Answer by Igor Stadnyk, CEO Minerall.io
— American company conducted a research. According to it, mining of Ethereum with the help of video cards became unprofitable. How dangerous is the situation in general?
— That is the question with a trick. I will explain why. There are industrial and home mining alone. And the difference between them is fundamental. Let’s take the situation in Ukraine as an example: with the price of electricity at 10 cents per kW/h for enterprises, the card px570 mines ether at 34 cents per day. For the electricity you’re paying 29 cents. In such a situation, mining is advantageous when the losses in the power system are less than 20%. Another question, home mining — unfortunately, the vast majority of miners mine «to zero.»
— And to what limit should ETH fall (if it has not collapsed yet) so that Ukrainian miners would start turning off their machines?
Right now, many Ukrainian miners are throwing farms away and putting up video cards for sale. However, I think that this is a reaction to a massive fall in the price of cryptocurrency and elimination out those who are not interested in collective mining. First of all, it is a natural selection, not a crisis. If you would understand this, then the phobia about cryptocurrency fluctuations will come to naught.
In any case, industrial mining is alive and will live: the minimum price of ether for mining at such a cost of electricity will be approximately $100-110 per coin.
— What is the future for video cards’ mining?
Well, the failure of the mining on video cards is still very far and one can hardly expect its funeral soon. Moreover, I believe that the cryptocurrency exchange rate will become stable since it is not profitable for traders to sink the exchange.