One of the things that make cryptocurrencies different is its decentralized nature. It makes use of miners in order to confirm the transactions. However, one of the things that evolved over the years is how the crypto miners operate especially when it comes to mining Bitcoin. In 2017, since Bitcoin had its meteoric rise to near $20K level, the number of interested miners also increased.
And now, there are a great number of miners operating in large facilities. In fact, it is now impossible to make a living from mining Bitcoin especially if you are just running it in the comfort of your home. In fact, crypto mining has been considered as an energy-intensive activity. In fact, there was a point wherein Bitcoin mining activity was enough to power an entire country.
Crypto Mining in a Bear Market
But since Bitcoin was able to reach near $20K and dropped 80% of its value in the next year, many chose to shut down their mining rigs and wait for the next bull run. On the part of Bitfarms, the company notified its investors that it was able to secure a $20 million loan that would cover for the expansion of its operations. The capital has been provided by Dominion Capital.
Currently, Bitfarms is based in Quebec. It has four mining farms in the province having around 220 Ph/s of hash-power. Aside from the fact that Quebec is among the best places to start a mining operation, the company has also used green and renewable hydroelectricity.
As for its expansion, the plan is to enter Sherbrooke municipality in Quebec. In addition to this, they are planning to buy a new generation of more efficient ASICs.
Opportunities Waiting Despite a Crypto Winter?
Let’s admit that though Bitcoin has been recovering in the past week, and Bitcoin has already regained more than 20% since last December, it is still a bearish market. However, for the big miners, they see this as an opportunity. It means that hardware prices are most likely cheaper. In addition to this, their competitors that don’t have enough funding may have already stopped mining in the meantime waiting for the time when Bitcoin price is back up.
According to its CEO, Wes Fulford, “It has been very challenging environment for many cryptocurrency miners to maintain profitability”. He also added that “At current network difficulty and BTC pricing, and assuming the average miner allocates 10% of power to cooling, a 13.5 TH/s S9 Antminer is currently losing money at power costs above $0.068 per kWhr.
Future of Bitcoin
The CEO of the mining giant thinks that the market is showing positive signs. He mentioned that “In recent months, we are pleased to see a more normalized and somewhat predictable correlation between price and difficulty. With attractive current hardware pricing, specifically price/TH metrics, we have a unique investment opportunity and plan to aggressively pursue our operational expansion”.
Are they doing the right move considering that many of the other miners have chosen to stop their operations? Could it give them good rewards in the coming months especially when Bitcoin continues to recover?
