Companies Report Mining Profits Despite Halving

by
Nick Marinoff
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The bitcoin halving has come and gone, and many were worried about the state of bitcoin’s mining operations and how they would handle the coming future. Would mining remain a profitable industry, or would it sink into oblivion never to be heard from again?

The Halving: Did It Hurt the Industry?

While there are certainly changes the arena must deal with, bitcoin miners and mining machines are still witnessing some profits creeping into the space, suggesting that the recent halving hasn’t rendered the business of extracting new bitcoin blocks entirely useless.

May 12 saw the third official halving occur for the world’s number one cryptocurrency by market cap. The first two occurred in 2012 and 2016, respectively. The first event saw the amount of bitcoin units rewarded to miners reduced from 50 BTC to about 25. While these seem like big numbers, bear in mind that bitcoin, eight years ago, was nowhere near the price it’s at now, which means that miners really weren’t getting much for their work in the long run.

The second halving occurred four years later. The reduction from 25 to 12.5 saw the currency become rarer, and while bitcoin was still trading for under $1,000 at the time of the event, things were miles better than where they had been in 2012, so miners were beginning to rake in relatively healthy profits for their work.

Now that the asset’s mining rewards have fallen to 6.5 BTC, many questioned whether it was even worth it for miners to keep their machines on. At the time, bitcoin was – and still technically is – undergoing a period of heavy volatility due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The asset saw its price drop to the high $3,000 range in mid-March after spending the last month trading for well over $10,000.

The currency lost close to 70 percent of its value in just a matter of days, and while the asset has largely recovered and is now trading for over $9,700, many are still not quite comfortable with the present circumstances and are keeping a watchful eye out.

But good news has appeared on the horizon in that companies such as Bitmain and MicroBT are still reporting solid profits thanks to specific mining machines. Both companies are based in China and say that specific miners are raking in the necessary funds to keep things going.

MicroBT’s Whatsminer M30S++, for example, can produce as much as 112 tera hash per second. It currently ranks as the number one most profitable machine for the company, garnering as much as $8.53 per day.

Raking in the Dough

For Bitmain, the big savior is the Antminer S19 Pro, which can produce as much as 110 tera hash. Its profit figures fall just below MicroBT’s Whatsminer at roughly $8.49.

In addition, many analysts predict that the currency will spike to unprecedented levels before the year is out thanks to the halving event.