The flip-side to the opportunity of substantial gains from, for example, Bitcoin mining, is how much of a hedge it can be against falling prices. If you had bought Bitcoin at the top — instead of through mining — your direct investment in the cryptocurrency at the start of 2018 would have significantly dropped in value by now.

Whereas, as long as the facilities you host your machines at are able to produce more Bitcoin than you need to pay for your costs then you would not have needed to switch your machines off and would still be working toward a good ROI. The current generation of Antminer S9s have been running for more than two years now. And in facilities like ours, they are still churning out large enough rewards that our customers can continue to pay the bills every month.

That’s not the case in every mining location though. If Bitcoin prices continue to fall in the short to mid-term, as they very may well do, then only a few regions in the world will offer conditions that continue to be profitable. If you want to invest a portion of your portfolio into cryptomining as a hedge against further drops, then you need to be smart about where you put your machines.

In this worst case scenario, Siberia is part of the last 17% of locations that can survive the drop. We’ve already had customers relocate their machines from Norway and we’re currently making arrangements for new customers to move from the Netherlands, Belgium and the Czech Republic.