Mining cryptocurrency can be an energy intensive and technically expensive activity to undertake. To mine Bitcoin for example, and to be competitive, you would need to use ASIC miners, a form of mining hardware designed to perform a single task very efficiently. If you have a farm, with banks and banks of ASIC miners, the energy requirements are high. But is the trade-off of energy price against profit a worthwhile task? The profitability of mining Bitcoins has historically gone up as the scarcity of Bitcoin increased and the value of Bitcoin sky-rocketed.
Bitcoin is not the only crypto-asset worth mining. There are some other interesting propositions out there worth considering, many of them not requiring ASIC based hardware to mine. Usually a high-powered GPU array is used for mining. Some coins even have built-in ASIC resistance to make it easier for everyday people to mine. Some popular coins to mine are Ravencoin, Monero, Verticoin and Litecoin.
Ethereum is another popular asset to mine, however this is all coming to an end when they finally usher in Ethereum 2.0. Ethereum is making the switch to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. This switch has been highly anticipated and comes as the graphics card industry is reeling from extremely high order quantities and depleting resources such as transistors and chips. EIP-3554 is an important update to the Ethereum network, dubbed the “complexity bomb” which will become active on December 1st 2021. The complexity bomb will have the effect of making mining Ether unfathomably hard and unprofitable. This update gives miners the opportunity to prepare for the switch by upgrading equipment or switching assets. Those miners that switch to staking will be rewarded for holding Ethereum. Needless to say, an entire industry will be affected by this move to a new consensus. It is expected to affect the overall market dramatically, even the price of Bitcoin.
This is the past years profitability chart for Ethereum
Ethereum will transform their ecosystem to be a less energy-hungry network that enables passive income and of course, provides developers with the tools to build amazing smart contracts. This, in turn, enables a wider secondary market to flourish. The rise of De-Fi, NFT’s and other popular smart contract based platforms has only strengthened the belief in Ethereum long-term.
There have been some bumps in the road for cryptocurrency miners, like the ban in China relating to cryptocurrency activities. Miners were instructed to shut down operations, causing an exodus of biblical proportions. Chinese miners moved to new, crypto-friendly countries to continue their mining activities. America, Canada and Russia have all seen an influx of chinese miners looking for new territories to mine within. As this move happens, the uptake of green energy is much higher on the priorities of those miners starting from scratch. We can expect to see a lowering of the carbon footprint of the Bitcoin network because of this.
Mining is still profitable and it will remain so as long as renewed interest in cryptocurrency continues and wider adoption reaches every part of the world. How profitable can depend on what you’re mining, how much you pay for energy and of course market health.
Have a look at the last years profitability chart for Bitcoin
If the Bitcoin Network Hashrate is at 85 EH/s (85,000,000 TH/s), a WhatsMiner M20S ASIC miner with 68 TH/s, will earn around 0.000702 BTC per day before pool fees. 0.000702 BTC is calculated by 68 (miner hashrate) ÷ 85,000,000 (network hashrate) × 144 (number of blocks per day) × 6.25 (block reward).
If you are looking to start mining at home, you will want to look into the most profitable coins at the moment. Analysis like this can be hard to find at times but there is one source of crypto-analysis and research that stands out among the crowd. VRM, the team behind BO and FLy, offer access to research, analysis and insights. You can also subscribe to their trading signals for up-to-the-minute trading information. VRM has been hard at work redesigning their whole ecosystem and infrastructure. To gain access to VRM insights, all you need to do is stake 1,000 FLy on their staking platform. VRM insights offers market analysis and forecasts which contain a wealth of useful information. Trading signals are a fantastic way to get ahead of the game, providing you with detailed instructions about when to buy and sell, which asset is the target and what stop-loss price to set. Gaining access to these signals is simple. Subscribe by paying the industry-low fee and staking 10,000 FLy on the staking platform and away you go!
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