BitcoinBitcoin investors and crypto industry counterparts are suffering what is presumably the introduction of another crypto winter. JPMorgan (JPM) stated in a research report that Bitcoin (BTC) miners are branching out into new business areas, such as offering high-performance computing (HPC) services to the rapidly expanding artificial intelligence (AI) market, to reduce their reliance on cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin crash moves miners out of the industry
According to Binance, the live price of BTC is $ 6,573.14 per (BTC / USD), with a current market cap of $ 517.14B. Over the last 24-hour trading volume sits at $ 34.43B. BTC is -6.86% in the last 24 hours with a circulating supply of 19.46M.
According to CoinGecko, today’s global crypto market cap sits at $1.09 Trillion. The industry is down -0.86% change in the last 24 hours and 1.85% one year ago. As of today, the market cap of BTC is at $505 Billion, representing a BTC dominance of 46.42%.
The BTC crash has led miners out of the industry, and not many are looking toward the BTC halving in April 2024. According to the JPMorgan report, miners selling coins in recent quarters have partially covered the cost of the additional investments.
Some bitcoin mining companies have rebranded to reflect the diversification, such as Hive Blockchain Technologies (HIVE) becoming Hive Digital Technologies and Riot Blockchain (RIOT) becoming Riot Platforms.
It’s not just miners of the world’s largest crypto that are looking for new revenue streams. Former ether (ETH) miners have shown an inclination to offer HPC services, the bank reported, noting that since the Ethereum blockchain Merge, there has been a large supply of graphics processing units (GPUs) on the secondary market because GPUs used for ether mining “lost their utility.”
According to the report, some ether miners sold their GPUs in order to recoup their investment. In contrast, others repurposed their PCs for gaming, image, and video rendering services and mining alternative proof-of-work cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum Classic (ETC), Ravencoin (RVN), and ergo (ERG).
However, mining these cryptocurrencies were not as profitable as mining ether due to their lower market caps and questions about their long-term viability […] With the rapid growth of AI, the increased demand for high-performance computing is now opening a new and perhaps more profitable avenue for utilizing GPUs previously used for ether mining.
JPMorgan analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou
The report added that Bitcoin miners are also looking to expand geographically, with Russia emerging as one of the global leaders in terms of bitcoin mining electricity consumption, second only to the United States.
Solo miner makes $160k on BTC reward
After defying the odds and solving block 803,821, a very fortunate Bitcoin miner has just won the full 6,25 Bitcoin reward. The miner identified as bc1q2za4ejga366sn288273pty8trasn5zs4y9hqg6 earned approximately $160,000 in fiat currency at current prices, less a 2% mining pool fee.
According to reports, the miner operated with approximately 1 PH/s (petahash per second) of hashing power, which is considerably less than the hashing power of the largest industrial-scale Bitcoin mining pools.
While the majority of miners have computing power capacities in the Exahash per second (EH/s) range — for example, Foundry, the largest Bitcoin mining pool, presently boasts up to 123.64 EH/s — an individual miner with fewer than a few Petahash is at a severe disadvantage.
According to the report, at the present Bitcoin mining difficulty, which is close to a record 52.39 trillion, “a miner of this size would only solve a block solo on average once every seven years.”
Note that the lucky miner could have employed approximately ten Antminer S17 BTC mining machines in order to solve the mathematical problem and earn the reward.
At the core of the Bitcoin network is the mining process, a crucial mechanism that verifies transactions, secures the network, and introduces new Bitcoin into circulation.
It is a computational endeavor that employs the strength of high-performance computers to solve intricate mathematical puzzles. Miners compete to solve these puzzles, with the victor having the opportunity to add a new transaction block to the blockchain.
Despite the odds, it is still possible for a solo Bitcoin miner to generate a valid hash on occasion.
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