They might begin bitcoin mining death spiral fud again after this news

[bbc.reporter]

Well, the article is not that bad as I thought initially, although the title of course exaggerates and smells to FUD. It "gets it right" about the long-term problems of low onchain activity. While there is probably nothing to panic about, we could see indeed a hashrate decline in the next years if the BTC price increase is not high enough to compensate halvings.

I don't believe that "actively managed Bitcoin Treasuries" like the article suggests could however change anything of that situation. That "trading volume" will probably not show up on-chain very much. There would have to be millions of treasury companies to make a difference.

I guess however that the current fee situation may be close to a substantial low, we might be still influenced by the Ordinals wave which made Bitcoin's on-chain usage too expensive for most payments. Bitcoin users now know the tricks to save fees, and some have already Lightning channels or perhaps use LTC or Doge for smaller payments.

In another thread I came to the conclusion that about 80% of Bitcoin users seem to have absolutely no onchain activity, i.e. they hold everything on exchanges or custodial wallets.

So my guess is that there are two effects which could make fees increase again in the next years:

- more "real" Bitcoin users trickling in: CEX users which will embrace the "not your keys, not your coins" paradigm and change to non-custodial wallets,
- payments in Bitcoin, even only for typical "nerd stuff" like hosting and domains, ramping up a bit, because it's affordable again.

Of course that depends on sustained adoption progress.

Did you read this article? The CEO of Mara bitcoin mining is only speculating on what might occur, implying that it might become more difficult for the bitcoin mining businesses to profit after the next halving.

However, this will be another an article that will be used as a source for the death spiral mining fud. I predict this fud will begin if the market bubble pop has happened and if the price of bitcoin has dumped under $90k again.



Bitcoin Miners Must Own Power—or Die Trying Before Next Halving, MARA CEO Says

The bitcoin mining industry is entering a difficult period marked by growing competition, rising energy demands and shrinking profits, according to Fred Thiel, CEO of MARA Holdings (MARA).

“Bitcoin mining is a zero-sum game,” Thiel said in an interview with CoinDesk. “As more people add capacity, it gets harder for everybody else. Margins compress, and the floor is your energy cost.”

Thiel painted a picture of a maturing and more brutal industry, where only miners with access to low-cost, reliable energy — or new business models — will survive. Increasingly, he said, many mining firms are pivoting to adjacent fields, such as artificial intelligence or building out high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure. Others are simply being outcompeted by players who deploy their own hardware at a lower cost, including major manufacturers and companies like Tether.

Thiel warned that the landscape for miners could become even more dire after the next bitcoin halving in 2028, when block rewards will be cut in half again — this time to just over 1.5 BTC. Unless transaction fees rise or the price of bitcoin surges, the economics of mining will become unsustainable for many.

Read in full https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/11/11/bitcoin-miners-must-own-power-or-die-trying-before-next-halving-mara-ceo-says

[pooya87]

Read in full https://www.coindesk.com/markets/ 2025/11/11/ bitcoin-miners-must-own-power-or-die-trying-before-next-halving-mara-ceo-says

Hmmm. 4 months later the FUD resurfaces...

They usually start the "mining death spiral" FUD when there is a drop in the market because they want to contribute to the panic sell and push the price down and fill their own shorts. At the time being the price has been staying above $100k strong resistance and doesn't show any signs of wanting to drop. So I don't see any reason for that FUD to be started without a price drop taking place first.

More interesting when we look at the charts after reading what I said months ago...

Bitcoin Miners Must Own Power—or Die Trying Before Next Halving, MARA CEO Says
Increasingly, he said, many mining firms are pivoting to adjacent fields, such as artificial intelligence or building out high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure. Others are simply being outcompeted by players who deploy their own hardware at a lower cost, including major manufacturers and companies like Tether.

I really hope he is predicting the future of his own business considering how MARA is the mining pool that has been actively attacking one of bitcoin's main principles by censoring bitcoin transactions. Hopefully the either go under or move away, since that seems to be the only way their attack would stop

[bbc.reporter]

I reckon that everyone should read this article if there are people who are beginning to be afraid of this mining death spiral fud. This is a reminder that the issuance of bitcoin, there is a production cost and the price of this has returned to this production cost and pumped over this during a bull market. On a bear market it will go under the production cost and this is natural for bitcoin and a chance for investors to buy cheaply.



Bitcoin Hovers Near Production Cost as Bull/Bear Line Tightens

Bitcoin is closely tracking with the Difficulty Regression Model, according to checkonchain.

This model estimates the all-in sustaining production cost for the network. The model treats mining difficulty as the distilled measure of mining price because it incorporates all major operational variables into a single figure. This provides an industry wide estimate of the average cost to produce one bitcoin without needing detailed assumptions about hardware, energy expenses or logistics.

The model currently sits near $92,300, roughly matching the spot bitcoin price. It was briefly tripped on the downside when bitcoin fell to around $80,000, but has since recovered back to the model's valuation.

Price tends to remain in a bull market when trading above the model and often shifts into a bear market regime when trading below it.

In April 2025, bitcoin dropped to about $76,000 and bounced precisely at the model value at the time, acting as an important support level. Throughout much of 2025, it traded at a premium of approximately 50% of the model, while for much of 2024 price hovered close to the model.

During the 2022 bear market bitcoin traded at a discount of as much as 50% of the model. Meanwhile, in earlier bull markets the multiple expanded far more, with bitcoin's price doubling the model at the top in 2021 and quintupling it in 2017.

Read in full https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/12/03/bitcoin-hovers-near-production-cost-as-bull-bear-line-tightens

[SeriouslyGiveaway]

The bitcoin mining industry is entering a difficult period marked by growing competition, rising energy demands and shrinking profits, according to Fred Thiel, CEO of MARA Holdings (MARA).

MARA is a mining pool with bad reputation by their effort to censor Bitcoin transactions. Bitcoin network is decentralized and Bitcoin mining industry is decentralized too, so I don't take opinion of Fred Thiel - CEO of MARA - into serious consideration. There are other CEOs of other Bitcoin mining companies and pools that are likey more trusted than Fred Thiel.

The new mining pool, Marathon miners censoring Bitcoin transactions.
Mara Pool And Bitcoin Mining Censorship
Transparency for Mining Pool Transaction Selection.

[bbc.reporter]

@SeriouslyGiveaway. Hehehehe you might not take his declaration into serious consideration, however, if the price will continue to dump under $90k again, the miners will be mining bitcoin at a loss and some them will be turning off their miners or they will need a loan to maintain their cashflow to continue mining bitcoin.

There is nothing in your argument that proves that bitcoin mining is not a competitive business. This is very competitive and some of them are having difficulty to compete.

[treesintheforestooh]

There is nothing in your argument that proves that bitcoin mining is not a competitive business. This is very competitive and some of them are having difficulty to compete.

I struggle to understand why some people don't seem to realize this.

Competitive entry and exit is a reality. When the average cost to "produce" a BTC exceeds the market value of a BTC, rational operators shut down, hash rate drops, block intervals drift, and security weakens. This isn’t ideology, but economics and human nature.

Brings to mind this post and thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5555069.msg66129646#msg66129646

Though, with that said, a common rebuttal within this discussion is often something related to the difficulty adjustment.

Less hashpower equates to greater difficulty in finding the nonce, so difficulty adjusts to make it easier.

Less hashpower equates to reduced power consumption - which means the cost of attack goes down.

In other words, Bitcoin is weaker and more prone to reorgs, orphans, 51%s, miner dishonesty/bribery, and (in my opinion the most important potential problem) increased probability of detrimental centralization.

The proof is in the pudding, as it's said: miners are shutting down rigs (BitFarms: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/bitfarms-to-exit-bitcoin-mining) and/or pivoting to AI (TeraWulf: https://codeum.org/news/terawulf-bitcoin-to-ai-pivot). Those are only two of many examples/realities.  

Bitcoin (fiat) value will not double forever: miners need to generate a proportional revenue to the size/value of the network, especially if it's going to remain truly secure. The proportion of miner revenue to size/value of the network is and has been trending down.  

[bbc.reporter]

I speculate that there will be more of this news this year when bitcoin will go down increasingly. However, these are only small miners who cannot compete against bigger miners. But I predict that the mainstream news media and the cryptonews media will use these types of news to make everyone afraid that this time the mining death spiral will kill bitcoin.

Do not be afraid of this fud hehehehehe.



Publicly traded Bitcoin miner Bitfarms has announced its exit from Latin America via the sale of its site in Paraguay, with the Canadian company pivoting to focus entirely on high-performance computing.

The Toronto-based firm said Friday that it had entered into a definitive share purchase agreement to sell its 70 MW site in Paso Pe, Paraguay to crypto infrastructure company Sympatheia Power Fund, managed by Singapore-based Hawksburn Capital, for up to $30 million.

Bitfarms will now turn to providing resources to artificial intelligence and high-powered computing using North American energy, the firm’s CEO said.

Read in full https://www.dlnews.com/articles/regulation/bitfarms-exits-latam-paraguay-sale/

[Rustam Meraj]

I speculate that there will be more of this news this year when bitcoin will go down increasingly. However, these are only small miners who cannot compete against bigger miners. But I predict that the mainstream news media and the cryptonews media will use these types of news to make everyone afraid that this time the mining death spiral will kill bitcoin.

This not be afraid of this fud hehehehehe.



Snip

When companies such as Bitfarms sell their sites in locations such as Paraguay, it is merely business decision to seek better profits instead of sign of Bitcoin falling apart. Indeed, much of miners are currently changing their power and cooling systems to support Artificial Intelligence and high performance computing due to its ability to make much more money and provide more stable and long term contracts than mining.
Although media may use this news to create fear, it is in reality market is growing up and despite some of large companies shifting focus, network is more secure than ever with record high hash rate. So I think investors to ignore noise and understand that as less efficient miners go, they are just replaced by other miners who can run network more effectively.

[Kruw]

I speculate that there will be more of this news this year when bitcoin will go down increasingly. However, these are only small miners who cannot compete against bigger miners. But I predict that the mainstream news media and the cryptonews media will use these types of news to make everyone afraid that this time the mining death spiral will kill bitcoin.

This not be afraid of this fud hehehehehe.

Publicly traded Bitcoin miner Bitfarms has announced its exit from Latin America via the sale of its site in Paraguay, with the Canadian company pivoting to focus entirely on high-performance computing.

The Toronto-based firm said Friday that it had entered into a definitive share purchase agreement to sell its 70 MW site in Paso Pe, Paraguay to crypto infrastructure company Sympatheia Power Fund, managed by Singapore-based Hawksburn Capital, for up to $30 million.

Bitfarms will now turn to providing resources to artificial intelligence and high-powered computing using North American energy, the firm’s CEO said.

Read in full https://www.dlnews.com/articles/regulation/bitfarms-exits-latam-paraguay-sale/

This article doesn't say "death spiral" either.

[vanesha]

it is already 2026. i think this news has no impact at all on bitcoin. maybe bitcoin has declined since its all-time high, but bitcoin is currently in its strongest position. it doesn’t matter to me if bitcoin has to plunge first. we have experienced this before, not just once. why should we be afraid? we just need to be confident in our investment, and even if there is doubt, we only need to have good financial management skills. it will not ruin anything at all.

[NotATether]

I speculate that there will be more of this news this year when bitcoin will go down increasingly. However, these are only small miners who cannot compete against bigger miners. But I predict that the mainstream news media and the cryptonews media will use these types of news to make everyone afraid that this time the mining death spiral will kill bitcoin.

It's very tricky as the basic requirement for survival is your rigs need to be making enough profit in order to survive a price downturn for an extended period of time. Naturally, the odds eventually collapse to zero as newer miners are released (nowadays the performance increase is mostly obtained from TSMCs smaller wafer sizes ie. Superior performance per watt as opposed to any engineering innovations in the hashboards) which means that miners who do not make enough bitcoins to continuously buy the latest equipment AND pay for power, at least 4 times over (if we assume a 80% price decrease over a given halving cycle and then include tax) will eventually run out of money and have to shut down.

[Satofan44]

I speculate that there will be more of this news this year when bitcoin will go down increasingly. However, these are only small miners who cannot compete against bigger miners. But I predict that the mainstream news media and the cryptonews media will use these types of news to make everyone afraid that this time the mining death spiral will kill bitcoin.

You do not know that the price will perform negatively this year. The 4 year cycle theory is nonsense that arises from the trait of dumb humans to look for patterns where there are none. There is a very real possibility that the price will increase this year. Nevertheless, it does not matter. There is no circumstance under which a "mining death spiral" can happen, and this is one of the lowest level of FUD. This is why we have the difficulty adjustment, this is not even possible under some ridiculous scenarios that are only interesting for intellectual indulgence. 

When companies such as Bitfarms sell their sites in locations such as Paraguay, it is merely business decision to seek better profits instead of sign of Bitcoin falling apart. Indeed, much of miners are currently changing their power and cooling systems to support Artificial Intelligence and high performance computing due to its ability to make much more money and provide more stable and long term contracts than mining.
Although media may use this news to create fear, it is in reality market is growing up and despite some of large companies shifting focus, network is more secure than ever with record high hash rate. So I think investors to ignore noise and understand that as less efficient miners go, they are just replaced by other miners who can run network more effectively.

Companies that switch quickly were never interested in Bitcoin, they were interested in making money. I would not spend too much time thinking about those. This is not any different than picking random wealthy people who bought Bitcoin and sold shortly after. It is completely insignificant.

It's very tricky as the basic requirement for survival is your rigs need to be making enough profit in order to survive a price downturn for an extended period of time. Naturally, the odds eventually collapse to zero as newer miners are released (nowadays the performance increase is mostly obtained from TSMCs smaller wafer sizes ie. Superior performance per watt as opposed to any engineering innovations in the hashboards) which means that miners who do not make enough bitcoins to continuously buy the latest equipment AND pay for power, at least 4 times over (if we assume a 80% price decrease over a given halving cycle and then include tax) will eventually run out of money and have to shut down.

You are right, but not everyone is profit oriented and they don't need to be. I know plenty of small miners that do it to support the network. They are not necessarily focused on profit, but they wouldn't mind ending up being one of those lucky solo miners.  Mining on a large scale is extremely competitive and that is why the profitability margins are thing. The amount of power being used to power everything that is massive. This is a good thing, it shows that the industry does not have many barriers for entry. In cases like this it is the fierce competition that leads to low margins and to the withdrawal of less competitive players, the price of Bitcoin is not that relevant as some thing.

[lizarder]

This article is good news for miners because the decreasing hashrate is good for miners who are continuing to mine bitcoin. However, after the fud on Michael Saylor, speculate that for the next months, there will be mainstream media news outlets that will publish articles that will begin another season of the mining death spiral fud heeheheh. Everyone should be skeptical of these news updates. They have used this mining death spiral fud before and bitcoin has continued to pump!

The constant negative news surrounding Bitcoin will always be there, but Bitcoin's journey is actually gaining momentum, making it even more developed and becoming the best asset ever. Conversely, while China continues to exert pressure on miners and crack down on these efforts, the mining industry is also experiencing significant progress. Mainstream news can be good news for anyone who can capitalize on the situation, but we must also anticipate the worst that can occur with negative issues.

Mining continues despite the constant negative news and those of us striving to invest must also be able to identify opportunities based on Bitcoin's performance. There's no need to dwell on how the news might impact the cryptocurrency the most important thing is to utilize it in any situation, so that both can be profitable if utilized effectively.

[Smartprofit]

I'm not so much concerned about investor panic as I am about the current financial situation of miners. As far as I understand, many of them are no longer making the same profits from mining. Of course, it's too early to talk about losses as a result of financial activity. 🙋

Four-year cycles exist in the sense that every four years, a halving occurs. The value of one Bitcoin doubles. Therefore, miners are, to some extent, hostages to high Bitcoin prices. If prices don't rise or don't rise quickly enough, miners are forced to go out of business. Moreover, the number of transactions on the network and the size of their fees prevent them from generating significant income from fees.

And what does miner withdrawal mean? It's a direct path to mining centralization. This circumstance alone, in my opinion, undermines Bitcoin's fundamental value. Incidentally, the management of the mining company Mara has made no secret of its expectations of mass bankruptcy of its competitors in the coming years. But do we need mining centralization?

[d5000]

I'm not so much concerned about investor panic as I am about the current financial situation of miners. As far as I understand, many of them are no longer making the same profits from mining.

The "more reasonable" version of the "death spiral" narrative is that hashrate could enter a decreasing trend (or stagnating due to hardware improvements), and several mining firms could go bankrupt or exit the market. Thus the "news" isn't unreasonable in this context, even if it isn't talking explicitly about a "death spiral" (and as others wrote, the "original" death spiral theory is completely bullshit due to difficulty mechanism).

The bad consequence of such an exit is a lowering 51% attack cost. And the FUD based on that is that then Bitcoin becomes less secure, and thus the blockchain less valuable. The prices go down and more miners go bankrupt, etc.

This isn't a completely impossible theory. But we have always to take into account that the 51% attack cost is already extremely high. This means even if the 51% attack cost falls to 10% of the current value, Bitcoin is still secure. Altcoins like LTC or XMR have not even 5% of the attack cost of Bitcoin and was never successfully attacked (XMR had an attempt recently to control hashrate as some may know and a pool got to 50% for a couple of minutes according to their own data, but there was no attack on anyone's funds).

Thus there's a lot of margin we have. Even if the fee situation doesn't improve, and the price sees some dramatic downturn, Bitcoin will still be safe.

Of course it could lead to major turbulences if several publicly listed mining companies go bankrupt. If Bitcoin sees no further non-speculative adoption, that would for sure impact the Bitcoin price.

But if Bitcoin sees more widespread adoption, then the liquidity will prevent a deep fall.

And every mining firm which goes bankrupt is an opportunity for the competitors. Difficulty falls (or stagnates) and those able to survive will have higher ROI.

Four-year cycles exist in the sense that every four years, a halving occurs. The value of one Bitcoin doubles.

I think you didn't mean what you wrote here I think what you meant is that for the hashrate to keep konstant, Bitcoin price would have to double every 4 years for miners' income staying stable. And that is roughly correct if the fee situation doesn't change. (It's actually a bit less than doubling because fees are never zero, and a constant fee level would have double impact in each halving.)

And what does miner withdrawal mean? It's a direct path to mining centralization.

This may be true but is not necessarily the case. Due to pools, innovative small mining firms are not directly in disadvantage to bigger mining firms. And big mining firms may get the same problems generally "old" and "established" companies have when it comes to innovation: they are reluctant to change their business model, and are less flexible to adapt. So a scenario of several big miner bankruptcies could actually also make some new small, innovative mining firms thrive.

[Satofan44]

I'm not so much concerned about investor panic as I am about the current financial situation of miners. As far as I understand, many of them are no longer making the same profits from mining.

The "more reasonable" version of the "death spiral" narrative is that hashrate could enter a decreasing trend (or stagnating due to hardware improvements), and several mining firms could go bankrupt or exit the market. Thus the "news" isn't unreasonable in this context, even if it isn't talking explicitly about a "death spiral" (and as others wrote, the "original" death spiral theory is completely bullshit due to difficulty mechanism).

This is not a spiral or the death of anything though, therefore the narrative is always biased here and can be dismissed on those grounds to begin with. What you describe here, the reasonable scenario, is how a free market should function. When miners over-invest or invest in inefficient ways, for example by building their facilities in places where their electricity cost is not competitive enough, the bad players have to exit. This is how a healthy market functions. In those cases there are only two outcomes:
1) The Bitcoin price increased sufficiently to make these miners temporarily more competitive, delaying their exit.
2) The Bitcoin price stays constant or stagnates, further increasing the speed of their exit.

There is nothing wrong with this, this is how it should be. Miners entering and exiting currently has zero effect on the market price, therefore under no circumstance can a "death spiral" happen.

The bad consequence of such an exit is a lowering 51% attack cost. And the FUD based on that is that then Bitcoin becomes less secure, and thus the blockchain less valuable. The prices go down and more miners go bankrupt, etc.

This has currently also zero effect on the Bitcoin price. From what I see there are parties that are trying to change this, some intentionally and maliciously and others unintentionally by unknowingly spreading FUD by overestimating the importance of such issues.

This isn't a completely impossible theory. But we have always to take into account that the 51% attack cost is already extremely high. This means even if the 51% attack cost falls to 10% of the current value, Bitcoin is still secure. Altcoins like LTC or XMR have not even 5% of the attack cost of Bitcoin and was never successfully attacked (XMR had an attempt recently to control hashrate as some may know and a pool got to 50% for a couple of minutes according to their own data, but there was no attack on anyone's funds).

Who is going to attack it? We don't have any real data on this, but it is plausible that even an extended period of a 50% hashrate drop is meaningless and does not pose any real risk. The Bitcoin network is extremely secure, and this security is abstract to the outside observers which is why it is not easily comprehensible. Some would jump to say, well if you reduce the hashrate by 50%, the devices that were shut down have enough hashrate to attack the network. Of course, baseless and wrong. It would require all those entities to collude in a malicious way, and they are not even related at all.

Further, I question the possibility of this at all. Monero is a different subject, it is not as legal and regulated as Bitcoin is. Can a legal entity be allowed to attack Bitcoin at all? I doubt that others would stand by and let this happen, at the very least they would mount legal challenges that would block the would be attackers (the only way to bypass this is a stealth attack, where your intent is fully concealed until the attack is executed -- possible but unlikely, humans are not good at keeping secrets). The other alternative is defending it by putting hashrate up online. The entities that have a lot to lose from such an attack, have a very large economic incentive to defend it. Collectively they could expend even billions of dollars in defending it from an attack and it would still make perfect economic sense to do this.

Thus there's a lot of margin we have. Even if the fee situation doesn't improve, and the price sees some dramatic downturn, Bitcoin will still be safe.

We don't know exactly how big the margin is, but it is very big.

[d5000]

This is not a spiral or the death of anything though, therefore the narrative is always biased here and can be dismissed on those grounds to begin with. What you describe here, the reasonable scenario, is how a free market should function. When miners over-invest or invest in inefficient ways, for example by building their facilities in places where their electricity cost is not competitive enough, the bad players have to exit.

I agree that's like the market should work. But it is not necessary that miners "over-invest" for that scenario. In the current scenario they could have invested basing their business decisions on past price performance, but the price didn't increase as expected.

This could actually happen even without any over-investing: if the price stays stable over more than 4 years, then the income of the mining sector will roughly halve each 4 years. This will lead inevitably into more miners exiting than entering. The only way this doesn't happen is if they also can halve their costs but that is quite unlikely.

Miners entering and exiting currently has zero effect on the market price, therefore under no circumstance can a "death spiral" happen.

There is at least no direct price effect, the only exception being when the bankrupt miner had accumulated hundreds of thousands of BTC they're now forced to sell, this could have a short term impact, but normally this shouldn't happen (a miner who accumulated lots of coins typically first would sell the coins, and only if they can't compete even with that artificial leeway, then go bankrupt). And if the security budget is lowering, this would only have an effect if there is really some attack attempt.

Thus I've also dismissed that narrative as "FUD". But in a speculative environment, where sentiment and mass psychology are still very important, the FUD can actually work. That's why I mentioned adoption as the best measure to counter that FUD.

Who is going to attack it?

The best bet would be someone who's able to short Bitcoin in a massive way to profit from the attack, and the attack thus retro-alimenting itself. However: The attacker must then also be able to "deliver". The Monero attack for example was not successful but burned a lot of resources. The price went a bit down (not that much as the attackers probably expected, though), but then increased again, so the window of opportunity to short was very small, and it seems not have to be enough for the attackers actually to profit in a way to increase the hardware dedicated to the attack and eventually succeed.

Further, I question the possibility of this at all. Monero is a different subject, it is not as legal and regulated as Bitcoin is. Can a legal entity be allowed to attack Bitcoin at all?

There are still a few countries where Bitcoin is banned or not recognized as property. The attacker could base the operation in such a country. But in general you're correct, that's an additional obstacle, as this increases the cost. The attacker wouldn't be able that easily to spend his profits in the Caribbean, Miami or wherever where rich criminals like to reside. Perhaps he can go jetskiing with King Yong Un

[OgNasty]

The article you linked doesn't say "death spiral". What are you talking about?

I think today when people mention death spiral with regards to Bitcoin they are talking about the machine that Strategy has turned into.  With Strategy paying dividends and holding their scale of BTC, Bitcoin now has a operating cost.  Sure, it might grow enough to pay for it, but most of us didn't ask for the market to start paying cash to investors on a regular basis.  I don't think the Strategy death spiral will kill Bitcoin, but it is quite a hurdle that wasn't there before.

[bbc.reporter]

I speculate that there will be more of this news this year when bitcoin will go down increasingly. However, these are only small miners who cannot compete against bigger miners. But I predict that the mainstream news media and the cryptonews media will use these types of news to make everyone afraid that this time the mining death spiral will kill bitcoin.

This not be afraid of this fud hehehehehe.

Publicly traded Bitcoin miner Bitfarms has announced its exit from Latin America via the sale of its site in Paraguay, with the Canadian company pivoting to focus entirely on high-performance computing.

The Toronto-based firm said Friday that it had entered into a definitive share purchase agreement to sell its 70 MW site in Paso Pe, Paraguay to crypto infrastructure company Sympatheia Power Fund, managed by Singapore-based Hawksburn Capital, for up to $30 million.

Bitfarms will now turn to providing resources to artificial intelligence and high-powered computing using North American energy, the firm’s CEO said.

Read in full https://www.dlnews.com/articles/regulation/bitfarms-exits-latam-paraguay-sale/

This article doesn't say "death spiral" either.

I did not say that it was the fud article. What I said was there will be mainstream news and cryptonews media outlets that will use these news updates on miners leaving for AI and begin again the mining death spiral again to make everyone afraid and this might cause them to dump their bitcoin hehehehehe.

[Satofan44]

This is not a spiral or the death of anything though, therefore the narrative is always biased here and can be dismissed on those grounds to begin with. What you describe here, the reasonable scenario, is how a free market should function. When miners over-invest or invest in inefficient ways, for example by building their facilities in places where their electricity cost is not competitive enough, the bad players have to exit.

I agree that's like the market should work. But it is not necessary that miners "over-invest" for that scenario. In the current scenario they could have invested basing their business decisions on past price performance, but the price didn't increase as expected.

Over-investing can happen to any number of reasons, one would be to base your investments on false expectations of growth. What you base these decisions on exactly, such as past price performance does not matter. It would fall under the term of over-investment. It would probably more refer to newer players, but it could also happen with existing ones that are doing expansion. Just take the example to the extreme. Say that for some reason you have a "justifiable" expectation that Bitcoin is going to reach $500k in 2026 and you want to make massive mining investments. You make them, you start mining and the price does not come anywhere near to what you expected. Over-invested.

This could actually happen even without any over-investing: if the price stays stable over more than 4 years, then the income of the mining sector will roughly halve each 4 years. This will lead inevitably into more miners exiting than entering. The only way this doesn't happen is if they also can halve their costs but that is quite unlikely.

That is true, but I would expect good players to have sensible scenario planning. If one is investing in a certain business with only a single scenario where returns are always positive or expected to be in a certain way, that often leads to bad outcomes. Still this is healthy, these are the players that exit the first because they do not have the business capabilities to compete and thrive in a competitive environment. They usually only survive in environments where everyone is making large returns, but those periods tend to be short-lived.

There is at least no direct price effect, the only exception being when the bankrupt miner had accumulated hundreds of thousands of BTC they're now forced to sell, this could have a short term impact, but normally this shouldn't happen (a miner who accumulated lots of coins typically first would sell the coins, and only if they can't compete even with that artificial leeway, then go bankrupt). And if the security budget is lowering, this would only have an effect if there is really some attack attempt.

True, but I don't think that there are entities like this anymore. I could be wrong, but I don't have any data that would lead me to believe that there is a large miner that could pose such a risk. Anyway as you've said, they would probably be selling coins gradually before they would go bankrupt.

Thus I've also dismissed that narrative as "FUD". But in a speculative environment, where sentiment and mass psychology are still very important, the FUD can actually work. That's why I mentioned adoption as the best measure to counter that FUD.

Yes, well it can work to some extent. That is what I meant when I said that there are entities that play that want to increase the impact of certain FUD. As you've seen in 2025 there was FUD by people about OP_RETURN, about quantum computers and many more. Probably 99.9% of the concerns come from people who don't understand either issue and don't have the knowledge to understand it either, yet they've been manipulated into believing that there are realistic concerns or even that some things will definitely happen. There are forces that want to do the same with different aspects relating to Bitcoin, such as the "death spiral" nonsense. This is why it is important to be strictly dismissive of these things, so that the average user who reproduces information will do it in a dismissive way too.

Further, I question the possibility of this at all. Monero is a different subject, it is not as legal and regulated as Bitcoin is. Can a legal entity be allowed to attack Bitcoin at all?

There are still a few countries where Bitcoin is banned or not recognized as property. The attacker could base the operation in such a country. But in general you're correct, that's an additional obstacle, as this increases the cost. The attacker wouldn't be able that easily to spend his profits in the Caribbean, Miami or wherever where rich criminals like to reside.

Well on this part I would leave a concluding note that the number of places that such an attack can be launched from are few, and their number is decreasing. The time is running out.  

Perhaps he can go jetskiing with King Yong Un

With our current timeline, anything is possible. If Trump was younger, I am sure we'd have a video of him doing something like this. (I bring him as an example due to recent worldwide events, not because of anything related to the topic just to be clear)