2019Q3 Blockchain Mining Research Report: Low-power mining machines will gradually establish advantages, and the mining industry will enter a new era

Source: Tokeninsight

Editor’s Note: The original title is “2019Q3 Blockchain Mining Research Report”

Summary of key points:

1. With the delivery of mining machine orders in the first two quarters and the concentrated release of new mining machines by major mining machine manufacturers, the computing power and difficulty of the Bitcoin network increased significantly in the third quarter, reaching 109 ET/s and 12.76T at peak, both of which are historical highs (as of the third quarter of 2019). Among them, the average increase in the difficulty of the entire network in the third quarter reached 6.26%, and the cumulative increase in difficulty was 72% (from June 1, 2019 to September 30, 2019), which is the highest level of difficulty growth in the past year.

2. Affected by the halving in the second quarter of 2020 and the instability of the coin price, the profitability of 16nm mining machines, including the Ant S9 series mining machines, will be greatly affected. In order to maximize the benefits of 16nm mining machines such as S9 before the halving, miners will not clear out the S9 mining machines for the time being. At the same time, with the delivery of 7nm mining machines released in the second half of 2019, TokenInsight predicts that the computing power and difficulty of the Bitcoin network will continue to rise in the first half of 2020 (before the halving). Due to the uncertainty of the coin price, the average increase will not exceed that in the third quarter of 2019.

3. In the second half of 2019, major mining machine manufacturers including Bitmain and Canaan Creative have launched mining machines with a power consumption ratio of less than 50J/T. Among all mining machines, Antminer S17+ has the lowest power consumption ratio (39.5J/T). Antminer T17+ replaced Innosillicon T3-43T mining machine in the previous quarter to become the most profitable low-power mining machine, with a payback period of only 230 days under the current difficulty and coin price. As the computing power grows, low-power mining machines will gradually establish an advantage in the competition.

4. In terms of mining machine profitability, affected by the sudden increase in the difficulty of the entire network in the third quarter, more than half of the mining machines cannot make a profit under the current difficulty and coin price. The payback period of the mining machines that can still make a profit has also increased significantly. The mining machine with the shortest payback period is Antminer T17+, which takes 230 days to make a profit, and the mining machine with the longest payback period is Whatsminer M20S-~45T, which takes 668 days to make a profit. The mining machines that can make a profit are mainly produced by Bitmain and Canaan Creative.

5. In terms of mining machine profitability, TokenInsight launched the industry’s first dynamic profit calculation model based on coin price and difficulty growth based on the static profit calculation in the previous quarter. In this model, all mining machines can recover their investment.

6. In terms of cloud computing power products, the cloud computing power products with a lock-up period of 6 months on the Renren Mine platform have the lowest unit computing power mining fee, and the mining cost per unit computing power per day is $ 0.0973.

7. On November 21, 2019, Beijing time, mining machine manufacturer Canaan Creative successfully listed on the Nasdaq in the United States, becoming the first blockchain concept company to be listed on the US stock market. Canaan Creative's listing means that blockchain technology and Bitcoin are increasingly accepted by the mainstream financial market, and the mining industry has entered a new era.