Recent perspectives on mining, mining pools, and Bitcoin halving, compiled by SCminer:
Bitmain and WhatsMiner’s Dominance in 2024 and the Challenges They Face:
As of now, the global mining machine manufacturing business is still dominated by these two major companies, especially after the release of the Antminer S21 in 2023, which has made this monopoly increasingly apparent. Many publicly traded mining companies are placing large-scale hash power futures orders with Bitmain. Observations of Bitmain’s production capacity and shipment volumes suggest that Bitmain may be keeping a significant number of mining machines for its own mining operations.
Faced with the lucrative profits and prospects in the industry, many big players in the computing field have tried to enter the mining machine manufacturing sector, including the well-known Intel. However, after launching just two generations of products, they seem to have completely abandoned this venture. This is mainly because this industry values not just technology and experience but also the ability to rapidly innovate. Even a computer industry giant like Intel lags far behind Bitmain when starting from scratch.
Despite these challenges, many companies are still attempting to manufacture mining machines, driven by the substantial benefits. In 2024, will there be any companies that can produce mining machines with even lower energy efficiency ratios than the Antminer S21 Hyd. (16J/T)? we shall wait and see.
Which Mining Pools are Stronger and More Miner-Friendly:
The global rankings of mining pools have remained quite stable over the years. Foundry has been leading the pack, and an interesting trend is the increasing number of pools forming alliances with Antpool. Industry experts have noticed that these pools pool their rewards at Antpool for distribution. Antpool, with its substantial financial scale, employs the FTPS model to manage its reserves against fluctuations in luck value. Since 2022, the combined hashing power of Foundry and Antpool has exceeded 50% of the global hash rate. Larger pools tend to have higher block generation rates and offer more support to miners. Additionally, compliance in mining pools is becoming increasingly important. For instance, F2Pool adheres to local policies by filtering certain sanctioned addresses, making it difficult for users of these addresses to continue receiving rewards and trading on the platform. For more on how miners can choose suitable mining pools, additional articles by SCminer can provide further insights.
Impact of Halving on Miners:
As highlighted in several of SCminers’ previous discussions, the halving of computing power presents both significant opportunities and challenges for miners globally. The opportunity arises from the potential substantial rise in Bitcoin’s value, while the challenge stems from the simultaneous increase in global computing power and halving of Bitcoin earnings. If Bitcoin prices were to fall to between $20,000 and $30,000, even efficient miners like the Antminer S19xP could struggle to remain profitable. In such a scenario, only miners with lower energy efficiency ratios, such as the Antminer S21 and T21, could maintain a positive revenue. This explains why many large mining companies have been keen to pre-order these models following the launch of the S21.
The mining landscape is also shifting significantly under volatile market conditions. There has been a notable increase in the computational power in regions like Russia and the Middle East, where sales and hosting services are quite active. Mining activities in Africa appear to be relatively small in scale. In South America, mining is largely influenced by local political situations, while North America has maintained a relatively stable environment, though extreme weather conditions need to be taken into account.
The above is a summary of industry information compiled by SCminer for our miner friends. SCminer is an internationally renowned cryptocurrency mining machine trading company serving globally. We provide comprehensive, professional, timely, and cost-effective mining machine purchasing and hosting services to maximize your profits!
