Continued rises in retail energy prices are now threatening to put paid to profits on crypto currency miners, even for many bigger entities, according to a new report. Despite rewards and fees for BTC miners showing huge year on year growth – $4.7 billion in the first three quarters of 2018, almost $1.4 billion more than the profits made in 2017, September’s energy prices saw profts completely resulted in an unprecedented situation where mining was unprofitable. Even in China, where miners enjoy some of the world’s lowest energy prices, overall overheads are likely to put operations into the red for all but the big few.
This might be bad news for the majority of miners, but at the same time is great news for the emerging big players – and a great time for the likes of Zukerberg’s behemoth to crash the party if you of a more cynical inclination.
The real question is whether ongoing energy trends will permanently change the mining landscape. It also raises the question of cryptocurrency’s sustainability in the environmental sense – is it time to look at greener coins?
