According to the Chinese crypto outlet, 8BTC crypto miners in China are selling their equipment. 8BTC used the mining pool F2Pool as a reference regarding the selloff.

Cryptocurrency mining not profitable

The cryptocurrency market is declining rapidly, and the price of bitcoin fell below $4,300 during November 20. Bitcoin hit a 13-month low in price, and we see great losses across the whole cryptocurrency market. According to Coinmarketcap.com, the total market capitalisation hovers around $139 billion. In January the market capitalisation went up to around $800 billion. The market has crashed in 2018 with a decline of 82 per cent.

The decline has impacted the miners as well as the investors. Many miners in China have shut down their mining machines since the earnings from mining cannot cover the costs anymore. Especially the older models are being sold, such as Antminer S7, Antminer T9, and Avalon A741. The “shutdown price” is reached according to 8BTC. The rigs are not sold per unit, but by kilo says to the founder of F2Pool.

However, the crashing market has mostly affected small- to medium sized mining operations which are selling their rigs at a second-hand market. Interestingly, a mining rig is only worth a twentieth of what it was the same time last year. A mining machine bought at a price of up to 20,000 yuan ($2,885) a year ago is reportedly currently sold for just 1,000 yuan ($144). Even so, it is hard to sell the devices according to a Reddit user:

“Almost no one, with good reason, is willing to buy secondhand fans and PSUs from miners. I wouldn’t buy parts from a mining rig even at an 80% discount.”

What will happen to the market and mining now?

Even though mining is less profitable now, it is still possible to make money. Some “hardcore miners” argues that during the bitcoin cash hard fork, the computing power of the bitcoin network declined by 8 per cent.

“It can only be said that the speed of making money has slowed down, but it can still make some hard money.” A miner said optimistically.

Despite the bitcoin crash, there are still newbies coming into the mining game who see a ray of hope as many choose to quit and the mining difficulty may decline. Many veteran miners also hold on there. “It is not that profitable now, but I can still make some money.” said a miner.

The market is not free falling anymore, and most of the top 10 cryptocurrencies sees mild losses. Bitcoin trades between $4,085 and $4,366 at the time of writing.

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