Bitcoin mining is not a “gold rush” anymore. In the BTC bear market, the price of second-hand bitcoin mining machines takes a dive towards 100 t0 200 yuan in China, leaving almost no one to have any interest in buying it, according to a local news outlet report.

A Chinese miner who is identified by the surname Li invested hundreds of thousands of yuan in purchasing roughly a hundred of mining rigs in the second half of 2017 after leaving his position as a business head at a small-loan company. Since then he started his mining business, in the hope of making quick and easy money by mining bitcoins.

But since this February, Bitcoin and the rest of the altcoins started going downhill. The largest cryptocurrency currently trades around $6700—down about 67% from its $20,000 all-time high in January.

“ By mid-June, my mining business’s profit margin has dropped by 90%.One of my friend who also mines altcoins suffered more, nearly losing all his investment.” Li said.

Therefore, Li closed his mining farm and tried to sell all used mining machines on an e-commerce platform for second-hand goods.

Over the past three months, however, Li sold only two mining machines were for 700 yuan. What’s worse, offline stores were reluctant to collect these obsolete devices for recycling . These once-sought-after mining machines become a pile of scrap metal covered in a thick layer of haze and dust.

Li is not alone. Another miner in China whose last name was Ma seems to have better luck. He sold four old mining rigs over the past month for each 850 yuan. The price is less than a quarter of a new machine’s cost.

Ma found those devices which were launched earlier this year with a computational performance of more than 10 TH/s per chip could be traded for more than 1,000 yuan, while some brand new products offered by some small brands are even cheaper than used ones.

In earlier this year, shoppers can find vendors of mining machines everywhere in electronics malls of Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen-based bustling electronics hub, where originally occupied by sellers of computer components.But nowadays the equipment is squeezed into the corner. “All of mining machines are sold at a discount of 30%. If you want to buy more than one , we can offer a better price and will give you more power cables and associated accessories for free.” One vendor in a big electronics mall said.

In addition to mining rig retailers and miners, the sellers of second-hand miner components in Huaqiangbei are also under tons of pressure as the price of used graphic cards drops sharply. “ We do not collect used devices for recycling anymore except some new ones like GTX1070, 1080.” said Liang Sizhong, the owner of a computer repair shop in Huaqiangnan.

In early days, a lot of people believed using the computer power of video cards to mine bitcoins was more efficient than CPU mining, which led to the short supply of graphic cards then. But today, these graphic cards become very cheap.

It’s especially risky for those selling machines tailor-made to mine bitcoin, as different from computers that could also be used for gaming or other purposes.Branded mining machines are usually equipped with customized cases,motherboards, power supplies and critical mining card, rendering them unable to be splitted into sub-parts.

For these used brand-name devices with good condition, they worth as low as 100 to 150 yuan. But their original price is over 3,000 yuan per piece.

With bitcoin mining machines turning into second-hand accessories or even scrap metal which now are sold for only 100 yuan, miners and mining machine sellers are falling victims to this speculated ‘gambling’ market.