Is it possible that number of miners will decrease for a while?

[bgaf]

We will feel that on coming weeks. A lot of miners will think if they are gonna continue or what, cause making their profit cuts in half will really affect everything and there are factors need to consider especially expenses, you can imagine your work stays the same but your profit is reduced.

Given that, the price of bitcoin never increases, but if the price could go somewhere more than 10k then maybe they will still be interested. Compensation is a must to be able to continue mining, perhaps many already stopped and sell their equipments due to this halving.

[TalkStar]

It is really possible, we are here in this crypto world to earn money so we are looking for the bitcoin to go up so we can earn more, but it all depends on the thinking of person if he wants to earn money while the value of the bitcoin is high or he wants to earn money every time without thinking whether the price of bitcoin is down, it is a matter of thinking of different people in this crypto world.

Professional miners regularly pay high amount of electricity bills to keep their mining rig live and i don't think all of them will follow the way of "Mining for nothing". They have their initial and regular maintenance costs where due to halving they are not getting enough funds to backup all. So its simple that a big number of miners will shut down their rigs due to insufficient mining rewards and that will remain same until bitcoin's price show enough uptrend move.

As a crypto user or trader you can stay sticky with bitcoin with the idea of supporting bitcoin but its kinda different for miners. Honestly it was expected that miner will leave the field for sometime but matter of concern is the number of miners.

  

[AniviaBtc]

With the recent halving of block rewards, the incentive will be lower than previous for miner. On the other hand, the cost for them will still be same which may not be profitable for a while (I'm not sure about this). If it is true, is it possible that some miners will just leave mining for a while until they get back in a equilibrium or in profit? What fo you think?

There is high possibility of it happening. Mining is a costly business to start and it also needs a good amount of recurring cost to maintain. So if bitcoin price isn't increasing now, a lot of small miners will be forced to leave mining because it will be cheaper for them to buy bitcoins from the market instead of mining it.

However, we haven't seen any signs of it. Let's keep a close watch on the situation. It seems bitcoin won't disappoint the miners.

Possibly, YES. There are a lot of bitcoin miners who are willingly want to stop because of the higher cost and minimal salary in mining. If you're a managing costly businesses, you should know how to manipulate and maintain it properly so that you don't have any problem when crisis occurs.

Halving is approaching and obviously, most of us will become affected by this, we will suffer from the halving of supplies and hopefully the demand becomes high. Hoping that the price of bitcoin reach its all time high again after halving. We need to look for a brighter side because we will all benefit about it once that there's a growth in its price.

Absolutely that there's a probability that bitcoin miners will leave their work in order to invest in cryptocurrency rather than working hard and waste their time mining minimal amount of bitcoin. Sometimes all we have to do is good decision making and wise thinking.

[Krislaw]

This is very possible, especially the miners with low hash rates. The only thing that could inspire them to continue is spike in BTC price and hope (hoping that the ones they are mining today would cost a fortune later in the future). But I see majority of miners leaving when the cost is too much for them.

[TravelMug]

If there are no profit margin for the miners, then obviously they will stop simply as that.

Specially those who are mining old and inefficient mining hardware as they curtail higher electricity cost.
Of course if the price spike around the 5 digits, maybe some miners with old rigs with continue, but we can't really see where the price will be so we should expect that the pressure are strong that there's no way for them but to close and shut it down for good.

Mining today is a business, if you can't find cheap electricity then you can't survived in this game. It's just a question of how much hash-rate will come offline post halving.

[davis196]

With the recent halving of block rewards, the incentive will be lower than previous for miner. On the other hand, the cost for them will still be same which may not be profitable for a while (I'm not sure about this). If it is true, is it possible that some miners will just leave mining for a while until they get back in a equilibrium or in profit? What fo you think?

Many people forget that the BTC miners are making their revenue out of the transaction fees from transactions that were executed on the blockchain.The block rewards are just additional revenue for them.
The mining reward might be reduced,but the transaction fees remain as a relatively stable source of income.TX fees on the Bitcoin core blockchain might go up,like they did in the winter of 2017-2018.
Smaller miners will leave the mining industry for sure.The bigger miners will have to improve their efficiency and move their facilities to places that have cheaper electricity.

[btc_angela]

I agree that if each bitcoin block reward were halved and the price did not rise, many miners would not make a profit or even lose money. Which would force them to give up mining until the price increase or they  find cheaper electricity to keep them from losing money.

Cheaper electricity and new mining hardware to be able to cope with the difficulty. It make me think as well that if it's no longer profitable to mine bitcoin, there is also a possibility that they could mine other altcoins as well just to be make profit out of their old and outdated mining equipments. And if bitcoin price rises, then they switch back to bitcoin. I'm not sure what will be the price today for miners to at least break even though. So there are a lot of pressure now for miners, to sell their coins in order to  buy new equipment. Or probably it already happened.

[bakasabo]

Anyone knows with what bitcoin price / hardware / electricity cost it has become unprofitable to mine after yesterdays halving ?

Aftermarket gonna be filled with used, but still in good shape (or almost new) hardware. I'm going to make a PC upgrade and is planning to buy a GPU unit from a miner that cant afford to mine since today. What do you think, should I buy GPU from a miner that bought hardware, lets say few months ago, but due to 2020 halving turn off his mining rig ?

[sheenshane]

I agree that if each bitcoin block reward were halved and the price did not rise, many miners would not make a profit or even lose money. Which would force them to give up mining until the price increase or they  find cheaper electricity to keep them from losing money.

I dont think there's a way to find cheaper electricity but there is always a new mining machine that suitable that makes miners didn't give up.

In OP question, yes, it is possible for small miners may not afford the expenses for s short period of time and the same as what happened in the previous halving. The mere fact that small miners will stop mining it is possible that through this it may help pump up the bitcoin's price because of the low availability of bitcoins in the market. Anyway, once the Bitcoin price pump again then rest assure small miners will go back and start mining again aside from those big mining companies.

[Pffrt]

 For some it can still be cost effective, with professional equipment and confidence in the potential of BTC.

Most miners are kind of investors, they invest because they have profit from mining. No one would mine if they had loss from it. If the price goes below, I'm sure we will see less number of miners in the chain. This may give you a good idea about it- https://tokeneo.com/bitcoins-hashrate-has-fallen-by-40-this-month-btc-miners-to-capitulate/

[Getmon]

With the recent halving of block rewards, the incentive will be lower than previous for miner. On the other hand, the cost for them will still be same which may not be profitable for a while (I'm not sure about this). If it is true, is it possible that some miners will just leave mining for a while until they get back in a equilibrium or in profit? What fo you think?

It is very possible and it has been happening.

The cost may rise or fall. The main cost there is the regular or non-stop electricity that miners need. But that is not something they cannot do anything about. They have certain options to counter it. But as to whether they will continue surviving with a profit despite the just implemented inflation of rewards, they will see in the next month or two.

[Yatsan]

With the recent halving of block rewards, the incentive will be lower than previous for miner. On the other hand, the cost for them will still be same which may not be profitable for a while (I'm not sure about this). If it is true, is it possible that some miners will just leave mining for a while until they get back in a equilibrium or in profit? What fo you think?

It is very possible and it has been happening.

The cost may rise or fall. The main cost there is the regular or non-stop electricity that miners need. But that is not something they cannot do anything about. They have certain options to counter it. But as to whether they will continue surviving with a profit despite the just implemented inflation of rewards, they will see in the next month or two.

Mann, if you see the BCH mining activity it goes skyrocket after the halving! I am sure that many bitcoin miners are mining other coin now cause of the halving. Lot of small time miners will transfer and going to mine other coin and maybe they are going back to bitcoin if the price goes up and it will be profitable again. But yeah, after I see the BCH mining activity and the sudden increase of miners of that coin, I am sure that most of them are mining bitcoin before the halving.

[shoreno]

With the recent halving of block rewards, the incentive will be lower than previous for miner. On the other hand, the cost for them will still be same which may not be profitable for a while (I'm not sure about this). If it is true, is it possible that some miners will just leave mining for a while until they get back in a equilibrium or in profit? What fo you think?

It is very possible and it has been happening.

The cost may rise or fall. The main cost there is the regular or non-stop electricity that miners need. But that is not something they cannot do anything about. They have certain options to counter it. But as to whether they will continue surviving with a profit despite the just implemented inflation of rewards, they will see in the next month or two.

what you mean may rise or fall ?  electric cost had never been lowered but its possible that they will be highered the longer the days have been running because the cost for materials and labor are also getting expensive  .

still there are places that electricity are not really expensive so i think miners on these area wont care too much  about the halving   .  my question is that how do we know what the number of miners are decreasing or not  , is there a tool to detect that  ?  

[Casdinyard]

I agree that if each bitcoin block reward were halved and the price did not rise, many miners would not make a profit or even lose money. Which would force them to give up mining until the price increase or they  find cheaper electricity to keep them from losing money.

Cheaper electricity and new mining hardware to be able to cope with the difficulty. It make me think as well that if it's no longer profitable to mine bitcoin, there is also a possibility that they could mine other altcoins as well just to be make profit out of their old and outdated mining equipments. And if bitcoin price rises, then they switch back to bitcoin. I'm not sure what will be the price today for miners to at least break even though. So there are a lot of pressure now for miners, to sell their coins in order to  buy new equipment. Or probably it already happened.

Yeah, the only way to keep mining after halving is to buy updated equipment and find a cheaper source of electricity. Well this is a disaster to small miners they are forced to buy new devices, yet they cannot sell their old equipment in such reasonable price since it is degraded by now. On the bright side, they can focus on mining different coins but it comes with a lower reward compare to what they are getting with bitcoin. The competition in mining now has raised the level by bitcoin's protocol this is how good that coin is.

[7788bitcoin]

With the recent halving of block rewards, the incentive will be lower than previous for miner. On the other hand, the cost for them will still be same which may not be profitable for a while (I'm not sure about this). If it is true, is it possible that some miners will just leave mining for a while until they get back in a equilibrium or in profit? What fo you think?

If you check in the past, the miners were running the machines when the price was around $200 and the general price of things, especially the hardware and electricity has not increased considerably in the past 5 years and now the price of bitcoin is over $8800, so you can compare that and come to a conclusion. The small mining farms might have a difficult time maintaining everything because of the rise in difficulty but the big farms will always sustain.

[maydna]

Yes, I think so. The miners who have low hashrate will decrease during the halving because the process to mine will need a big hashrate to find the block. But if the bitcoin price can increase up to $10k-$15k, perhaps, they can start mining again, but I don't think that they can get a big reward or they can find the new block. But I don't know much about that since I don't mine bitcoin anymore. Perhaps, the miners will search for the other coins to mine because they don't have a big hashrate to mining.

[seoincorporation]

...
If you check in the past, the miners were running the machines when the price was around $200 and the general price of things, especially the hardware and electricity has not increased considerably in the past 5 years and now the price of bitcoin is over $8800, so you can compare that and come to a conclusion. The small mining farms might have a difficult time maintaining everything because of the rise in difficulty but the big farms will always sustain.

Not only the small farms will be affected on this halving, but we can also say the miners will get the half of the reward while the energy cost is the same, this factor will make a lot of miners inefficient, and it will be cheaper to turn them off than pay from your pocket the maintenance cost.

[squatter]

Let's wait and see how much of an impact this will have
630000   2020-05-11 19:23
630034   2020-05-12 02:12

That's 409 minutes for 34 blocks, 12 minutes on average!

Block generation sped up overnight. Now we've seen 135 blocks in 1365 minutes, which is just over 10 minutes per block.

Until the next difficulty adjustment comes, I don't want to make any big assumptions.

Sorry, can you explain to a layman when the difficulty adjustments happen? I've always thought it's automatic, but can you tell me if it is?

The difficulty adjusts every 2016 blocks. It's only "automatic" as long as miners keep mining.

[cutesgirl]

If reward from mining decrease little maybe miner will leave crypto and keep going on with good project by investing and trading than have buy mining tools with higher price, but if bitcoin reward higher for miner they will keep continue for mining.

[princerepon]

With the recent halving of block rewards, the incentive will be lower than previous for miner. On the other hand, the cost for them will still be same which may not be profitable for a while (I'm not sure about this). If it is true, is it possible that some miners will just leave mining for a while until they get back in a equilibrium or in profit? What fo you think?

I don't think so it's a good logic that some miners will be left because of not expected value of btc after halving. There are many giant company mine btc and don't you think they can hold recent rewarded btc for better value for future. But if we would talk about small miners then it would be possible. But as i said before in my opinion it's not a good idea to leaving mining because of recent value cause we can all assume that how much far can go btc price.