The increasing costs of operating a crypto mining operation has caused some companies to turn off their equipment or to sell their units at a huge loss.
Amid the falling prices of digital coins, cryptocurrency mining units became worthless that some miners are selling them at all costs, even at a significant loss.
On the Chinese blogging site Weibo, the owner of top Chinese mining pool F2Pool stated that crypto miners are selling their units not as mining rigs but as scraps.
The now-viral photo showed a man weighing what appeared to be an ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) miner alongside boxes filled with more mining hardware.
神鱼 posted it today (owner of @F2Pool_Official one of the top 5 mining pools) Saying the current miner are sold by “pound”, more of a parody. The fact is – say if you can’t mine with S9 with profit, someone with better unit economic will buy at a very low price to “recycle” pic.twitter.com/gT0wGmGST4
— Dovey Wan ? (@DoveyWan) November 20, 2018
More stories of miners turning off their mining equipment have also gone viral on social media site Twitter. One video showed a worker transporting what seemed to be an AvalonMiner741 units from inside a crypto mining farm to a parking space full of dispatched mining rigs.
BRUTAL: this is what’s happening now in a China based mining site …. ?? pic.twitter.com/gcN4lVTyBt
— Dovey Wan ? (@DoveyWan) November 20, 2018
Many crypto analysts credit the massive sale of mining rigs—as well as the shutdown of other mining-related businesses—to the declining profitability of Bitcoin (BTC) mining. Data from F2Pool showed that, as of November 20, most mining units have reached their shutdown prices.
It's been a crazy week in the cryptocurrency markets, please keep an eye on the latest coin prices to make sure your miners are running in profit #bitcoin #mining #f2pool pic.twitter.com/BIysUJAIVs
— f2pool (@f2pool_official) November 21, 2018
For example, Bitcoin needs to be worth around CNY 40,030, or around US$5,700, to break even. However, Bitcoin is currently trading only at US$4,335.98, which is more than a thousand dollars off from the required shutdown price.
Many online crypto analysts blamed both the rising electrical costs and the bearish crypto market for the shutdown of many mining services, especially those operating in China.
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