The planned obsolescence of the independent miner .....

[limerx]

Hi everyone,

 I've been following the evolution of ASICs for a few years now, and especially the high-performance models coming out in 2026, and a bitter observation is inescapable: Bitcoin mining is undergoing forced "gentrification." We're no longer talking about technological progress, but rather a technological and electrical barrier to entry that increasingly resembles a deliberate eviction of individuals.

The weapon of choice: insane energy density. Today, a high-end miner approaches or exceeds 5000W. For an individual, this isn't just "expensive," it's physically impossible to manage. Our home networks, meters, and outlets aren't designed to handle a continuous load of this intensity without risking fire or requiring a complete overhaul of the electrical system. By pushing power consumption this high, manufacturers like Bitmain are sending a clear message: "If you're not in an industrial warehouse with three-phase power and dedicated infrastructure, don't bother us."

 The shift to liquid cooling: The kiss of death for the garage. The official argument is efficiency ($J/TH$). But the reality is that liquid cooling is the best way to lock down the market. Maintaining a water circuit, managing pumps, heat exchangers, and potential leaks requires maintenance technician skills that the average hobby miner doesn't necessarily possess. It's an added complexity that only serves to justify centralization in giant farms. It kills the "Plug & Play" that allowed anyone to secure the network from their basement.

Political centralization disguised as technological evolution. Let's be blunt: manufacturers much prefer dealing with five huge, publicly traded clients than with 50,000 small miners. It's simpler for customer service, lobbying, and especially regulatory compliance. The more mining is concentrated in massive industrial hubs, the easier it becomes for governments to monitor, tax, or even shut it down. We're moving radically away from Satoshi's "One CPU, one vote" to a system where only a handful of energy elites have the right to validate blocks.

My question is this:

Are we letting Bitcoin become what it was supposed to replace?
A system where the rules are dictated by those who can afford the multi-million dollar entry fee?

Are we doomed to become mere "tenants" of hashrate on third-party platforms, thus losing total control over our own machines?

 I'd like to hear from veterans who remember when you could still tell the difference between mining and a simple PC. Is hashrate decentralization already a lost cause?

[philipma1957]

It is an interesting question.


Bitmain's idea of making 3 phase 415 volt gear could be too late to force the switch.

https://shop.bitmain.com/product/detail?pid=00020250525151230946ki4IicUp06D6

This unit is costly.

 yea 9.5 watts and high hash

But 580th hashrate

Vs 540th hashrate for 2 s21xps

Cost of s21xp is 3700

 2 units cost 7400.

No retrofit for an air cooled container.

The s23 cost 17,400

And retrofit coolers into system.

Maybe  25,000 to set up.

Liquid  cooled i spend over 25,000
Air cooled i spend under 8,000

I am doing 7kwatts for the aircooled

I am doing more than 5,5kwatts for the liquid cooled as I need a pump and a fan

So let's argue 6kwatt liquid
7kwatt air

That is about 24 kwatts a day to get 40th less hash

So at 5 cents  a kwatt  $1.20 more POWER

AND AT 3 CENTS A TH 90 CENTS LESS btc.

1.20+.90= 2.10 a day

750 a year

But the gear is around 17,000  cheaper.

So who wants to spend 17,000 to make 750

Take over 20 years to make it up.

I am thinking people will not run to get the newest liquid cooled gear.

When 8,000 air  cooled should be an easy winner over 25,000 liquid cooled

[FP91G]

Why do you say it's easier for a manufacturer to work with five companies?
You can go to the official website and buy any equipment.
https://shop.bitmain.com/
Every family used to bake bread, but now it's cheaper to do it in an industrial facility. You can also bake bread at home or buy an ASIC miner for home use, but this is no longer profitable because mining is now an industrial business.

[limerx]

I totally agree with your points on scale and advantage, but that actually reinforces my 'political' concern.
By pushing the hardware toward 4kW-5kW units and Liquid Cooling, manufacturers are essentially forcing that industrialization. They aren't just following the market; they are designing the hardware to make home mining structurally impossible, regardless of the 'open market' access.

When a machine requires an industrial electrical substation and a plumbing team to run, the 'right to bake bread' becomes irrelevant because you can no longer afford the oven or the flour at that scale.
My point is: Bitmain and others aren't just selling to the highest bidder; they are actively killing the 'One CPU, one vote' dream by making the barrier to entry physical and infrastructural.

If we reach a point where 95% of the hashrate is held by 10 companies because only they can house the hardware, is Bitcoin still decentralized, or is it just a private club using the open market' as a shield?[/b]

[philipma1957]

I totally agree with your points on scale and advantage, but that actually reinforces my 'political' concern.
By pushing the hardware toward 4kW-5kW units and Liquid Cooling, manufacturers are essentially forcing that industrialization. They aren't just following the market; they are designing the hardware to make home mining structurally impossible, regardless of the 'open market' access.

When a machine requires an industrial electrical substation and a plumbing team to run, the 'right to bake bread' becomes irrelevant because you can no longer afford the oven or the flour at that scale.
My point is: Bitmain and others aren't just selling to the highest bidder; they are actively killing the 'One CPU, one vote' dream by making the barrier to entry physical and infrastructural.

If we reach a point where 95% of the hashrate is held by 10 companies because only they can house the hardware, is Bitcoin still decentralized, or is it just a private club using the open market' as a shield?[/b]

Well lets argue that there are 1,000,000 coins left to mine.

price of a coin is 71.6k so the future coins are worth

71,600,000,000

71.6billion dollars

2026 to 2028 block 944,214 to 1,050,000 is 105,786x3.125000=       330,581.25 coins
2028 to 2032 block 1,050,000 to 1,260,000 is 210,000x1.56250=      328,125.00 coins
2032 to 2036 block 1,260,000 to 1,470,000 is 210,000x0.78125 =     164,062.50 coins

so by 2036 a short ten years     822,768 coins will be mined they are only worth  58.9 billion at 71.6k a coin

So buying liquid cooled 415 volt 3 phase gear to get only 58.9 billion in coins over the next 10 years is less attractive to the miners then you think.

bitmain knows this and is trying to force miners into it. since 25,000 vs 8,000 is what bitmain wants in sales.

miners do not want to pay that ie 3x the price to get an item that is going to be very close to gone by 2036.

so convert to A.I. use the cash you get to buy coins that already exist.

To me what I really want to see is exactly how many liquid cooled miners have been sold

and how much are they vs aircooled

Ie 1000eh in mining right now are

600eh air and 400eh liquid

or

is it 700eh air and 300eh liquid.

I personally have zero idea of how much liquid mining is done now.

btw look at this air cooled setup.

https://www.youtube.com/@CoreX_Hosting

he has 2 containers about 2 megawatts and 400-500 units mining as I type. I have 10 pieces with him

he is a big 'small' mine.  do you think that these people will get forced out of business?

I do agree a huge switch to liquid will hurt this smaller 2 megawatt setup.

Just do not think big players will move into liquid if they are not there yet.

Mara is super big they have 330 containers compared to this guys 2.

They decided to shut down some mining and switch to A.i. due to profit margin.

I think bitmain will get resistance to a full switch to liquid.

https://shop.bitmain.com/product/detail?pid=00020250525151230946ki4IicUp06D6

the liquid s23 promises 9.5 watts


https://shop.bitmain.com/product/detail?pid=00020260330165744306Qb3RQT100632

the air cooled s21xp delivers 13 watts

and the cost factor for the liquid cooled is 25,000 vs 8,000

1 unit liquid doing 580th
2 units air doing 540th

at current numbers the liquid unit never pays off the +17,000 cost to get it.

I think bitmain will not sell as many as you think.

I also think that in 10 years since there will be around 160,000 coins left to mine 

mining will not be the force it is today.

to me I see a lot of change coming in mining in a very short period of time.

Looking at it all from my 2012 to 2026 time frame mining it is essentially over right now with the 'wall' or practical

end being 2036. It is clearly in site.

[OgNasty]

I think the problem is that the independent miners are trying to do this like it is income.  It isn't.  It is gambling.  So independent miners that are mining in pools for profit are basically all hurting each other.  Like gamblers that all want to share winnings.  The only winner in the end is the casino.

The answer in my opinion is lottery mining.  Every Bitcoiner should run a small lottery miner at home, even if that means throwing away electricity forever.  This is because it takes advantage of your best asset.  You don't have to pay for employees or a datacenter.  When enough solo miners are losing money gambling on blocks that big miners can't afford to pay their costs and go bankrupt, then the network can start to perform again as intended.

The answer is more Bitcoiners being willing to solo mine regardless of the odds.  If the independent miner is unwilling to solo mine to enter the fight, then they shouldn't complain about slowly losing all their coins trying to keep up profitability, as they themselves are the problem.

[limerx]

Thank you for your quantitative analyses, but they forget the geopolitical dimension which is strangling the independent miner. We can no longer look at the hashrate without seeing the flags behind it.

On the one hand, we have Asia which has transformed entire regions into energy hubs. With hectares of photovoltaics, they produce a hashrate at a marginal cost close to zero. On the other hand, the United States has made Bitcoin a national security issue with its Strategic Reserve (SBR).These two superpowers have the same objective: total industrialization. Bitmain does not design 5kW machines for us. They are designing weapons for this war for energy sovereignty. An Antminer Hydro is not a decentralization tool, it is a soldier on a 500MW farm.

But the saddest thing about this development is the widespread acceptance of KYC , satoshi created Bitcoin to counter the great powers that print money out of thin air don't forget .... The idea was to separate the money from the state.

Today We are asked for our identity papers to buy a minor / We are asked for KYC to join a major mining pool / The USA is pushing for “compliant” blocks (OFAC compliant) and other....

By forcing mining towards massive industrial infrastructures (via the crazy electricity consumption), we mechanically force the transition to KYC. Neither An individual in his garage can be anonymous nor even a 100 megawatt farm connected to the national grid.

Conclusion: We recreated the system we wanted to escape !!!

Mining has become the armed wing of institutional finance. In 2026, if you mine with industrial equipment under state supervision, you are no longer fighting the "powers that create money out of nothing", you are working for them.

Domestic mining was the last bastion of anonymity and resistance. By making machines physically inaccessible to ordinary people, manufacturers and States have killed Satoshi's vision: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, without masters and without borders.This is the absolute antithesis of Satoshi's vision; they use transaction control as a leash around the necks of citizens. Satoshi wanted a system where one could secure the network anonymously, simply by proof of work ($PoW$). Today, in 2026: Do you want to buy an ASIC from Bitmain or a reseller? KYC. Do you want to rent your power on a platform or join a major pool? KYC. Do you want to pay for your industrial electricity? KYC. We transformed a tool of freedom into an instrument of traceability, we forced each minor to come out of the shadows to declare themselves to the State. The result? States (USA, China and others) no longer need to ban Bitcoin. They simply domesticated it by ensuring that each unit of Hashrate was linked to a verified identity. The 'money printing press' is no longer in the cellar, it is under government video surveillance.

and This is where Privacy Coins (Monero, Zephyr, or the new layers of anonymity on other chains) will explode. you just need to see the course over a period of barely one year..... Why? Because in an era of total surveillance (AI, facial recognition, widespread KYC), anonymity will no longer be an option for criminals, but a requirement for honest citizens who don't want the state to know what time they buy their bread or what mining rig they rent. 

[philipma1957]

I think the problem is that the independent miners are trying to do this like it is income.  It isn't.  It is gambling.  So independent miners that are mining in pools for profit are basically all hurting each other.  Like gamblers that all want to share winnings.  The only winner in the end is the casino.

The answer in my opinion is lottery mining.  Every Bitcoiner should run a small lottery miner at home, even if that means throwing away electricity forever.  This is because it takes advantage of your best asset.  You don't have to pay for employees or a datacenter.  When enough solo miners are losing money gambling on blocks that big miners can't afford to pay their costs and go bankrupt, then the network can start to perform again as intended.

The answer is more Bitcoiners being willing to solo mine regardless of the odds.  If the independent miner is unwilling to solo mine to enter the fight, then they shouldn't complain about slowly losing all their coins trying to keep up profitability, as they themselves are the problem.

yeah there is some truth to this.  I mine a solo miner.


https://solostats.ckpool.org/users/bc1qns96gdmrd024q20kav0x6lrlfg72qg8avu54ug

so I could hit every single block (math would be next to impossible to hit 2 in a row.)

the big miners are in a different world they use a lot of OPM (other peoples money)

So they do not give a shit about cost they are striping coins as fast as they can.

Some companies (MARA) are converting some power to A.I.  they have a better profit margin and can buy BTC on the cheap with A.I. profits.

Mining is on a decline


Latest Block:   944227  (5 minutes ago)

Current Pace:   95.2876%  (740 / 776.60 expected, 36.6 behind)

Previous Difficulty:   133793147307542.8                           
Current Difficulty:   138966872071213.2                           
Next Difficulty:   between 132499817686897 and 135016936843444
Next Difficulty Change:   between -4.6537% and -2.8424%
Previous Retarget:   last Friday at 5:23 AM  (+3.8670%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   April 17, 2026 at 3:21 PM  (in 9d 0h 31m 37s)
Next Retarget (latest):   April 17, 2026 at 10:00 PM  (in 9d 7h 11m 2s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 14d 9h 57m 35s and 14d 16h 37m 0s





yeah price is down but the under 1 million coins left means a second factor

there is at most 10 years of large scale mining left.

unless coins moonshot to 1 million or more usd a coin.

So me big ass miner (Mara) do I buy coins now at 71k

or do I chase by mining. Since they cut back and shifted to AI they certainly are hedging to mine less.

[FP91G]

I totally agree with your points on scale and advantage, but that actually reinforces my 'political' concern.
By pushing the hardware toward 4kW-5kW units and Liquid Cooling, manufacturers are essentially forcing that industrialization. They aren't just following the market; they are designing the hardware to make home mining structurally impossible, regardless of the 'open market' access.

When a machine requires an industrial electrical substation and a plumbing team to run, the 'right to bake bread' becomes irrelevant because you can no longer afford the oven or the flour at that scale.
My point is: Bitmain and others aren't just selling to the highest bidder; they are actively killing the 'One CPU, one vote' dream by making the barrier to entry physical and infrastructural.

If we reach a point where 95% of the hashrate is held by 10 companies because only they can house the hardware, is Bitcoin still decentralized, or is it just a private club using the open market' as a shield?[/b]

I think you're trying to bend all the facts to fit your theory. Manufacturers are making ASICs in 2026, including 3 kW Antminer S23 (318Th), 5 kW S23 Hyd (580Th), 10 kW Antminer S23 Hyd 3U (1.16Ph), 15 kW WhatsMiner M79 (920Th), and even 20 kW WhatsMiner M79S (1.35Ph).
All of these models were released this year.
New manufacturers are also appearing with home ASICs ranging from 1 to 100 TH. There are plenty of solutions on the market for everyone.

[limerx]

but you are proving my point while trying to debunk it.

You listed machines of 10 kW, 15 kW, and 20 kW. Let's be serious for a second: in what world is a 20 kW WhatsMiner a 'choice' for a home miner? That’s not a home appliance; that’s an industrial furnace. Even a 'small' 3 kW S23 is the equivalent of running two high-end air conditioning units at full blast, 24/7, in a single room....

By pushing the 'standard' toward these power densities, manufacturers are making home mining a miserable, loud, and electrically dangerous experience. Just because I can buy a Boeing engine doesn't mean the aviation industry is 'open' to backyard pilots.

You mention too  1 TH to 100 TH 'home' solutions. These are toys or lottery miners      At the current 2026 network difficulty (over 800 EH/s), a 50 TH machine is essentially a space heater that pays you in dust. It’s a way to keep individuals feeling involved while the 20 kW monsters in Asian solar farms and US Federal-backed data centers take 99.9% of the rewards.

Every single one of those manufacturers you listed now requires full KYC for direct purchases. Every major pool requires KYC. Satoshi’s vision wasn't about 'having the right to buy a machine'; it was about the power to create money without a central authority knowing who you are. By making hardware so power-hungry that it must be housed in monitored industrial zones, we have allowed the State to put a leash on the Hashrate.

As Bitcoin mining becomes a transparent, government-regulated industrial activity, the true spirit of crypto will migrate to Privacy Coins. When everything is seen, everything is controlled. The next explosion won't be in Th/s, but in anonymity. People will eventually realize that a 1.35 Ph WhatsMiner is useless if the State can blacklist every satoshi it produces because they know exactly who owns the machine.

[Somegory]

It depends on the miners you choose, it's total exaggeration when you use high end Asic miner that consumed 5000W, because you can still run this much watt in your home but not from the same wall socket.

Here is what a friend did about this, since he wasn't ready to change complete home wires because of mining, he went with Bitcoin home miners that takes 1500watts from wall and that's how he is using close to 5000watts at home mining Bitcoin.

Things have changed as many new home miners are coming out, you only have to choose what suits your style or setup, the simplest way to mine Bitcoin today is through small solo miners but they aren't profitable because of high mining difficulty.

We got here because Bitcoin has done well for itself over the years, higher difficulty means only one thing, higher adoption rate.

[limerx]

It depends on the miners you choose, it's total exaggeration when you use high end Asic miner that consumed 5000W, because you can still run this much watt in your home but not from the same wall socket.

Here is what a friend did about this, since he wasn't ready to change complete home wires because of mining, he went with Bitcoin home miners that takes 1500watts from wall and that's how he is using close to 5000watts at home mining Bitcoin.

Things have changed as many new home miners are coming out, you only have to choose what suits your style or setup, the simplest way to mine Bitcoin today is through small solo miners but they aren't profitable because of high mining difficulty.

We got here because Bitcoin has done well for itself over the years, higher difficulty means only one thing, higher adoption rate.

is exactly what I call the ' Heater Trap'.
Sure, you can split 5000W across three different circuits in a house.  But 5000W of mining is 5000W of heat, 24/7......

Unless your friend lives in a wind tunnel or a meat locker, his house is becoming an oven.   at this stad , Mining at home isn't just about not blowing the fuse  it’s about managing industrial-grade heat and noise in a living space. Suggesting that this is a 'solution' for the masses is, frankly, the real exaggeration unless you live in russia.

You say higher difficulty means 'higher adoption'. I disagree. In 2026, higher difficulty means higher industrialization. It’s not 'millions of people' joining the network with 1500W miners  it’s a few dozen mega-corporations and nation-states (USA, China) deploying hectares of solar-powered Hydro-farms. The 'home miner' you describe is just picking up the crumbs while paying a retail price for electricity that the big players get for near-zero.  its the deep of the problem what i say .

[NotFuzzyWarm]

a few dozen mega-corporations and nation-states (USA, China) deploying hectares of solar-powered Hydro-farms.

China and the US governments do not operate mining farms. China may allow a few non-gov owned farms (AFAIK they don't), in the USA all are private/public owned companies.