Key facts:
The Bitcoin hahsrate reached figures above 239 EH/s and a difficulty of 29.8T.
The hashprice reached lows of 0.16 USD/TH daily, while the teams continue to lower their prices.
Everyone who has ever mined Bitcoin knows that there are good seasons and bad seasons. However, some factors are difficult to judge with the naked eye. For example, the constant increase in the hashrate or global computing power of the network, which affects the growth in the difficulty of mining Bitcoin, and which in recent hours has reached a new historical record.
Currently, the increase in the number of Bitcoin miners contrasts with the fall in the hashprice, or the price of each terahash invested in mining Bitcoin, and in the prices of ASIC equipment.
According to the miner network usage values we can see on sites like Braiins and Hashrate Index, the new difficulty setting for mining Bitcoin reached 29.8Tthis is 5.5% more than during the previous period.
Difficulty is a parameter that determines how difficult it will be to mine Bitcoin for a period of 2016 blocks, approximately two weeks. This maintains a constant bitcoin emission over time.
For its part, the hashrate also reached a maximum of 239.94 EH/s according to Braiins, which translates as the maximum capacity of the network in terms of simultaneously connected miners.
This means that network security is greater than ever, since with more miners connected, the network is less likely to fail or be attacked; it also means that the reward for participating in this activity should be divided among more Bitcoin miners.
Declining hashprice doesn’t deter miners
The increase in the Bitcoin hashrate and the increase in programmed difficulty have an impact on the profit that Bitcoin miners can obtain. Currently, the value of each terahash invested in the network is 0.16 USD/TH dailya minimum brand for this payment network.
The hashprice is a parameter that has a positive relationship with the price and earnings of Bitcoin miners. If these values go up or down, it affects the value of investing computing power in mining in the same proportion.
However, the relationship between hashprice and difficulty is negative. This means that if the difficulty (or the hashrate) increases, this value tends to decrease.
This affects the investment strategies of the miners, because it conditions the expectations they may have regarding the purchase of new equipment and the ability to return the investment in an acceptable term for each one.
In other words, if a miner knows the amount of satoshis he can get daily at a given time, he can calculate how long it takes to recover the investment he made in hardware that you bought or plan to buy, since each ASIC to mine Bitcoin has a certain power.
Hashprice versus Bitcoin ASIC price drop
Since the hashprice has not returned to the values of the end of last year, when it was above $0.40/TH diaries, this current minimum mark has been perceived as an obstacle in terms of the profitability of mining Bitcoin. However, this decrease of more than 50% of the hashprice contrasts with the speed with which the number of participants in the network increases.
In fact, there is another parameter that has been progressively decreasing this year and that somehow stabilizes the balance of the earnings of Bitcoin miners. This is something called the price of the rig (rig price), but that in simpler terms we could understand as the cost of the hardware in relation to its efficiency.
According to the hashprice Index, the price of hardware to mine Bitcoin has been progressively declining, a fact that can be observed if you check the digital shelves where ASICs are sold to mine Bitcoin.
According to the figures provided by Hasrate Index, an Antminer S19 has progressively decreased in value over the last 5 months. In relation to the month of February, now an Antminer S19 is 8.99% cheaper.
Another example is the Whatsminer M20, which has decreased its price for 6 consecutive months. Compared to February, the current price of an ASIC M20 is 18.96% cheaper.
Of course, this depends a lot on each specific market, since in some countries their prices may be inflated by other factors, beyond the fact that trends can be maintained.
In April of this year, we reported in CriptNoticias how ASIC equipment dragged 8 weeks of price drops. At that time, we explained the relationship between this drop in prices as a logical consequence of the stabilization of the markets after the crisis caused by the Covid pandemic.
Another analysis described by this newspaper maintained that the drop in prices was equivalent to 20% since the beginning of the year, where the high-end models of Bitmain and Whatsminer stood out, reflecting cheaper prices than previous months on sites such as Mercadolibre and Amazon. .