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In the blink of an eye, it is the month of year-end review again. Oxford Dictionary, one of the most comprehensive and authoritative English dictionaries in contemporary times, announces its word of the year every year, but this year, for the first time in history, it said that it could not choose a suitable word to describe 2020. From the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of the year to the bushfires in Australia, from the anti-racism demonstrations "Black Lives Matter" across the United States to the US election, too many things happened in 2020 that are worth remembering. Oxford Vocabulary Report cover: An unprecedented year
In the blockchain industry, many major events happened in 2020 that are worth reviewing in the future. In this article, I will first take you through 10 things that have had a relatively large impact on the miners . 01
312 Crash Under the combined influence of multiple factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, high leverage, and the technical death loop of the Bitmex exchange, BTC suddenly plummeted from 7934 USDT to below 5000 USDT on March 12. The next day, the price of the currency continued to fall, falling to a low of 3782.13 USDT. The plunge in BTC prices dragged down the entire crypto market. In just a few days, the market value of the entire cryptocurrency market evaporated by more than $100 billion. For miners, the 312 plunge not only caused the crypto assets in their hands to shrink, but also caused a large number of old mining machines such as S9 to shut down, and the total computing power of the Bitcoin network fell from 110E to a minimum of 85E. On March 26, the difficulty of Bitcoin mining dropped by 15.95%, which was the second largest drop in Bitcoin history at the time. The biggest lesson that the 312 crash has given to miners is to be cautious in using leverage in the market. Borrowing money to mine can indeed make money and earn coins, but this money must come from outside the market. Because of the black swan market like 312, even if the leverage in the market is 1x, it can be wiped out completely. 02
Antminer S19 miner released Mining machines are like hens that lay golden eggs, providing us miners with a steady stream of “income after sleep”. This year, the most noteworthy Bitcoin mining machine is the Antminer S19 series developed by Bitmain. The Antminer S19 series can be divided into two models: S19 and S19 Pro. Among them, the computing power of the S19 mining machine is 95T, and the energy efficiency ratio is 34.21W/T; the computing power of the S19 Pro mining machine is 110T, and the energy efficiency ratio is 29.55 W/T, which is far ahead of its competitors. Due to the 312 crash and the low price of coins, Bitmain delayed the announcement of the price of Ant S19 mining machine for a week. In the " B.TOP Conference and the First Interview with Miners " held by Zhikuang University, Jiang Zhuoer, the founder of Litecoin, analyzed: This mining machine has very little water, and is basically at a relatively low price. Buying this mining machine at this time to mine, and gradually reducing costs through mining output, it is easy to put yourself in an invincible position.
The first batch of S19-95T mining machines were May futures. When they were launched on the B.TOP platform under Litecoin, the price was 15,295 yuan (200 yuan cheaper than the official website). Looking back now, if I had bought the S19 mining machine from B.TOP at that time, it would have been a very successful mining investment. This year, the production capacity of mining machines is generally insufficient, and it is difficult to get a machine. Bitmain's S19 futures mining machines are sold until August 2021, and the price for large customers is as high as 13,770 yuan. Figure: Ant S19 mining machine launched on the B.TOP platform in March this year
03
Mining output halved On April 8 this year, BCH was the first to experience a halving of mining output, with block rewards reduced from 12.5 BCH to 6.25 BCH. During this period when BCH mining output had been halved but BTC had not been halved, as previously popularized by Zhikuang University, BCH did not enter a death spiral. On May 12, Beijing time, the Bitcoin block reward was halved as scheduled. After the halving, Bitcoin's annual inflation rate dropped from 3.7% to 1.8%, which is lower than the 2% inflation target designed by most central banks for fiat currencies in the world. The mining output is halved, and the old mining machines with high energy consumption are the first to bear the brunt. However, fortunately, the cheap hydropower resources during the flood season and the steady increase in the price of Bitcoin after the halving have allowed many old mining machines with high energy consumption (such as the Ant S9 mining machine) to still be turned on for mining every day. In addition to BTC, BCH, and BSV, many small mining coins have also experienced production cuts this year: BEAM, ETC, DASH, XZC, ZEC, ZEN, Sero, etc. 04
Park Electric This year, the term "park electricity" has entered the vision of many miners. Park electricity refers to the electricity in the Sichuan Hydropower Consumption Industry Demonstration Zone. Because this electricity is consumed in the government-planned industrial park, it is commonly known as park electricity. This year is the first year that Sichuan Province implements industrial park electricity supply. Compared with direct power supply, industrial park electricity supply has the following advantages: 1. The power supply of the park comes from the national power grid, which is more stable. 2. The electricity prices in the park are transparent, and the cost structure is also very clear and transparent. 3. Electricity in the park is safer. 4. Park electricity means a safer site and more convenient transportation. For the mining industry, the emergence of park electricity has promoted the standardization and transparency of mining activities, allowing miners to use more stable and compliant electricity, while also promoting the consumption of local surplus hydropower. If you want to learn more about park electricity, please read the previous tweet of Zhikuang University, " Mine owners talk about all aspects of park electricity ." 05
DeFi Liquidity Mining At the end of May and the beginning of June this year, the decentralized lending platform Compound fired the first shot of DeFi liquidity mining, and the price of its token COMP rose to as high as $372.27. The success of Compound has injected new vitality into DeFi, and more and more projects have launched similar liquidity mining incentive mechanisms. Liquidity mining does not require the purchase of mining machines, selection of mining sites, or deployment of mining pools. You only need to deposit the corresponding tokens in the DeFi application to participate in mining. It is simple and convenient, and the annualized rate of return can be as high as several hundred percent when it is popular. We, the miners who honestly buy physical mining machines for mining, are classified as "classical miners" by many people and are ridiculed as outdated. However, after a short-term frenzy, the bubble burst and the prices of many tokens plummeted, or even headed straight for zero. In the end, we found that we, the "classical miners", were the ones who had the last laugh, because the popularity of DeFi caused congestion on the Ethereum network and soared Gas prices. During that period, the income of our graphics card mining machines was more than three times the usual. Figure: Ethereum network fee income, the red box is the period when DeFi was popular
06
Filecoin Mainnet Launch On October 16 this year, the mainnet of Filecoin, a public storage blockchain project that had been delayed for more than two years, was finally launched. Before the mainnet was launched, the official FIL pre-staking rules were too strict, which caused dissatisfaction among miners. After some negotiation, Filecoin officials finally compromised. After more than two months of development, the effective computing power of Filecoin's entire network has reached 1.476EiB, and the number of active miners has reached 836. Source: Filfox 07
Card Cutting Operation On October 11 this year, the State Council and the Ministry of Public Security held a meeting to announce the launch of a nationwide "card-cutting" operation. The card-cutting operation is mainly aimed at cracking down on and rectifying the illegal opening and selling of phone cards and bank cards. The card-cutting operation has made it much more difficult to withdraw money, and miners have to pay electricity bills every month, which has a great impact on them. According to official reports, there is no time limit for this card-cutting operation, until the passive situation of the two cards being rampant and being used for crimes is completely changed. 08
BCH forks again On November 13, 2018, the disagreement on the upper limit of BCH block size led to the BCH fork, which resulted in the fork of BSV, which aimed to have "unlimited blocks". Two years later, on November 15, BCH forked again. The key point leading to this fork was the IFP proposed by the ABC development team: miners will donate 8% of the theoretical block output to the development team to solve the funding problem of the development team. When writing this article, the price of BCH is 310USDT, and the price of the forked BCHA is 19.5USDT, which is less than one-tenth of the price of BCH. For miners, it is good to get free BCHA after the fork. 09
Ethereum 2.0 and 4G graphics cards On December 1, the beacon chain of Ethereum 2.0 was successfully launched. As of the time of writing, the total amount of ETH staked in the contract deposit address of Ethereum 2.0 has exceeded 1.79 million, and the current annualized rate of return on staking is about 11.5%. For miners, the biggest impact of Ethereum 2.0 is its PoS consensus mechanism. Once the current Ethereum PoW chain is merged into the PoS chain, Ethereum miners will no longer be able to mine ETH. However, miners do not need to worry yet, because according to estimates by industry veterans, Ethereum can still be mined for another year and a half to two years. Even though the beacon chain is now online, it is still a good time to enter the Ethereum mining market . For the specific logic, please refer to Zhikuang University’s previous tweet " ETH 2.0 is here, can you still buy mining machines to mine ETH? " In addition to Ethereum 2.0, Ethereum miners also need to pay attention to 4G graphics cards. According to the information provided by Spark Mining Pool, it is expected that after Christmas this year, the DAG file will exceed 4G. At present, some 4G graphics cards have been completed or are being expanded to 6G/8G. After the 4G graphics card mining machines are eliminated, how much will the Ethereum network's computing power fluctuate? This is worthy of our miners' attention. 10
Bitcoin hits new all-time high In the article " Where is the current bull market cycle & the upcoming surge in mainstream coins ", Jiang Zhuoer, founder of the Litecoin Mining Pool, mentioned that only when BTC breaks 20,000, it will be a real break and there will be a lot of news and traffic. On December 16 this year, Bitcoin successfully broke through the 20,000 US dollar mark. Subsequently, Bitcoin broke through 21,000, 22,000, 23,000, and 24,000 US dollars in succession. As of the time of writing, Bitcoin has reached a high of 24,295 US dollars. The blockchain market is often like a hairtail market. What is worse than not being able to eat the fish is that you only eat the head of a hairtail. Of course, historically, unfortunately, most people cannot hold on to their coins and sell them early at some point in the bull market . Only miners, most miners, can enjoy the bull market from beginning to end . The reason is simple: if you have a coin that has increased 10 times, you will want to sell it, but you will definitely not want to sell the hen (mining machine) that keeps laying golden eggs.
Now that Bitcoin has broken through its previous high, I hope you have both a mining machine and coins in your hands. Risk warning : The content of this article is only the author’s personal opinion, does not represent the views or position of Zhikuang University, and does not constitute any investment opinion or recommendation. | 
