Author | Seeing an old friend
The Bitcoin mining industry is like a giant ship sailing through the waves. Every technological innovation affects the market. As the core link in the mining ecosystem, changes in mining machine capacity directly affect mining efficiency, costs, and even the competition landscape of the entire industry. Today, in the deep sea of the mining machine market, miners are facing an unknown challenge and choice.
The mining machine market is experiencing “inflation”
The oversupply of Bitcoin mining machines is becoming more and more prominent, and the undercurrent of overcapacity is gradually surfacing. According to data revealed by a supply chain, some well-known mining machine manufacturers have a large backlog of chip orders, and it is expected that about 5 million mining machines will be put on the market by next year. Once these mining machines are put into production, the computing power of the entire network is expected to increase by 1300EH/s. The large-scale computing power growth will directly lead to a significant decline in the income of miners, especially when the direction of currency price fluctuations is unclear, the payback period will be more pessimistic.
Taking the total network computing power of about 650.49EH/s and the total network difficulty of 82.05T as an example on the day of publication, the newer S21Pro mining machine has an energy efficiency ratio of 15JH/T and a selling price of 17U/T. Under the conditions of a Bitcoin price of US$64,234 and an electricity fee of US$0.06, the miner's net income per T is about US$0.027, calculated based on the BTC.com mining pool handling fee of 4%. Assuming that the increase in mining difficulty is not taken into account, the miner's payback period is about 609 days. However, if the above inventory expectations are followed, after 5 million mining machines are put on the market, the total network computing power will increase significantly by about 1300EH/s. This means that under the same currency price and electricity fee conditions, the miner's payback period will increase sharply to more than 2000 days. Excess capacity is like a sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of miners. As customers, miners are often in a passive position in this game with mining machine manufacturers and lack the "right to know about capacity". Faced with such a huge capacity, does it mean that the price of mining machines will enter a downward trend? Will there be unpredictable risks if we purchase mining machines now? And when the computing power like a tide comes online, how high will the difficulty be pushed?
Technology competition is heating up
The fourth Bitcoin halving is undoubtedly an important node in the development of the industry. Miners are in urgent need of replacing more efficient and energy-saving mining machines to ensure their profitability. In this technological competition, miners' pursuit of new mining machines is more intense than celebrities' pursuit of fashion. They know that more advanced mining machines mean longer-term productivity. In the face of 5nm, 4nm and even more advanced 3nm technologies, miners are faced with a dilemma of choice, and everyone is worried that they will be eliminated by the market in advance.
From a historical perspective, the development of mining machine chips often presents a periodic technical platform period, during which the energy consumption ratio tends to be stable, forming a relatively constant performance range. For example, the previous S9 and S19 models are typical representatives of this stage. However, the mining machines on the current market are in the transition stage of technological iteration, and their performance and stability need to be improved through long-term optimization and upgrading. For example, the former S15 and the current S21 models all show the characteristics of the technical bottleneck period, and they are more like the products of the transition period. Against the background of the fourth halving of Bitcoin, tight power resources, and rising electricity prices and surrounding costs, it is obviously not a rational decision for miners to buy mining machines in the technical transition period. Bitcoin mining is a dual contest between technology and the market, and the performance and price of mining machines are constantly changing. Miners are like sailors. They need to pay attention to the market trend at all times and flexibly adjust their procurement strategies in order to keep their course in this turbulent sea. How to control costs while pursuing performance has become a major challenge for them.
The right to know is a basic need for miners
In the context of overcapacity and accelerated technological iteration, miners are more urgently in need of information such as the actual supply, performance parameters, and price trends of mining machines on the market in order to make more informed purchasing decisions. However, the confidentiality strategy of mining machine manufacturers on sales and production capacity makes it difficult for miners to obtain accurate market information. If the barriers of information asymmetry can be broken and key data such as mining machine inventory and reservations can be disclosed, it will not only help improve industry transparency, but also enhance trust and cooperation between mining machine manufacturers and miners. This transparent management method can reduce market uncertainty, improve the efficiency of resource allocation, and ultimately lay a solid foundation for the sustainable development of manufacturers and miners, thereby promoting the healthy and orderly development of the entire industry and achieving common prosperity and progress.
