Bitcoin miners scrap their servers
The mass exodus has broken out on the crypto exchanges. Bitcoins, for $ 6000 more than two weeks ago, are currently trading below $ 4,000. Practically all major alternatives such as Ripple, Ethereum or Bitcoin Cash have a similarly large crash behind them – and possibly even in front of him. Even the crypto-fugitive Tether, which is said to be covered one to one with US dollars and a bitcoin mining giant bitmain guarantee, has to accept a discount.
It is unmistakable: The already fragile world of digital speculation objects is experiencing its next major collapse. Most stakeholders see the hard-felling of Bitcoin Cash on November 15 as an immediate trigger. Bitcoin Cash was once split off from Bitcoin itself in 2017.
Such bifurcations already existed in the crypto scene. What’s new, though, is that the overall activity of the scene – and not just the virtual value of its assets – is shrinking.
The South China Morning Post reports that in China, where most of the crypto-money is still being mined, there are a number of small miners to be abandoned. In Chinese media, images of warehouses are circulating in which servers are being cleared out. The special mining machines are no longer profitable to operate even with almost free electricity purchased.
Who can still profitably mine Bitcoin?
The nearly $ 6,000 bitcoin price from August through mid-November has been explained by some to the low cost of today’s technology and the inherent complexity of the computational power required by the Bitcoin code to increase long-term value. The thesis: Deeper than about 6000 dollars, the price could not fall because no one would then offer more new bitcoins.
But reality looks different. The new crash makes it clear that the cryptosystem is free of fundamental logic. The New York economist Nouriel Roubini, who has earned a reputation as a doomscript prophet of cryptocurrencies, sees the true value of bitcoins as being below zero due to high energy consumption without any economic benefit.
In this regard, the current crash provides good news. „Bloomberg“ reports that the hash rate is sinking, which measures how much computing power miners need to mine within a second. It is not necessarily individual miners replaced by others who can produce even cheaper, but at least temporarily, the offer actually drops.
The result: the energy requirement also goes back for the first time. The „Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index“ currently reports an annual consumption of 54 terawatt-hours of electricity alone for Bitcoin – still as much as Bangladesh, a country with twice as many inhabitants as Germany and the second largest textile production in the world. But two weeks ago, the forecast was still more than 73 terawatt hours, more than Austria. Falling energy consumption is an indication that many Bitcoin miners are actually retiring.
