Popularity of Crypto Mining in South Africa

The crypto market’s 2017 made it possible for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to enter the mainstream. Regardless of financial experts’ opinion on cryptocurrencies, the bottom line is that Bitcoin was able to reach near $20,000 in December last year.

And considering the soaring price in 2017, many ventured towards cryptocurrency mining which has become quite popular. However, let’s admit that there are a number of issues surrounding crypto mining activities. You have environmental concerns due to the fact that it’s an energy extensive activity. There is even a study saying that Bitcoin mining electricity consumption worldwide is enough to power an entire country. And because of this, there are those that even banned the importation of crypto hardware.

With regulators imposing strict guidelines on mining, not to mention the bearish market, things weren’t actually looking good for crypto miners. In reality, though there are those looking for solutions to address the issues, many have experienced smaller returns as the cryptocurrency rewards tend to get smaller in time combined with the bearish market.

South Africa’s Crypto Mining Industry

But many are still buying crypto mining rigs in South Africa despite all of these issues that we have mentioned. According to Bitmart CEO Jacques Serfontein, mining activities still provide miners with a  great return on investment. It can be profitable in South Africa as people get as much as 30% ROI per month. According to Serfontein, “People are still buying miners, a 7%-30% ROI per month based on the different cryptocurrencies out there is still a great ROI”.

However, miners are quite picky which cryptocurrency they should be mining. For instance. “The focus is off Bitcoin for now due to the low price, but the income on some other miners is very good”.

Bitmart was able to sell a good number of miners in the country. And one of the reasons for its success is due to the ability of these miners to provide good returns. He said that “You can buy an Antminer Z9 that mines Zcash with an ROI period of four months, where Bitcoin miners and Ethereum miners are now sitting with much higher ROI periods”.

The Popularity of ASIC Than GPU?

As for the gaming industry, any are relieved about the development and the popularity of ASIC miners. These rigs are built specifically for mining cryptocurrencies. And therefore, you can expect much larger returns from these crypto mining rigs than the GPUs.

Serfontein mentioned that “ASIC miners are for sure the most popular, we clearly see that ASIC miner sales outperform GPU rig sales by over 200 to one, but it’s all dependent on what the miners can mine and what is most profitable”.

But of course, he added that there is a chance that GPUs are going to become popular once again. There are GPU-only algorithms that are adopted in the market.

He mentioned that “Look at what happened to Ethereum. The Antminer E3 replaced the GPU rigs mining Ethereum thanks to its lower cost, much lower power consumption, and far better hashrate—it’s a no-brainer.

As for cloud mining, Bitmart stopped providing this kind of services. Recently Gemini cloud mining contracts were stopped mainly because it is no longer profitable. And Serfontein agrees to this. He said that “owning a rig makes a lot more profit than cloud mining and clients keep comparing earnings with online calculators that don’t factor in hosting costs, so it was a hard sell”.