines? At present, the unemployment rate is quite high. Bitcoin is a good job helping to solve the unemployment problem

[Oulay]

And this will only get worse as the mining difficulty will rise.
-snip-
Do you think mining difficulty will be brought down (I know this option is almost impossible)?

You got the wrong idea about difficulty, with less miners mining difficulty will decrease. It's a totally possible thing and it's related to the network's total hash power.

That being said, no country banned mining due to high electricity usage. In fact, banning mining, although leading to centralization, would increase its profitability, so the whole OP doesn't make any sense.

EDIT: If you want miners' opinions you should post in the mining board, the spam in this board makes quality posts harder to be seen.

[siddartha1492]

Thank you all for discussing on this topic. So, as many of you have stated that countries/cities are not banning Bitcoin mining, but some are encouraging. That is true, but as @Za1n gave the example of Plattsburgh, this is also worth noting. Many smaller cities with cheaper electricity are not able to meet the demands. Which leads to less electricity available for their own residents and increase in electric bills. And to mitigate this, miners are told to either pay more per unit of electricity or leave. And that has nothing to do with those cities being in favour or against the Bitcoin itself.

Pursuing I hope you understand that I am not saying some cities banning mining is related to lesser profits. I am just saying that options become less for miners. Say for example Iceland. Currently it is estimated that 50% of their electricity is consumed in Bitcoin mining. And that is a very big amount. What happens when the electricity demands for Bitcoin mining keeps increasing but the rate of generation of electricity does not match. Then those govts. are obviously forced to give much higher electricity bills to the miners. That's where the unprofitability part comes. Of course, long term miners can absorb losses in order to stay in the competition and hope for price increase in future to compensate for the losses. But that obviously introduces centralization. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not very comforting also. Especially when you learn that country wise Chinese and Russians will have upper hand in Bitcoin mining!

Herbert2020 you mentioned many articles which state that countries are welcoming miners. If true, then this is of course an excellent thing.

And for people stating that large IT companies also eat up a large chunk of electricity and lead to increase in prices. That is fully true, but the thing is that they are providing a lot of jobs, taxes, expertise, overall economy growth. This is what I state from the viewpoint of govts. or non-crypto people. They see IT companies bringing something in and Bitcoin mining as basically a speculative thing not benefiting their country much. So when the electricity demands reaches out of control, who do you think they will favour? IT companies or Bitcoin mining?
*This above paragraph is fromt he viewpoint of govts. or non crypto people. As a crypto enthusiast, I of course do realize that Bitcoin mining is not wasting the energy. But ya certainly it might help a lot if somehow the electricity consumption in Bitcoin mining can be brought down.

Between I think if current Bitcoin miners can add their opinions on this topic, then it would be highly appreciated. How long do you think you can handle the increased mining costs before you quit?

Edit: OK, I have to admit one thing that I just understood. That is, the mining difficulty does not necessarily increase, in fact it depends more on how many competitors are there at a given time. I was seeing the charts with clear increasing difficulty rates and I assumed that it only increases as time passes. https://blockchain.info/charts/difficulty Perhaps then I guess, in the end, it won't matter much as the rule of average will play out.


 

[unangsajah]

In my opinion, bitcoin mining becomes less profitable because it has been too much to do bitcoin mining, and also the limited amount. Therefore it is better to mine another alternative coin that has the same profit. Many of the coins that can be mined and give big profits even though the time is only a moment.

[mudasarali43]

BTC mining is becoming more and more demand able because it is pure profitable business you have nothing to do just only one time setup and after that your electricity consuming only and you have good thing to do business with Mining machines but not less profitable but one thing is some countries make ban to use bitcoin or make illegal to setup of bitcoin mining machines that you can not do mining but over all it is good business.

[Pursuer]

Pursuing I hope you understand that I am not saying some cities banning mining is related to lesser profits. I am just saying that options become less for miners. Say for example Iceland. Currently it is estimated that 50% of their electricity is consumed in Bitcoin mining. And that is a very big amount. What happens when the electricity demands for Bitcoin mining keeps increasing but the rate of generation of electricity does not match. Then those govts. are obviously forced to give much higher electricity bills to the miners. That's where the unprofitability part comes. Of course, long term miners can absorb losses in order to stay in the competition and hope for price increase in future to compensate for the losses. But that obviously introduces centralization. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not very comforting also. Especially when you learn that country wise Chinese and Russians will have upper hand in Bitcoin mining!

first of all Iceland is a tiny country in Europe which has 300K population! (No. 173 among195 countries) one small mining farm in their country obviously increases the electricity cost by a lot so does any other power consuming business that starts there!
secondly it does NOT consume nearly that much electricity, there was a fear that because of cheaper electricity and growing interest in bitcoin and mining of it, there might be an increase in the consumption.

and again you are thinking small (your example here is Iceland) then making a conclusion on big scale (talk about bitcoin miners in general). the power consumption for mining bitcoin in China is probably 10 times bigger than the total power consumption of Iceland already and they are find with it.

[noormcs5]

I think we all know the fact that BTC mining consumes lot of electricity and many cities/countries are banning Bitcoin mining or charging heavy bills. The cost of mining is rising, places to mine are become less. And this will only get worse as the mining difficulty will rise. And not only that, as per this Cointelegram post, the profit margin has drastically lowered. https://cointelegraph.com

How do you think this will impact Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin itself. Do you think mining will become way more centralized due to this? Do you think mining difficulty will be brought down (I know this option is almost impossible)? Maybe we will have new mining hardware? Or mining will become a loss service and there will be almost no Bitcoin miners left?

I would really like to hear your opinions on this topic.

I am not sure mostly countries have ban bitcoin mining or not, but i am sure, it is not suitable for every man, because of many reasons, like the purchases the things of bitcoin mining, these are very costly and secondly, mining use too much electricity and it is not-affordable for every man. I can't afford it, even too many time i though to start bitcoin mining but in the end i realize i can't make profit from it. You are right in bitcoin mining becoming less profitable.