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Afternoon HEADLINES

Bitcoin is priced $8,177 at the time of press, a rise of around $478 dollars on the day so far but a better place than the $5,947 low from earlier this week.

Ripple is now priced at $.077, with ethereum at $820.

After the price collapse that took bitcoin down to the $5,000 mark this week, concerns have been raised around the profitability of mining bitcoin while electricity use is staggeringly high, and the return on the price of the coin is now so low compared to its January 18 $19,000 peak last December.

Bloomberg described the current situation to that of a game of chicken. Profitability will return to mining bitcoin when some miners pull out. But who will walk first?

Their analysis argues that unless you're an outfit running the fastest rigs bought at wholesale prices, "chances are you're losing money".

After so many more people got involved during the December price rise period, miners the requirement for superpower computers has shot up 18-fold in two years. The cost of this has been offset by the 21-fold price increase over the same period that made it all worthwhile.

Bloomberg say that if bitcoin is clocked at its 50-day moving average of $13,200, then the average miner could expect to print $80 per week in profit at current levels of computation (hash rate) and difficulty.

With the price now less than half of that, it is safe to assume that some miners are now losing money.

However, Aleksei Antonov, CFO of SONM says that the idea that miners could just down tools and leave the space is not likely.

He said: "Bitcoin mining is also a market itself. As soon as Bitcoin mining becomes unprofitable, some miners will stop mining it.

"The total Hashrate decreases and for all the miners that remain, mining becomes a little more profitable.

"If Bitcoin costs $10, there will be very few miners, but those miners will take the entire reward for the calculated block.

"To summarise, there is no situation when mining becomes unprofitable for everyone at all."

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