r/CryptoCurrency • u/Calm_Voice_9791 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 • 18h ago
🟢 GENERAL-NEWS Bitcoin Mining Faces 'Incredibly Difficult' Market as Power Becomes the Real Currency
https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2025/08/24/bitcoin-mining-faces-incredibly-difficult-market-as-power-becomes-the-real-currency28
u/ilfollevolo 🟦 244 / 245 🦀 18h ago
The conversation everybody has avoided ever since. A sprinkle of reality checking in, finally
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u/Vipu2 🟦 0 / 4K 🦠 16h ago
Im not sure what the point of that article was, some miners crying they will get squeezed and they will go use that electricity on AI instead?
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u/Available_Win5204 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 10h ago
Yes lol. Well the power providers are saying thank goodness for AI because bitcoin mining is starting to shit the bed.
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u/Available_Win5204 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 18h ago
This article has a lot of mental gymnastics to avoid directly saying “bitcoin mining was a temporary fad” and that pivoting to actual, longer term productive uses of electricity is necessary. Unfortunately the amount of hardware waste is astronomical, since miners used chips specifically tailored to bitcoin mining.
If you were listening to the more reasoned minds in this space, you knew the writing was on the wall from years ago. If you’re a head-in-the-sand maxi, this is likely the first cracks you’re starting to see in the fantasy.
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u/brkinard 🟩 2 / 1K 🦠 17h ago
Preach brother.
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u/Spaceseeds 🟦 479 / 479 🦞 14h ago
You propagandists never cease to amaze me with your 4th grader takes on energy and the market. Keep blowing blackrock and their esg bullshit and maybe you'll save the world anakin
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u/EarningsPal 🟩 2K / 2K 🐢 17h ago
Banning asic chip production won’t stop BTC from continuing to exist. Someone somewhere will keep the equipment they have running.
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u/Available_Win5204 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 17h ago
Who said anything about banning chip production. I'm saying that all of those chips are essentially trash when mining inevitably becomes unprofitable.
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u/loulan 🟦 4K / 4K 🐢 16h ago
Data centers also replace their machines every few years though.
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u/Available_Win5204 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 16h ago
The vast majority of data centers can sell or donate their old equipment, which is very common in the business. It may not suit them, but it likely has some value to others. Mining companies most likely trash their stuff. It has no use outside of their industry and if they can't make a profit from it (they have access to the absolute lowest energy costs), no one else will be able to.
The entire bitcoin industry has been outrageously wasteful. Some got wealthy from it but overall it is a shameful and embarrassing waste of resources.
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u/loulan 🟦 4K / 4K 🐢 16h ago
Old machines get thrown away all the time.
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u/Available_Win5204 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 16h ago
As I just said. It is very common to sell or donate them because they still have a use, just not for their purpose. This is not the case with btc.
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u/loulan 🟦 4K / 4K 🐢 3h ago
This is completely delusional. Most machines just end up in the trash after a few years. It's not like many people are using machines from 10+ years ago, especially "donated" from a data center. As a society, we produce a lot of electronics trash, sure, but whether it's from data centers or bitcoin mining rigs it's the exact same thing.
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u/solidstatepr8 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 13h ago
Easier to do with commodity servers that find easy homes down stream from surplus dealers and the like.
ASICs are paperweights after they're done with them and have no other purpose other than mining.
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u/MichaelAischmann 🟦 1K / 18K 🐢 12h ago
Unfortunately most electronic products have a short life cycle & become trash.
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u/Available_Win5204 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 10h ago
Uh, yea most "things" have a short life cycle and become trash, but they're generally useful before that point. This is basically an industry that created mountains and mountains of computer hardware trash with no real world application.
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u/Moistinterviewer 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 14h ago
If you think mining will become unprofitable then I don’t think you understand mining
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u/Available_Win5204 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 10h ago
Ah shoot you're right. You obviously understand it better than the literal top executives running these mining operations saying it is becoming more and more difficult to stay profitable. Maybe your invite got list in the mail?
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u/Moistinterviewer 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 7h ago
Well I understand it because I’m a miner, if it’s not profitable then companies don’t mine, they won’t mine at a loss for very long..
The hasrate drops, then the difficulty drops and then mining is more profitable for the remaining miners.
Mining is essentially free for people that use electric heating, if you swap out your electric heater for a miner you pay no more to heat a given area but you receive a return in bitcoin.
For companies that flare (oil/gas) again it’s free, it’s better for the environment and it’s a way of moving that power without needing a grid.
For grids that use renewable power it’s free for them to mine during quiet periods and switch off when demand ramps up.
You can’t really get cheaper than free, please feel free to correct me if I am mistaken.
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u/AInception 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 1h ago
You can’t really get cheaper than free, please feel free to correct me if I am mistaken.
You're being disingenuous by saying mining is free. If it were actually free there would be zero point in POW, it would be proof of nothing.
There is always a cost to do work. The financial reward from doing POW is the only incentive to spend this cost, and the reward is the only thing that makes it "free" or actually profitable to do. Remove the financial incentive and well... nobody's working for free.
You know this...
And, you know halvings algorithmically reduce the financial incentive by half each few years. And that halvings will occur repeatedly forever and ever and ever and ever. They are 'security budget halvings' after all.
Even in your made up world where energy has $0.00 cost and it costs $0.00 to maintain Bitcoin, it still wouldn't be free to set up or maintain ASIC farms that require land, people, and utilitiy hookups. If BTC rewards $0.00 as well then that cost would be better spent (more rewarding) practically in anything else. This is the future we're looking at. Mining is solely based around ROI.
Best case, if BTC becomes 90% less profitable then 90% of miners drop off and Bitcoin's network security becomes 90% weaker as a result... then another halving comes in to ruin any semblance of stability anyway. GG
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u/MichaelAischmann 🟦 1K / 18K 🐢 16h ago
I'm wondering when we'll see a lasting decrease in hash rate.
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u/scummy_shower_stall 🟩 45 / 46 🦐 8h ago
Does this mean that bitcoin will lose its value if there are no miners? I'm asking that seriously, this is an angle I hadn't thought about.
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u/Available_Win5204 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 8h ago
The coins themselves will not lose value due to mining activity. However the security of the network depends on mining activity, so people may sell their coins as they fear decreased network security, causing the coins to lose value.
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u/scummy_shower_stall 🟩 45 / 46 🦐 7h ago
Oh, that IS concerning. So perhaps more than any quantum threat, it may be that corporations pouring electrical sources into AI is a bigger threat? Otoh, corporations own a huge chunk of bitcoin, they'd hate to lose value. What are some clues to look for that corporations may sell their bitcoin because they're seeing that trend of losing trust in the network?
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u/beambot 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 17h ago
The PoW model, despite its benefits, was never going to fly in light of anthropogenic climate change... And now with AI creating massive demand on electricity, it's just misguided inefficiency to couple money with electricity.
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u/CryptoDeepDive 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 13h ago edited 22m ago
Nothing to do with the POW model. The problem is the baked in halvings.
If Bitcoin had no 21M cap and defined inflation of the supply annually forever to reward miners for securing the network, this won't be an issue. But maxis are idiots.
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u/AInception 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 1h ago
If Bitcoin had no 21M cap and defined inflation of the supply annually forever to reward miners for securing the network, this won't be an issue.
Woah, are you suggesting Satoshi's roadmap would have been better for Bitcoin..?
In the cryptocurrency subreddit?
Balls of steel, man. Balls. Of. Steel.
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u/partymsl 🟩 76K / 143K 🦈 16h ago
BTC mining will simply be a legacy thing.
There will be BTC mining firms, but their main business will be their BTC holdings they already have rather than the newly mined ones.
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u/DryMyBottom 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 18h ago
mining is supposed to be difficult, I mean is the while point of BTC
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u/oldbluer 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 17h ago
But does btc have a point?
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u/TheLuckyO1ne 🟦 259 / 258 🦞 16h ago
What kind of question is that? Does the dollar have a point?
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u/oldbluer 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 14h ago
Medium of exchange.
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u/TheLuckyO1ne 🟦 259 / 258 🦞 11h ago
It appears as though you've answered your own question. Well done.
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u/oldbluer 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 9h ago
Thestupidone
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u/TheLuckyO1ne 🟦 259 / 258 🦞 9h ago
I didn't realize I was discussing this with a toddler, thank you for letting me know. You are free to read the white paper on Bitcoin if you want to learn about the "point" of Bitcoin. It involves math that's likely too advanced for you, though. Maybe revisit the idea in a couple of decades.
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u/MilkyJets 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 16h ago
Supposed to be deflationary store of value. An asset that can't have its supply tampered with. Permissionless, borderless, peerless. Wrestling away the corruption of inflation and money printing that we have become accustomed to accepting in our daily lives.
I dunno, lots of people are perfectly content paying taxes on spending borrowed money from an elite private organization (the Federal reserve) that is freely printed to ensure global domination through violence and coercion.
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u/IsThereAnythingLeft- 🟦 1K / 1K 🐢 14h ago
No it isn’t supposed to be that, it was meant to be a peer to peer payment system and it failed at that. It isn’t a store of value and never will be
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u/solidstatepr8 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 13h ago edited 13h ago
Thank you.
Bitcoin stopped being a currency the first time it was ever traded for a Dollar. It became a digital commodity in effect occupying the same space gold and silver do as to how people use it now. Most only buy BTC with the hope of a Dollar profit.
BTC otherwise simply is not scaled to handle anything close to what just Visa does in a day either.
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u/L-1-3-S 🟦 280 / 281 🦞 11h ago
It isnt a store of value? Bruh, its literally more valuable than silver now. Its one of the the best stores of value on the planet. And nothing wrong with adapting use cases. Satoshi wanted a decentralized way to send value to people anywhere in the world in seconds without a middle man, and that has been accomplished.
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u/Available_Win5204 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 10h ago
Let's see. Bitcoin has been around for about 15 years now and is insanely volatile. Silver has been around for thousands and is steady. So, yea sounds to me like it is not a proven store of value. Bruh.
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u/IsThereAnythingLeft- 🟦 1K / 1K 🐢 2h ago
I don’t care if it’s more valuable than gold, that doesn’t make it a store of value, and the fact that you mentioned it as if it had any relevance shows how you don’t have a clue. You have to be joking thinking it’s one of the best sites of value lmao, those don’t drop 80% in a few month, stop kidding yourself it has no function or utility other than a gamble
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u/Available_Win5204 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 10h ago
Yea if there is one thing the crypto industry is known for, it's a lack of corruption and ZERO infinite money printing. It's not full of scams, rug pulls, and "stable coins" printed out of thin air. You've got it all figured out.
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u/MilkyJets 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 5h ago
yes, I'd much rather make generational wealth in the Stock market, or perhaps real estate, because that's an iron clad route towards early retirement.
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u/custardBust 🟦 26 / 26 🦐 17h ago
I imagine bitcoin might reach such high prices that mining becomes interesting again, if bitcoin gains more traction.
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u/MichaelAischmann 🟦 1K / 18K 🐢 18h ago
Energy has long been the actual currency of the world.