What happens when the price of Bitcoin falls below the cost of mining?

[drmilind2004]

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.

[drmilind2004]

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

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. 

[EVOS]

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.

[tomward]

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.

[rileyhill]

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.

[r32godzilla]

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.

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.

[Herbert2020]

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?

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.

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

this article is how pure bullshit looks like. CNBC does that a lot
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?

[rajkr]

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.

[Kakmakr]

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. 

[dohh]

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.

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.

[KuromaYoichi]

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.

[Madara_Uchiha]

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

[coinwizard_]

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

[johnwest]

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.

[bitfocus]

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

[yazher]

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.

[locsta123]

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

[Ayston]

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...

[CryptoPairFTX]

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.

[ETHTachometer]

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