After ten years of mining, what are the pain points of miners?

Since 2009, when the "Father of Bitcoin" Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first Genesis Block, mining is about to enter its tenth year. In addition to the rapid development of mining equipment, from the initial CPU to GPU, and now to ASIC, the price of coins has also repeatedly set new highs.

In a few years, some people have realized their dream of wealth and freedom through mining, while others have become "leeks" to be harvested. The world is changing, what are the unknown hardships behind the so-called "myth of getting rich quickly"? Is "mining" really a profitable investment that is guaranteed to make money as some reports say?

The picture comes from the Internet

Blockchain revenue is halved every 4 years, and more people are sharing the rewards

The income from Bitcoin mining is not constant, but will be dynamically adjusted by the computing power of the entire network and the difficulty of mining. In addition, there is a mechanism for mining to be halved every four years. Initially, the reward for a block was 50 Bitcoins, and currently the reward for a block is about 12.5 Bitcoins.

The most important thing is that while the rewards are decreasing, the number of people sharing the rewards is increasing. Because according to the proof of work mechanism (POW) adopted by Bitcoin, if a block is successfully mined, the reward is distributed according to the actual amount of work contributed. Since the current mining difficulty is very high, it is almost impossible to mine blocks in solo mode, and miners basically choose to join the mining pool for mining. As the price of Bitcoin rises, more and more people begin to participate in mining in the hope of getting a piece of the pie, and the coins distributed to each person naturally decrease.

The cryptocurrency market fluctuates relentlessly, and miners’ earnings can vary several times in a few days

Strictly speaking, there are two criteria for measuring mining income: the number of coins mined and the current price of the coin. For some miners who believe in Bitcoin, the temporary rise and fall of the coin price may not be a big deal, because they believe that Bitcoin can rise to a higher price in the future. But for some miners who need to continue to sell coins to subsidize electricity bills, the current coin price is very critical. The coin market often has the habit of skyrocketing and plummeting. It is possible to double several times in a few days, or plummet by more than 50%. Therefore, if miners want to calculate according to the market price, even if the number of coins mined is fixed, they may be able to sell 100 yuan yesterday, but only 50 yuan today, but they will find that they can sell 200 yuan tomorrow. Such a huge gap is extremely challenging for the psychological quality of miners, but it is also one of the biggest charms of the coin circle.

Mining machine failures are difficult to avoid, and repairs have become a common problem in the industry

For miners, mining machines are their "money printing machines". To get the maximum return from investing in mining machines, they must be kept running 24 hours a day. Temperature, humidity and air quality will have a certain impact on the service life of mining machines. Over time, the machines will inevitably have some failures. Usually, it takes a long time and logistics costs to repair the machines, at least ten days and half a month, which also means that miners have no income during this period, and the loss is immeasurable.

Since mining machines are special investment products, they cannot enjoy the after-sales policy of general consumer products. Therefore, in the entire mining industry, the inability to provide comprehensive after-sales service is a common problem for most manufacturers. So far, only Antminer after-sales service provides services including on-site maintenance, training courses, and return policies. According to the official statement, if the return meets the conditions, miners can resume mining on normal mining machines within 3-4 days at the shortest, which is very rare in the entire industry.

Antminer launches after-sales maintenance courses

Conclusion

It can be seen that the so-called "getting rich quickly through mining" is not as simple as ordinary people think. Since it is an investment, high returns are accompanied by high risks. Before investing in mining machines, you must fully consider your own risk tolerance. Even if you cannot correctly predict the market, you must still have awe of the market.

In addition, when choosing a mining machine, do not blindly pursue high computing power. We certainly hope to gain more benefits by contributing more workload, but whether the overall performance of the mining machine is stable and whether the manufacturer's after-sales service is complete are also important guarantees for whether the mining machine can earn us profits in the long run.