Answer by Igor Stadnyk, CEO Minerall.io
— Mao Shixing, founder of F2Pool Mao Shixing, said that market has already left 600,000-800,000 miners since the collapse. Do you think the situation is really so terrifying? How do you think the situation affects miners?
— Mao is partially right. Production of ASIC miners began in 2011 and continues to this day. And like any equipment, it becomes obsolete. And like any equipment, miners have their own profitability limit and efficiency limit. If you compare it with computers, imagine some sort of news that several million PCs went to the dump this year. Will this be a tragedy? No. Technologies simply become obsolete and simply replace outdated equipment.
Mao posted on his Tweeter the table explaining what hardware is unprofitable to beckon at a price of 6 cents per kW/h. And, there are a sufficient number of models for mine is no longer profitable. Mao most likely means devices, not people. For example, if we are talking about the old Bitmain Antminer S7 and S5, we should know that their time is running out.
— How many miners can refuse activity with a further fall in the BTC rate? Can it be the end of cryptocurrencies’ decentralization?
-The further the price will fall — the more will refuse. This concerns, first of all, the old miners with low power. It does not threaten decentralization: Bitmain sells equipment very massively and at a current price pegged to the cost of cryptocurrency, not to the price of hardware.
— Some experts have argued that it is profitable for miners to mine cryptocurrency only at a price of 7,000$. And how do you think, at what price of BTC the coin is unprofitable?
— Price of Bitcoin is influenced by such factors as a price of electricity, price/efficiency ratio of equipment. We know which ASIC gives out Th/s, how much it consumes. Miners of the new generation, such as S9 and S15 from Bitmain, for example, are advantageous when the price of electricity is from 6 cents per kW/h and the price of Bitcoin is from 3,800$. There are ASIC-machines, which are profitable at the cost of electricity from 2,000$ and above. A real value, in fact, doesn’t exist.
— What do you think, what cryptocurrency is currently the most profitable to mine? Why?
— Profitable to mine all coins, but in different ways. Depending on electricity price and cost of hardware. You just need to understand what result you want to achieve and on what kind of machines.